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A Vietnam photo album (part 2)

The next day I went out on a helicopter, and a month later I was home in New Hampshire, playing games of makebelieve. What if we'd been told to garrison Tan Hoa, instead of merely evacuating its residents? I wrote the story as Incident at Muc Wa. (Imagine a Yankee pronouncing "muck war" and you'll get the idea.) It was published in 1967. One reader was the screenwriter Wendell Mayes, who optioned the movie rights to the story. He wrote a script, titled it Go Tell the Spartans, and spent years finding somebody willing to take a chance on it.

Mayes built up the role of Major Barker, the team commander, so as to interest a star who'd work for a percentage of the gross. The project finally came together with Burt Lancaster in the role. Obviously, he was too old to be a major--a major reason why the U.S. Army refused to provide technical assistance to the filmmakers, or so it claimed. But he was splendid in the role.

Evan Kim was cast as Cowboy, the handsome and bloodthirsty interpreter. The real Cowboy supposedly had killed 22 men with his fast-draw hunting knife, and his reputation naturally followed him into the novel and the movie.

Craig Wasson played my hero, Corporal Stephen Courcey, shown here buying himself a peck of trouble with a chocolate bar. Cowboy warns that the family are Viet Cong and should be killed; Courcey insists on bringing them back to Muc Wa.

Denice Kumagai played Butterfly, the refugee girl. Casting Japanese and Korean actors and Vietnamese refugees in the film was no doubt necessary, but caused the film to miss the wild beauty of the Montagnard tribesmen who actually populated my story.

The Viet Cong soon bring Muc Wa under siege. Here in a desperate moment are Ackley, the outpost's radioman (John Megna); Oleonowski, the team sergeant (Jonathan Goldsmith); and Courcey. Their white tee-shirts are accurate for 1964, but instead of a carbine the Americans more likely would have been carrying a Colt AR-15 Armalite, civilian forerunner of the M-16 assault rifle.

The story ends with Courcey staggering through the shattered French graveyard. I let him be killed by a wounded Viet Cong guerrilla. The movie lets him live, whereupon he vows: "I'm going home, Charlie--if they let me." Then 1964 flashes on the screen. Ten years to go.