If you've never even been to Southeast Asia, can you 
be a Vietnam veteran? In a novel that captures the 
life and times of a generation, Mark Busby takes us 
on a journey through an era of hippies, the shootings 
at Kent State University, integration, and Woodstock. 
Fort Benning Blues tells the story of Vietnam from 
this side of the ocean.

    
Drafted in 1969, Jeff Adams faces a war he doesn't 
understand. While trying to delay the inevitable tour 
of duty in Vietnam, Adams attends Officer Candidate 
School in Fort Benning, Georgia, desperately hoping 
Nixon will achieve "peace with honor" before he graduates. 
The Army's job is to weed out the "duds," "turkeys," and 
"dummies" in an effort to keep not only the officers 
but also the men under their command alive in the rice 
paddies of Vietnam. It doesn't take long for the stress 
to create casualties.


Lieutenant Rancek, Adams' training officer at OCS, is 
ready to cut candidates from the program for any perceived 
weakness. He does this, not for the Army, but because 
he wants only the best "...leading the platoon on my 
right" when he goes to Vietnam.
    

Hugh Budwell, one of Adams' roommates, brings the 
laid-back spirit of California with him to Fort 
Benning. Tired of practicing estate law, he joins 
the Army to relieve the boredom he feels pervades 
his life. About Officer Candidate School, Budwell 
states, "If I wanted to go through it without any 
trouble, I'd be wondering about myself."
    

Candidate Patrick "Sheriff" Garrett, a black southerner, 
spends a night with Adams in the low-crawl pit after 
they both raise Rancek's ire. Expecting racism when 
he joined the Army, Garrett copes better than most 
with the rigors of Officer Candidate School.
   

Busby uses song lyrics, newspaper headlines, and the 
jargon of the era to bring the sixties and seventies 
alive again. Henry Kissinger is described as "Peter 
Sellers as Dr. Strangelove" and Lieutenant William 
"Rusty" Calley as "Howdy Doody in uniform." Of My 
Lai, Busby says, "At Fort Benning everybody took 
those actions as a matter of course."


As America continues to try to comprehend the effects 
of one of the most transforming eras in our history, 
Fort Benning Blues adds another perspective to the 
meaning of being a Vietnam veteran.
 

_________________________________________________________

MARK BUSBY is an English professor and Director of 
the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Southwest 
Texas State University in San Marcos. He is the author 
of books on Larry McMurtry, Ralph Ellison, Lanford 
Wilson, and Preston Jones and has edited several 
books, anthologies and journal articles about the 
Southwest and its writers. His stories can be found 
in New Texas Short Stories and Texas Short 
Stories II. Busby is currently secretary-treasurer 
of the Texas Institute of Letters and editor of 
Southwest Literary Review and Texas Books 
in Review.  He completed OCS at Fort Benning in 
1970.