Flint Whitlock

Picked up in New Mexico recently, this is the best book I’ve come across about the 1862 Confederate invasion of New Mexico and Arizona. (The Union territories were the same as the current states, except Arizona included a chunk of southern Nevada; the Confederate territories were divided latitudinally along the 34th parallel; thus Confederate Arizona was approximately the southern halves of modern New Mexico and Arizona and Confederate New Mexico was the other half). Author Flint Whitlock show more (possibly doomed by his name to be a military historian) does an excellent research job, tracking down old letters and newspaper reports to give first hand immediacy but also including modern maps of the campaign and battles.


The driving parties were Confederate Brigadier General Henry Sibley; Union Colonel Edward Canby; and Colorado Territorial Governor William Gilpin. The antebellum Regular Army was a fairly exclusive club, and Sibley and Canby had met in the Mexican War, in the Mormon Campaign (where Mormon farmers had to rescue the military forces which had run out of food on the way to suppress them) and in the 1860 campaign against the Navajo. Their acquaintance later led Federal soldiers dissatisfied with Canby’s performance to claim that they were related by marriage and that Canby had been the best man at Sibley’s wedding; Whitlock can’t disprove these claims but finds them highly unlikely (for example, at the time of Sibley’s wedding in New York Canby was serving in the Seminole campaign; while it’s not impossible Canby could have obtained leave it’s pretty unlikely).


Sibley had a reputation as an aggressive officer (and also as a thorough drunk – one of his prewar subordinates described him as a “walking whiskey keg”); Canby was thought of as a good administrator. Ironically, at the start of the war Sibley was in command at Fort Union in New Mexico; his sense of honor prevented him from turning over the fort to the Confederacy and he sent in his resignation instead. He then traveled to Richmond and proposed a grand offensive through the Southwest, with the goal of gaining New Mexico, Arizona, and California for the Confederacy – with the suggestion that his experience in the area would make him the appropriate commander for the expedition. Jefferson Davis approved and Sibley was sent back west with a brigadier’s star and authority to raise a force in Texas.


In the meantime, William Gilpin was appointed as the first territorial governor of Colorado (which had only recently been split off from Nebraska). When Gilpin left Washington for Denver, he claimed he was assured by Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he could count on the US Government to back up any expenditure he had to make to defend Colorado from the Confederacy. Unfortunately he didn’t receive this assurance in writing. On arrival, Gipin immediately began enlisting a regiment of volunteers, paying for supplies and equipment with sight drafts on the US Government. The Colorado Volunteers elected their own officers, set up a camp (near 8th and Vallejo in modern Denver) and then sat around waiting for orders to march south.


Canby, in the meantime, headed south to Fort Craig in New Mexico (now vacant land just off I-25). He sent a detachment south to Fort Fillmore on the Rio Grande near the Texas border and began a series of urgent messages to Gilpin asking for troops.


Sibley was in San Antonio, where he discovered that the authority to gather troops and supplies didn’t actually provide any troops and supplies. He eventually got his brigade together and set off for New Mexico. One of the things Whitlock points out is Sibley’s men had to march 675 miles from San Antonio just to get to their jumping off spot, and through West Texas at that. When Sibley finally got to Fort Bliss, he found that one of his subordinates, Colonel John Baylor, had already crossed the border and defeated a Union force under Major Isaac Lynde. Lynde had marched off from Fort Fillmore and attacked Baylor near Mesilla, New Mexico; after two cannon shots and some desultory musketry, Lynde lost his nerve, retreated to the fort, burned it, and attempted to march his whole command to Fort Stanton, 125 miles away. He was barely a day on the road when Baylor came up and demanded his surrender; Lynde agreed, even though he outnumbered Baylor by about 5 to 3.


Sibley appeared annoyed by Baylor’s success; he absorbed his command and ordered Baylor to raise new troops and march off to seize California. The irate Baylor did get as far as Tucson before meeting the oncoming California Column under Union General James Carleton, resulting in the westernmost land battle of the American Civil War (Battle of Picacho Pass; three Union soldiers killed to no Confederates but the Confederates retreated).


Relieved of Baylor, Sibley now headed north toward the next major Union post, Fort Craig (a number of smaller Union positions had been abandoned and burned to concentrate at Fort Craig). The Rio Grande River was the deciding terrain feature; Fort Craig was on the west bank and the Confederates were marching up the east side. There were three fords above the fort and Canby deployed to cover them; after some long range skirmishing on February 20th, 1862, the Battle of Valverde took place on February 21st, about three miles north of Fort Craig near the abandoned village of Valverde.


