Muddy Jungle Rivers: A River Assault Boat Cox’n’s Memory Journey of His War in Vietnam and Return Home

Affield offers a creative account of his tour of duty during the Vietnam War as a 20-year-old crewman on a Navy river assault boat. He tells his story chronologically with an excess of reconstructed dialogue and vivid descriptions of the extremely dangerous South Vietnamese rivers. Affield’s crew was patrolling at the war’s height in 1968, and his remembrances of the day-to-day events in the war zone evoke the unique and hazardous role played by the men of the brown-water Navy (the colloquial term for riverine units). Said men included Buddha, the gung-ho, commie-hating captain; Stonewall, the black Southern cannon gunner who became radicalized after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Snipe, the “docile” engineman; Crow, a racist and cowardly southerner; and Professor, a know-it-all college grad. The author was severely wounded during a deadly ambush in the Mekong Delta, and he deals briefly with his post-war life, including his survivor’s guilt. It’s “guilt that I’m alive,” Affield writes, and “have lived a full life when so many others didn’t have a chance.” Affield lends valuable perspective on riverine warfare and it’s a worthy volume for Vietnam aficionados. (BookLife)