Monk's War: Volume 2--Crossfire: A Marine Grunt in Vietnam

Monk's War, Volumes 1 and 2, contain true stories of what it was like to live the life of an 18-year-old Marine ground pounder in Vietnam. Both volumes read like good adventure novels, when your own "theater of the mind" puts you in the hero's place. In Volume 1 we met young men with nicknames like Gunny, Mushy, Hog, Broccoli and Eyes. Author Frank M. Beyea was Monk. Now in Volume 2 we are introduced to Goofy, Twitch, Spit Shine and Rusty. We meet Rocky, the 11-year-old Coca Cola sales kid in the Vietnamese bush. We also find out what happened to Captain Clean, an enemy within the Marines. And we learn about Baby Blues. When Monk goes on a five-day R&R in Japan, we get to meet Mama-San and the lovely Yureko. Monk finds trouble in Tokyo, like many Marines on R&R did, and flees the city as police sirens close in. Monk and his friends are fighting the NVA, the North Vietnamese Army, in Volume 2, as in this description of a fight on a trail: "I was having a hard time getting my breath back and all hell had broken loose since the explosion. Three NVA were coming at us down the trail with guns blazing, and as I tried to get off my back and into a firing position, I discovered that the entire stock of my M-14 had been blown off at the narrow part of the grip just be-hind the trigger. Nevertheless, I did manage to fire off a short burst that got one of the NVA and that's when a round grazed my shoulder and knocked me down once more. "By this time the rest of the squad had caught up to the firefight and gave us some blistering cover fire that put the other two NVA down in a hail of bullets." Join 18-year-old Monk and his Marine, ground pounding buddies in Volume 2, as they hold it together again and Monk gets to leave Vietnam in the way he had anticipated. On a stretcher.