I’ve read of the “Battle of Valverde” described as “the Gettysburg of the West”, which is a real misnomer considering the number of troops involved – perhaps 3800 Federals versus 2500 Confederates (the apparent Union superiority is deceptive; most of the Union force was New Mexico militia and what regulars Canby had were almost all infantry, while the Texans were cavalry or mounted infantry). Despite the incongruity of comparison, you were just as dead if you stopped a Minie bullet in the New Mexico scrub as if you stopped it in Pennsylvania farmland. Things were generally going well for the Union; the Confederates committed their forces piecemeal and ineffectively in attempts to silence Union artillery. Lang’s Texas Lancers made what is believed to be the only lance charge in the Civil War and were shot to pieces, losing all but two men; Raguet’s cavalry company tried another charge against a battery but advanced diagonally instead of head on and were shot up by flanking fire. At this point Canby did one of the things that led his troops to believe he was a traitor; he withdrew the infantry support of his main battery. He never explained why, and Whitlock doesn’t offer an opinion; the infantry company had just been involved in stopping Raguet’s charge and perhaps they were low on ammunition. At any rate, the Confederates picked this time to finally do an all-out charge and overwhelmed and seized all six guns in McRae’s Union battery (McRae, who died fighting, was from North Carolina). Canby retreated back to Fort Craig. Whitlock’s maps of the battle are excellent, showing the positions at various stages in the fight.


At this point Sibley was left with a dilemma. Despite the capture of six more guns, he didn’t have anything like the siege train necessary to take Fort Craig; Canby was better supplied inside the fort than Sibley was outside of it. He therefore decided to leave the fort and Canby in his rear and head north toward Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Canby, in turn, could stay where he was until reinforced or head after Sibley; he decided to stay where he was. Sibley took Albuquerque and Santa Fe without any resistance (he stayed in Albuquerque; letters home from some of his soldiers suggest he developed a fondness for Mexican ladies and tequila). Whitlock notes the Texans spent two weeks in Santa Fe engaging in R&R and suggests if they had immediately marched on toward Fort Union they might have captured the enormous and poorly defended supply depot there. Hard to say; they were in the New Mexico mountains in the middle of winter, had already marched 1000 miles through West Texas and New Mexico, and fought a battle on the way. It would have been another 100 miles to Fort Union, then 300 miles more to Denver; to put that in perspective Berlin to Moscow is 1100 miles.


By now, the Colorado Volunteers were on the verge of mutiny. Gilpin had appointed John Slough as Colonel; Slough was a lawyer with no military experience. According to letters from his troops, he had a talent for rubbing people the wrong way. His soldiers allowed he was a competent administrator but had absolutely no tact in dealing with his command; there was an attempt to assassinate him in Denver. , As reports of Confederate victories piled up, newspaper editorials and letters to the editor began increasing virulent questioning of Slough’s loyalty and fitness to command. Eventually, he got orders from Canby to head south – but only to defend Fort Union; there was a clause, though, allowing him to “harass” the enemy. The Colorado Volunteers marched out – into a blinding snowstorm; they only made six miles the first day. Things picked up with a thaw; they were lucky enough the rest of the way, especially crossing Raton Pass. On reaching Fort Union, Slough took advantage of the “harass the enemy” clause in his orders to leave only a token detachment behind at the fort and take the rest of his troops west toward Santa Fe.


