When We Walked Above the Clouds: A Memoir of Vietnam

There is the mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations as celebrated in story and song. And then there is the reality of one soldier’s experience, the day-to-day loss and drudgery of a Green Beret such as H. Lee Barnes, whose story conveys the daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds, Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965, and then at A-107, Tra Bong, Vietnam. There, he eventually came to serve as the advisor to a Combat Recon Platoon, which consisted chiefly of Montagnard irregulars. Though “nothing extraordinary,” as Barnes saw it, his months of simply doing what the mission demanded make for sobering reading: the mundane business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing. More than anything, Barnes’s story is one of loss—of morale lost to alcoholism, teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions endlessly and futilely repeated. As the story advances, so does the attrition—teammates transferred, innocence cast off, confidence in leadership whittled away. And yet, against this dark background, Barnes still manages to honor the quiet professionals whose service, overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the day.

Biographies & Memoirs

Barnes, H. Lee

Leaders & Notable People

University Of Nebraska Press

The mythology of the Green Berets, of their clandestine, special operations, has been celebrated in story and song. The reality, however, could be quite different. This story of one soldier’s experience, the day-to-day loss and drudgery of Green Beret H. Lee Barnes, reveals the daily grind and quiet desperation behind polished-for-public-consumption accounts of military heroics. In When We Walked Above the Clouds, Barnes tells what it was like to be a Green Beret, first in the Dominican Republic during the civil war of 1965, and then at A-107, Tra Bong, Vietnam, where he eventually served as adviser to a Combat Recon Platoon consisting chiefly of Montagnard irregulars. Though “nothing extraordinary,” as Barnes saw it, his months of simply doing what the mission demanded make for sobering reading: the mundane business of killing rats, cleaning guns, and building bunkers renders the intensity of patrols and attacks all the more harrowing.More than anything, however, Barnes’s story is one of loss—of morale lost to alcoholism, teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions endlessly and futilely repeated. And yet against this dark background, Barnes graciously honors the quiet professionals whose service, overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the day. 

In this collection of short stories, former Green Beret Lee Barnes deals with the war itself and its aftermath, focusing on the human aspects of men in armed conflict and their families at home. The characters reveal the many faces of war and the small tragedies as well as the large.

Gunning For Ho: Vietnam Stories (Battle Born)

Literature & Fiction

United States

University of Nevada Press

The glitter and excitement that tourists associate with casinos is only a facade. To the gaming industry's front-line employees, its dealers, the casino is a far less glamorous environment, a workplace full of emotional tension, physical and mental demands, humor and pathos. Author H. Lee Barnes, who spent many years as a dealer in some of Las Vegas's best-known casinos, shows us this world from the point of view of the table-games dealer. 
Told in the voices of dozens of dealers, male and female, young and old, DUMMY UP AND DEAL takes us to the dealer's side of the table. We observe the "breaking in" that constitutes a dealer's training, where the hands learn the balletic motions of the game while the mind undergoes the requisite hardening to endure long hours of concentration and the demands of often unreasonable and sometimes abusive players. We discover how dealers are hired and assigned to shifts and tables, how they interact with each other and with their supervisors, and how they deal with players-the winners and the losers, the "Sweethearts" and the "Dragon Lady," the tourists looking for a few thrills and the mobsters showing off their "juice." We observe cheaters on both sides of the table and witness the exploits of such high-rollers as Frank Sinatra and Colonel Parker, Elvis's manager. And we learn about the dealers' lives after-hours, how some juggle casino work with family responsibilities while others embrace the bohemian lifestyle of the Strip and sometimes lose themselves to drugs, drink, or wild sex. It's a life that invites cynicism and bitterness, that can erode the soul and deaden the spirit. But the dealer's life can also offer moments of humor, encounters with generous and kindly players, moments of pride or humanity or professional solidarity. 
Barnes writes with the candor of a keen observer of his profession, someone who has seen it all-many times-but has never lost his capacity to wonder, to sympathize, or to laugh. DUMMY UP AND DEAL is a vivid and colorful insider's view of the casino industry, a fascinating glimpse behind the glitter into the real world of the casino worker.

Dummy Up And Deal: Inside The Culture Of Casino Dealing (Gambling Studies Series)

Sports & Outdoors

The streets of early Las Vegas are a tough place for a boy to grow up. Pete Elkins is fatherless, living in a cramped apartment with his mother, a party-girl with a penchant for falling in love with the wrong kind of man, and his older sister, grown up too young from trying to parent both her brother and their feckless mother. Pete is headed for serious trouble when he is befriended by Willy Bobbins, a casino owner with a murky past and even murkier business practices. But Willy is also deeply compassionate and wise, and he soon becomes a surrogate father for the lonely Pete. Gradually, Pete becomes involved with Willy's troubled family and comes to know both the scope of his mentor's power and the depth of his vulnerabilities.

