The greatest beer run ever : a memoir of friendship, loyalty, and war
2020
Large Print
In 1967, John (Chick) Donohue was a 26-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran working as a merchant seaman when he was challenged one night in a New York City bar. The men gathered at this hearth had lost family and friends in the ongoing war in Vietnam. Now, they were seeing protesters turn on the troops. One neighborhood patriot proposed an idea many might deem preposterous: One of them should sneak into Vietnam, track down their buddies in combat, and give each of them messages of support from back home, maybe some laughs - and beer. Chick volunteered for the mission. He sailed to Vietnam on a cargo ship carrying a backpack full of American beer, landing in Qui Nho'n in 1968. Things went awry when Chick got caught in the Tet Offensive, starting in the early hours as an eyewitness to the battle to retake the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, where he became stuck for months. Chick Donohue later became legendary as "the Sandhog who went to Harvard." He worked for decades on behalf of New York's tunnel builders as the legislative and political director of Sandhogs Local 147. This is the story of his epic beer run to Vietnam, in his own words and in those of the men he found in the war zone.
Item Details
ISBN: 9780062999931
Edition: Large print edition.
Description:
- xiv, 304 pages (large print), 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
- large print
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-248).
Contents:
- One Night in a New York City Bar-The Colonel's Challenge
- Gathering the Names
- Setting Sail
- Voyage to Vietnam
- Anchored off Qui Nhon
- Looking for Chuckles's Brother
- The Texan Couldn't Care Less About Orders
- The Good Samaritan in An Khe Looked Familiar
- LZ Tombstone
- "Who's This Guy?!"
- "Wait a Minute-You Don't Have to Be Here, and You're Here?!"
- Firefight at the Ambush Post
- Screams on the Night Road
- An Air Force Pilot Does Me a Favor
- Stuck in Saigon
- American Money Is Good for Bribes
- The Caravelle Rooftop Bar
- Finding a Seafaring Friend
- Happy New Year, Baby
- Beaucoup VC
- Broken Truce
- The American Embassy Under Siege
- Battle at the President's Palace
- Am I Dead and in Purgatory?
- Befriending a South Vietnamese Cop
- A Giant Floating Freezer Full of Food in the Midst of Famine
- Coast Guard Brass: A Big Job on a Big Ship
- Australian Marines Lock the Caravelle Up Tight
- Finding Bobby
- Explosion at Long Binh
- Helping a Descendant of the Mayans
- C.D., Phone Home
- Please Do Feed the Animals
- "We Cannot Win"
- "We're Outta Here!"
- I Kiss the Ground.
Control Number: 2882235
Publisher: New York : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2020]