The Confederates (under Lieutenant Colonel William Scurry; Sibley remained in Albuquerque; Whitlock never explains how Scurry got his nickname “Dirty Shirt”) finally left Santa Fe marching east just in time to run into Slough marching west. The resulting battle is variously called the Battle of Gloriéta Pass, the Battle of Apache Canyon, the Battle of Pigeon’s Ranch, the Battle of Johnson’s Ranch, and the Battle of Kozlowski’s Ranch (Gloriéta Pass is the entire area; Apache Canyon is the western part. From east to west, the three ranches are Kozlowski’s, Pigeon’s and Johnson’s; there was some action at Kozlowski’s on the first day when the forces met; most of the main battle took place around Pigeon’s; the Confederate baggage train was at Johnson’s). Although some contemporary illustrations show the battle site as looking something like the Grand Canyon, it is nowhere near that dramatic; if you’ve ever driven from Las Vegas, New Mexico to Santa Fe on I-25 you’ve passed right over the battle site. It was (and more or less still is) rough and wooded enough to cancel the Confederate cavalry superiority. Slough’s lack of military experience didn’t hamper him very much, as his troops generally ignored his orders anyway; they deployed in the canyon until gunfire forced them to take cover, then shot back – which is more or less the same thing Scurry’s Texans did. The key player in the battle ended up being Major John Chivington, a former Methodist minister and now in command of a provisional battalion of Colorado Volunteers. Other histories I’ve read say Chivington was disgruntled at being held in reserve and set off on his own; however, Whitlock say Chivington and Slough planned his maneuver the night after the initial contact with Scurry. In any event Chivington took his detachment up the wall of the canyon, across the mesa at the top, and back down in the Confederate rear. His initial orders were to then advance and trap the Confederates between him and Slough; however, when he descended he was right on top of the Confederate baggage train, brushed aside the guard (who initially jeered, not believing that anybody could descend the steep canyon walls) and put his troops to work looting and burning. Chivington then retraced his route (almost; he was lost and wandering around on the mesa until a Catholic priest showed up – on a white horse, of all things - and guided him down).


Scurry, meanwhile, had pushed the enthusiastic but not especially tactically skilled Coloradans back until the battle broke off at dusk. (Somewhere in the middle of things a Colorado company had expressed their dissatisfaction with Slough’s leadership by turning around and firing a volley at him, which lead him to withdraw to the rear). Scurry was confident he’s achieved a victory until he came upon the mess Chivington had made of his baggage train; apparently the “acoustic shadow” effect meant that Chivington didn’t hear the battle going on east of him and Scurry didn’t hear his reserve ammunition blowing up to his west). Once again, Whitlock provides an excellent series of maps showing successive positions.


Scurry felt he had no choice to retreat to Santa Fe and resupply; at almost the same time a rider from Canby showed up at Slough’s headquarters with unequivocal orders to retreat to Fort Union. Slough, presumably somewhat discomfited by having his own troops shoot at him, resigned his commission “in protest” to Canby’s orders, and Chivington took over command (by acclamation; he was junior to Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Tappan).


The rest of the campaign was anticlimactic. With no supplies and no chance of pressing on to Fort Union, Sibley’s brigade retreated toward Texas. In the meantime, Canby left Fort Craig and ordered Chivington to leave Fort Union to try and catch Sibley in the middle; somehow the forces missed each other. The now combined Union army fought a minor action at Peralta, outside Albuquerque, then contented itself with sheparding the Texans. The Union troops grumbled at Canby for not being more aggressive; Canby invited one of them into his tent and asked him if he was getting enough to eat. The private allowed he wasn’t; Canby then pointed out if they captured the Texans, they would have to feed them. The private left and explained this to “the boys” and criticism of Canby stopped.


Whitlock goes on to follow the subsequent careers of some of the principals. Chivington, of course, went from hero at Glorieta to villain at Sand Creek. Canby survived the war but was killed by Captain Jack while trying to negotiate a treaty with the Modoc Indians. Sibley went on to be a general in the Egyptian Army, but his thirst and the Islamic prohibition of alcohol got better of him and he was dismissed after breaking into a British merchant’s house and consuming the entire supply of intoxicating beverages; his claims for patent revenues as the inventor of the Sibley Tent were disregarded by the US Government for the understandable reason that he had fought the Civil War on the wrong side. Fort Union is a National Historic Park (although the Civil War fort is overshadowed by the later post). Glorieta Canyon is mostly private property or under I-25 but there is still a remaining building from Pigeon’s Ranch. Valverde has a couple of Daughters of the Confederacy monuments; Fort Craig is mostly private but the BLM has a self-guided tour booklet. Fort Fillmore is long gone.