The Lucky: (A Novel) (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Literary

A gaming insider reveals the dark side of casino life from the perspective of the dealers.

Smith, John L.

Lee Barnes' new book, Minimal Damage, contains seven stories and a novella that depict veterans of several wars in search of dignity and purpose in a civilian life that has no need for men who were soldiers. Psychically scarred, in emotional crisis, pushed to the fringes of society, or in relentless battle with their memories, many of these men find themselves living "like warts on America's ass."The characters range from the enigmatic Mr. K, who runs a brutally violent reality television show and once led an escape from a Korean POW camp, to the doomed Billy Debecki, who regains his dignity in the last minutes of his life by remembering that he once willingly risked his life to save an enemy soldier. In one story, a man who was never a soldier finds a path toward reconciliation with his brother, a former Marine. In another, a man recalls becoming a soldier by watching the humanity of a fellow recruit disintegrate in basic training. In the novella "Snake Boy," a homeless Vietnam vet is kidnapped by a snake-handling evangelist. The depth of damage is never immediately apparent in these men, whether they are living proper, upstanding lives or lost, drifting ones. In war, chance, luck, and arbitrary timing conspire to determine a soldier's fate. In civilian life, the same uncontrollable forces influence who finds a place in society and who is doomed to continue searching.

Minimal Damage: Stories Of Veterans (Battle Born)

Jude is a Las Vegas casino dealer who barely survived the deadly MGM fire in 1980. More than two decades later, he’s still dealing, a tired, middle-aged man, divorced, struggling with debt, and trying to be a good father to his children. Then he loses his job and his car is totaled in an accident. When an attractive woman friend offers to help him get another job, Jude is happy to go along. Gradually, he realizes that his new job is part of an elaborate scheme to cheat a casino and that his own fate and that of his children depend on his finding the courage and ingenuity to extricate himself. Cold Deck is the exciting story of an ordinary man who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. Moving from Las Vegas’s mean streets to the insider’s world of casino workers, this is a story of survival set against the greed, fears, and glitz of Sin City.

Cold Deck: A Novel (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Contemporary

The Salt Lake City Tribune has called Lee Barnes “one of the finest writers of short stories in the contemporary West.” Minimal Damage contains seven stories and a novella that depict veterans of several wars in search of dignity and purpose in a civilian life that has no need for men who were soldiers. With emotion, humor, and clarity, Barnes creates characters who show us what it is to live with the trauma of having experienced combat. The fractured souls and twisted lives of these men remind us that war’s ultimate damage extends far beyond the battlefield. 

The Gambler’s Apprentice tells the story of a teenage boy growing up in Texas during desperate times. Willy, wise and capable beyond his years, learns the gambler’s trade and experiences adventures that demand quick wits—and sometimes violent actions. This is a multilayered story, full of Old West motifs such as cattle-rustling and gunfights along with more modern twists. Starting with a cattle-rustling scheme involving his father, Willy embarks on a life of crime early, eventually landing in a Laredo jail for shooting a man. During his incarceration he meets Sonny Archer, an itinerant gambler, who teaches Willy how to be a cardsharp. Upon his release, Willy roams the country, honing his new talent and getting into more trouble. During his time in New Orleans, Willy even winds up in a confrontation with an Italian crime ring. While all these adventures mold Willy into a clever card player and a masterful fortune-hunter, his grand ambition to be a professional gambler is thwarted when the influenza epidemic strikes. Willy is forced to return home to his family’s Texas ranch, where he faces the most challenging test of his young life and begins to prove that he is far more than simply an apprentice.

The Gambler's Apprentice (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Genre Fiction

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barnes, H. Lee. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Barnes, H. Lee

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barnes, H. Lee. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

When We Walked Above the Clouds: A Memoir of Vietnam

When We Walked Above the Clouds: A Memoir of Vietnam

Gunning For Ho: Vietnam Stories (Battle Born)

Dummy Up And Deal: Inside The Culture Of Casino Dealing (Gambling Studies Series)

The Lucky: (A Novel) (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Dummy Up And Deal: Inside The Culture Of Casino Dealing (Gambling Studies Series)

Minimal Damage: Stories Of Veterans (Battle Born)

Cold Deck: A Novel (Western Literature and Fiction Series)

Minimal Damage: Stories Of Veterans (Battle Born)

The Gambler's Apprentice (Western Literature and Fiction Series)