David A. Willson, born June 30, is the nearly unique novelist of the majority American military experience in Viet Nam. He would stay up late typing a long letter home after each hard day filing memos at the administrative center at Long Binh.
His REMF Diary, REMF Returns and In the Army Now draw on these notes to summon the bureaucratic reality of war and modern life. They take off into office daydreams such as a love affair with Madame Ky.
Marc Leepson, arts editor of the Veteran, interviewed David for the Viet Nam Literature Project on the occasion of Veterans Day in 2010. Listen to the recording, read the transcript, or go to the Wikivietlit entry on David to start reading his work.
It is a final irony of an unfunny war that David and all the support personnel at Long Binh bathed and cooked in surplus dioxin dumped into the water supply, eating and drinking Agent Orange every day. After two bone marrow transplants for multiple myeloma, we congratulate David on another year!