In the long term, the New Mexico campaign had little to no influence on the outcome of the war. Sibley presented the idea that the Confederates could build a railroad to the Pacific and bypass the Union blockade and that capture of New Mexico would prompt foreign recognition; both are farfetched. The Confederacy couldn’t even maintain the railroads it had, much less build a new transcontinental line, and foreign governments were unlikely to take the slightest interest in who controlled New Mexico. (To be fair, it’s possible that Richmond had grandiose ideas about their capabilities; after all, if they didn’t they wouldn’t have started the war in the first place). A more interesting speculation is what would have happened if Sibley had somehow managed to get all the way to Denver. During the war, the Colorado gold and silver deposits produced about four times the entire wartime revenue of the Confederate States of America. At this stage in the Colorado mining industry, “mine” is something of a misnomer; most gold was coming from placer deposits. The few “mines” in production were working with native gold in quartz veins; processing involved stamp mills, mercury amalgamation, and retorting. Sulfide ores that required smelting were dug out, crushed, loaded into barrels, shipped by oxcart to the railhead in St. Joseph, Missouri, transferred to riverboat, unloaded again somewhere at a Union-controlled railhead, shipped to an Atlantic port, loaded again on ship, and sent to Swansea in Wales where the then-secret ore processing technology was available. It’s unlikely the Confederacy could have extracted a significant amount of precious metal. Still, Whitlock notes that in 1862 there was about $1M worth of gold and silver in Colorado vaults waiting for shipment; a successful Confederate looting raid could have disrupted mining and hauled quite a bit of bullion back to the South. Hard to say.


As mentioned, the best book on the campaign, combining good maps with good text descriptions; can’t say I found any faults. There are a surprising number of books available considering how obscure the battles were; I suppose if I lived in Murfreesboro or Antietam I’d find a lot of local bookstores with volumes about Stones River or Sharpsburg. Whitlock’s other books are all about WWII, I’ll have to track some down. show less

Very well done description and analysis of the Airborne aspect of the Normandy Invasion. The planning had many flaws, grossest among them was failing to assess the terrain correctly. Hedgerows, swamps and flooded fields turned into deathtraps. Did anyone think to ask the local French Resistance?
The execution was even worse than planning. Vastly overloaded with equipment and supplies, most of which left their possession, on or before landing and scattered miles from their drop zones, how did show more these men succeed?
Success was at the small unit level. Groups formed, someone took charge. These small groups seized and held strongpoints, bridges and strategic road junctions and denied their use to the Germans. Supported by locals who helped them find supplies, gave directions; frequently paying a horrendous price from revengeful Nazis. It was not planned or pretty but the ordinary soldier did the job. show less

Review Written by Bernie Weisz, Historian, Vietnam War Pembroke Pines, Florida, U.S.A. January 13, 2011 Title of Review:
"What Good Is Fighting For People When The People You Are Fighting For Hate Your Guts? And By the Way, Welcome to Vietnam!" Flint Whitlock has done come in with a superb historic lesson about many issues in "Internal Conflicts." On the surface, this is a novel about a young, Army officer who while joining the Army in an attempt to discover his manhood by way of wearing show more "army greens, sexual conquests and love," searches for the meaning of life in the tumultuous 1960's. Although Whitlock throws to the reader a novel of varied themes, i.e. eroticism, romance, sibling rivalry, mortality, murder, war, and peace, his protagonist, a Vietnam bound Officer named Peter, Luton, sums up his personal "Internal Conflict" best in this book with his following lament: "My mother is not really my mother, my brother is not really my brother, my father was not really my father, I am not who I always thought I was." The title chosen by Flintlock is appropriate, as Luton, an awkward, graceless youth matures into adulthood in the shadow of his older, athletically adroit brother Jack. Full of negative self poise and overly sensitive, Peter is forever plagued by self-recrimination, indecision and self doubt. As the reader will discover through what Whitlock deemed "The Incident," Luton's impulsive behavior precipitate negative repercussions that cause self doubt and insecurity that plague him nearly to the end of this story. Yet, the reader need to be forewarned: when it came time for Luton to step to the plate and prove his prowess and fortitude in the face of death, he smashed a grand slam home run. Unfortunately for Luton, his base clearing blast was in an unforgiving place that was not a John Wayne film, devoid of makeup, fake blood, flags and bugles. This was in Vietnam and in the watershed year of this conflict, where he was to ultimately find out that he was deceived by his drill instructors with the following admonition: "The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in wartime."

The reader needs to be forwarded that it is once in a while a book will come along where the majority of occurrences one reads about can be identified vicariously. I myself experienced identical or similar incidents and experiences that Whitlock's protagonist encountered and experienced. It brought back poignant memories of my youth and my own voyage of self discovery. If the reader of this novel went through the 1960's, the whole scene of Vietnam, the search for manhood, sexual conquest, masculine identity, adoption, sibling rivalry, post traumatic stress syndrome, etc., this book will certainly churn both your head and stomach with emotions perhaps dulled with the passage of time. I did not expect this book to end as violent and abrupt as it did. Being Whitlock's first foray into fiction, I did not even expect this to be anything more than a marginal regurgitation of historical facts coated by a flimsy storyline. Needless to say, this book turned out to be a plot I simply could not put down until the last page was turned, and even then I was shaking my head as to "why?" I will not be a plot spoiler and let on to why I say this. I can promise anyone, man or woman, that there is something in this book that you will identify with and have you thinking about for weeks after you have finished it. One wonders if Whitlock is veiling his own biography through fiction. The writer of almost 10 best selling historical books that effectively convey the emotional and physical aspects of the soldier's experience, Whitlock's past parallels his protagonist. A college graduate in ROTC, Peter Luton, a Chicagoan, tearfully finds out the circumstances of his adoption late in life. Witnessing the death of his friend through a suspicious incident in basic training, Luton underwent a grueling ordeal of learning to be a soldier at Fort Benning, Georgia. Luton spent two years in Germany as an Officer for the Nike Hercules Missile Battery prior to his involuntary deployment to Vietnam at the height of the 1968 "Tet Offensive." His real father and mother perished in a fatal car accident and his adopted father vanished in a downed B-17 Bomber, shot down over Germany's skies during the Second World War.

Flint Whitlock graduated from the University of Illinois in 1964 with a degree in Advertising Design. Whitlock's father, James, served with the famed 10th Mountain Division in World War II. With Vietnam escalating after the August, 1964 "Gulf of Tonkin" incident, Whitlock wanted to serve his country, and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Commission Training Program and entered active duty in December 1964. Similar to his protagonist,after completing basic Air Defense Artillery officers' course at Fort Bliss, Texas, Whitlock received his jump wings at Airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was then posted to a Nike Hercules battery in Baumholder, Germany. After two years in Air Defense Artillery, he spent an additional year in Zweibruecken, Germany, where he was promoted to captain as part of the Supply and Maintenance Agency. In 1968, Flint was transferred to South Vietnam, arriving one day before the Tet Offensive in January, 1968 just like his protagonist. He served for six months as a supply specialist at 1st Logistical Command Headquarters at Long Binh, northeast of Saigon, before being transferred to the 14th Inventory Control Center at the same post. Although Whitlock never saw combat, he chronicles his protagonist's self recrimination and guilt at being a noncombatant, euphemistically called a "REMF," while his compatriots sweat, fought, were wounded, and died in the sultry triple canopy jungles of Vietnam. I have read and reviewed other men's memoirs of serving in the rear lines of Vietnam. Most have a complex called "survivor guilt." Whitlock makes an interesting statement at the beginning of this book, where Jack Luton's brother tells him this admonition: "Never expose your weaknesses to someone else, unless you want him to use your weaknesses against you." Possibly Luton exorcises Whitlock's impotence of his non involvement in the Vietnam conflict by this novel. Definitely, Whitlock hits, and hits hard at the major facts and issues that affected everyone unilaterally growing up during the Vietnam era.

Needless to say, Flint Whitlock, former child of the 1960's, ex Army Officer, ex Vietnam Veteran, and current historian, has come up with a gem here that only a conglomeration of the following roles could produce. Incredibly, this book is a primer on the major issues of the era and the Southeast Asian conflict America became enmeshed in and eventually concluded in a debacle. Whitlock stated out early in this novel by including actual events cleverly included in a realistic storyline. In his last year of college, Luton mourned the fact that a lot of his classmates dropped out of college and joined one of the branches of service as part of the "Cold War" fervor as a reaction to the "Bay of Pigs Invasion." This was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the U.S. government, in an attempt to overthrow the Communistic Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The conflict started in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United States. It ended as a U.S. embarrassment, as the Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by the Soviet Union, defeated the invading combatants within three days. The failed invasion severely embarrassed the Kennedy Administration, and made Castro wary of future US intervention in Cuba. At the beginning of September 1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites in Cuba. J.F.K. complained to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that the U.S. would not accept offensive weapons 90 miles off U.S. shores. The National Security Council and the CIA recommended a U.S air-attack on the missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before the Bay of Pigs invasion, J.F.K. decided that by doing that it would lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

It was finally decided to blockade Cuba in a naval manner, disabling any Soviet nuclear hardware to reach the island. As well as imposing a naval blockade, Kennedy also told the Air Force to prepare for attacks on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched, a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites. The world waited anxiously. A public opinion poll in the United States revealed that three out of five people expected fighting to break out between the two sides. On October 24, 1962,J.F.K. was informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the U.S. ships blockading Cuba. On October 26 and 28th, Khrushchev sent J.F.K. two letters. The first proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the U.S. they would not invade Cuba and the second one demanded that the U.S. remove their nuclear bases in Turkey. J.F.K. accepted the terms of only the first letter, and Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled. However, The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The event was used in Whitlock's book to show how frightened people were of the Cold War. Incidentally, three months after the Cuban Missile Crisis the U.S. secretly removed all its nuclear missiles from Turkey, 1,113 prisoners captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion were exchanged by Castro for $60 million from the U.S. in food, drugs, medicine and cash, but most significantly, the U.S. became convinced that the Soviet Union would not go to war over another communist country which encouraged the U.S. to help attempts to overthrow the communist government of Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam, and later in Nicaragua and Grenada.

Whitlock ingenuously included American sentiment over the assassination of J.F,K. and it's after affects, on November 22 1963, Luton's callous girlfriend could not understand why he had no libido on that night. Not being able to empathize why Luton, with images of the Zapruder amateur video tape of the Kennedy shooting in his mind, thus incapable of sexual performance, she used that as an excuse to break up with him. Luton also had school that day and watched students walk out of his ROTC class. Luton stayed, "internally conflicted" by his professor's advice: "Gentlemen, there's a lesson to be learned here. In the not too distant future, you will be on active duty. Some of you may even see combat-Europe, the Middle East, Africa, maybe even Vietnam-who knows where. your best friend may get killed right in front of you, his blood and brains splashed all over you. Are you going to start bawling your head off and run home to mommy? No. The real officer sticks it out, no matter how rough it gets. The real officer sets an example for his men, because, if he runs away, then his men are going to run away, and then the mission is lost." After Kennedy's death, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, took a steadfast policy of gradual escalation. While Jack Luton attended his Airborne training at Fort Benning, he realized units at Benning were alerted to go and were later placed on stand-by status for Vietnam. Luton mused the following during the training, echoing millions who similarly endured identical anxiety: "I wondered which ones would be going off to Vietnam, which ones would lose legs and hands and faces and genitals, which ones would return home in body bags and which ones would never be found, and I suddenly knew why we were all being hardened." An incident with racial overtones resulted in the murder of Luton's friend, and Jack's suspect, a bigoted drill master named Sergeant Krieger, is targeted for fragging. Soldiers serving under Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., the culprit of the My Lai Massacre, secretly considering fragging him after he marched them into danger. "Fragging" referred to the act of attacking a superior officer in one's chain of command with the intent to kill that officer and was most commonly used to mean the assassination of an unpopular officer of one's own fighting unit. Killing was effected by means of a fragmentation grenade, hence the term.

Flint Whitlock cleverly included this ugly aspect of the Vietnam War, as throughout the course of conflict, fragging was reportedly common. There are documented cases of at least 230 American officers killed by their own troops, and as many as 1,400 other officers' deaths could not be explained. Between 1970 and 1971 alone, there were 363 cases of "assault with explosive devices" against officers in Vietnam. Although Luton agreed that it was important to be "hardened," one Black soldier was mistreated, insulted and unfairly abused by Krieger that resulted in him quitting. There is another book, written by Joel Russell, entitled "Escaping Death's Sting" that also shows unfair mistreatment as part of basic training. However, another issue of the war, also dealt with in this book, is avoidance of the Draft, by going to graduate school, or even absconding to Canada or Sweden. Although he ultimately dropped out and was promptly drafted, Luton's friend back in college, Marty "Frog" Randall was used by Whitlock to illustrate those that went to war, and those that were against it and stayed. This issue broke up friendships, families, and marriages. Luton goes to a party prior to his deployment to Germany, and see's Frog in a different light. The underground usage of marijuana, the drug per se an anti-war, counterculture statement receives treatment in "Internal Conflicts." Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers served in West Germany during the Vietnam era, and Whitlock, since he was there, included his observations through Luton, of the Germanic vision of our occupation as a couple looked at him and smiled: "He couldn't help wondering, though the smiles masked a hatred of him and his uniform-a symbol of the conquering Army that had occupied their country for twenty years. Or did they view him as a valiant warrior, ready to die to keep the Russians from swarming across the border? He wished he could speak German so he could converse with them; he promised himself he would learn the language."

Despite the fact that this is a novel, very real issues were brought up, particularly of the U.S. military in Germany in this period of time. Luton, trained to watch a radar grid of possible Soviet ballistic incoming missiles, is warned by lieutenant Stiles Van Dellen, a later casualty of Vietnam, the dangers of the Battery Control Center. Showing Luton how to work the radar, Van Dellen instructs the following: "Every so often, we'll see a dozen or so blips in formation heading our way-probably MIG's-but they always turn back before they reach the East and West Germany border." "What happens if they don't turn back?" "Then Pete," Stiles said, the proverbial balloon has just gone up." Peter gulped. World War Three would just be minutes away if ever those advancing blips did not reverse course." Aside from war games, Whitlock showed how the military could easily change one's "Military Occupational Specialty" at whim and even if one had a week left in their tour of duty, re-designate them for combat duty. During the Vietnam era, this was referred to as being "curtailed," although now with Iraq and Afghanistan in the background, it is referred to as "Stop Loss." This amounts to the involuntary extension of a service member's active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term of service date and up to their contractually agreed end of obligated service. It also applies to the cessation of a permanent change of station move for a member still in military service. There has recently even been a major motion picture of this issue. Peter Luton, thinking that he is safe from being called to Vietnam because he is in air-defense and the North Vietnamese had no planes, is corrected once again by Stiles as follows: "Pete, the Army can do whatever it damn well pleases, including sending you or me to anywhere." Yeah, but they guaranteed-" Army guarantees don't mean squat, Pete." In a memoir about Vietnam, written by James A. Daly entitled "Black Prisoner of War: A Conscientious Objector's Vietnam Memoir," Daly, a Jehovah's Witness, joined the Army under the promise of being made a cook and designated a permanent rear echelon job, was deceived, sent to the front lines as part of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, captured and spent over five years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war.

Flint Whitlock also included an incident where Peter Luton, on night patrol of his own men, discovered two men having sex. This is significant, considering the 1960's view of homosexuality in the military, the subsequent "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" term policy restricting the U.S. military from efforts to discover or reveal the sexuality of closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service, and it's current repeal. Nevertheless, Luton did meet an Army nurse, Meredith, whom he eventually wed, had a daughter with, and then it happened. His worst fears were realized, as he was shipped to Vietnam, no less on the first day of the "Tet Offensive". Contrary to W. W. II, there was no enthusiasm of going to combat, and unlike any previous conflict the U.S. has ever been involved with, his war chariot was a commercial airplane, a Boeing 727. Given a short leave between Germany and Vietnam to visit his new bride's family and his own in America's Midwest, he was given this little speech by his new father in law: "We either stop Communism over there or we try to stop it when the Russians or Red Chinese parachute in to Milwaukee. That's our choice, Pete. Far as I'm concerned, I'd rather we stopped it over there, in Vietnam. I just want you to know that I'm damn proud that you are going over there." "Well sir, I guess it's my duty. When I joined the Army, I knew that was part of the bargain, he lied. "Well, I'm just proud of you. And my daughter, too, for being an Army nurse, Too many of these long haired hippies are running around, burning their draft cards and American flags and smoking pot, are just spoiled brats, if you ask me. The kids today are as soft as marsh mellows they need to go into the service to toughen them up, and learn some discipline and respect. That's what my generation did. We gave up our jobs and our schooling and our families to serve our country. When they called us up, we all went. There were no protests or demonstrations back then. Draft dodgers were few and far in between. In fact, guys who were underage or were four-F and unfit for service did everything they could to get in. It took almost four, years, but we licked those Japs and Krauts. That's the problem today-nobody's willing to sacrifice. Everybody just wants everything handed to them on a silver platter."

Regardless, the "internal conflicts" of Peter Luton continue. After a two week stay in Milwaukee, Luton flew to Vietnam, via San Francisco and the Philippines, a common passage during the war. However, an interesting tract was included by Whitlock, which speaks volumes, in terms of ambivalence: "Luton landed in San Francisco, was bussed across the bay bridge to Travis Air Force Base, near Oakland, where he spent the night at the Visiting Officers Quarters. early the next morning, Peter, along with twenty other officers, was loaded onto a 727 in which now he sat, along with ten dozen other worried, frightened, and confused soldiers, to continue their westward journey. A brief refueling stop in Hawaii, and then they were airborne again, flying in a wide arc over Pearl Harbor, where Peter looked downward could see the submerged hull of the U.S. S. Arizona, and he though sadly of the noble men still entombed within her. Now that had been a war-a war to embrace fervently, a war to get excited about. He wondered why he-or anyone else he knew-wasn't excited about going off to war." Anyone that has experienced the Vietnam ordeal will immediately identify. Luton landed at Bien Hoa Air Base and Whitlock wrote: "Even though it was two in the morning, the heat and humidity swamped Peter like a soaking wet electric blanket turned up high." The day was January 31, 1968, the first day of the Lunar New Year, as well as the infamous "Tet Offensive." As promised, I am not going to spoil the outcome, but this is where this book travels at the speed of light to it's earth shaking outcome. Several key events happen that influence the outcome of this book. Luton goes on an emergency bereavement leave following several months "In Country" after he is informed that his mother without warning drooped dead of a heart attack and through a chance of fate gets caught in the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. "Internal Conflicts" continues as he is both tear gassed and bashed in the head by Mayor Richard Daley's goons,and assailed a "baby killer" by the protesting, unruly crowds. Like most Vietnam Vets that became "adrenalin junkies," as he couldn't resist the call of Vietnam to return, where ironically he felt at home. Luton cried "What are they doing to our country?"

The major events in Vietnam were the meeting of Jack Luton with Captain Todd Gorman and Australian Army Captain Graham Birdsong, both of whom played vital roles in propelling the novel to its shattering, inevitable conclusion with an emotional impact that few readers will be able to ever forget! Gorman knocked America's role of world policeman and showed Luton, given a safe, air conditioned desk job, the realities of the war. Pulled to an evacuation hospital, Gorman showed Luton both KIA and WIA victims, some dismembered, some burned beyond recognition. While Luton sat behind a desk, Gorman explained that every promise and guarantee the Army made to him had been broken. Warning Luton, Gorman exhorted: "If the Army says we are winning this war, head for the bomb shelter. The generals don't want this war to end. It's their profession, their livelihood, their whole reason for being. If peace talks are ever held and the fighting stops, the generals will be out of work. They'll be stuck at the Pentagon, making chains out of paper clips." Luton also saw the false, inaccurate reporting of the Tet Offensive. A complete American route of the enemy, the men with the pens and microphones reported this as a U.S. military defeat, while in reality it was a shattering blow to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The final internal conflict was when Luton met a "Digger"(A soldier in the Australian Army) named Captain Birdsong, who albeit inebriated, hit a sensitive nerve in Whitlock by questioning his manhood and calling him a coward. Birdsong sent Luton over the edge by telling him: You should be out in the boondocks with us, mate, mixing it up with Charlie, not pushing a pencil back at your cushy headquarters. Oh sure, you can say, "I'm in Vietnam, but you aren't really, are you? This is just like being in the States, isn't it, with a bit of shelling thrown in from time to time-just enough so that you don't have to feel guilty about collecting your hazardous pay duty. You and your fellow REMF's are more than willing to take the credit and the glory and the medals that will come your way for being in a war zone without actually taking part in the war itself. You're content to stand on the fringe of the battlefield, handing food and ammunition to those of us who are doing the real fighting, just as long as you don't get any of the mud or blood on you, You truly do believe in stopping communism-as long as it's someone else who has to do the actual stopping. Am I right?" I promise what happens next will never leave you and will be read over and over again. If you read one historical novel about the Vietnam War, make it "Internal Conflicts." show less

The first couple generations of books about the Big Red One have been done. This work represents a lot of detail done by painstaking research and a multitude of interviews. There is no doubt that the Big One Red has had a powerful history, much like the First Marine Division. It seems to have been in most important battles in the ETO, and usually in the thick of things. The author has avoided a sense of "you are there," focusing instead on the details, often gory. The loss of life was show more horrendous but American generalship seems to be someplace between the British and Russian. The former fought to avoid casualties and later seems to have ignored casualties. American generalship seems also to have been most interested in getting the job done as quickly as possible believing creating calamity was the quickest way to reach an objective. That book is yet to be written, or if it has I haven't heard about it. show less