The Making of Patton’s Boys

I must admit that I had no idea of how writing Patton’s Boys would be so unlike any of my other five books. I just figured with my fellow ARPs and the other members of the Air Cavalry Troop providing their own tales that it would be a piece of cake because I would only be required to write just a few of my own stories, and they would do the rest. But it turned out to be so much more.

I brought my good friend Ed Cook in as my co- author for a number of reasons, one being that we had served together in the ARPS. ED had arrived a little before me and left almost four months after I returned to the World. Unlike me, Ed knew everybody and had a hundred stories to tell. He was and is very active in reunions and is the vice president of the Air Cavalry Troop Assn.

What I didn’t know and learned so early on was getting these guys to tell their stories was like pulling teeth! The main reason seemed to be the same.

“I don’t have any stories, I wasn’t any sort of hero, just one of the guys.”

Ed must have spent hundreds of hours on the phone with any ARP he had a good phone number for. Before hanging up most said it might take a little while but that they would write a story, it might be short but a story none the less. Most never appeared, something that I had never dreamed would have happened probably since I had been writing about Vietnam for fifteen years now and had forgotten just how hard it was for me to write my first story.

It seems they had nothing to say which of course Ed and I knew wasn’t true since we had been standing on their side through most of the good and bad times. We learned real fast that you always started by saying that it didn’t have to be about them but about one of their friends or a funny story about somebody screwing something up. This seemed to help loosen them up but we would never read a “hero story” at best it was an “I was standing next to a hero story”.

I must add that a few of the men wanted nothing to do with my project. Some felt as though they had been treated wrongly and still felt the same way even now some fifty years later. One ARP platoon leader refused to be in the book as he felt his men had never received the combat awards that they had so deserved and had earned on the battle field. I even had to reject a couple of stories as both Ed and I thought they weren’t appropriate for Patton’s Boys. This was the hardest decision I had to make. As you know I said it was a “tell it like it was” book, but this was far beyond that and we decided to tell the writer what and why we decided not to add his story, but we did offer them a chance to provide another story less political filled.

I thought we would get at least a hundred stories but in the end we got about forty, they were great stories and did the job we wanted which was to tell the story of a single platoon sized unit in the whole of Vietnam called the Aero Rifle Platoon (ARPs) that would end up changing the course of the entire Vietnam War as told in Ed Cook’s own story, “The Day the Stars Shined.”

I extended my closing date three times waiting for many promised stories to show up but finally had to end in order to meet our goal of publishing Patton’s Boys in time for Christmas 2015. I must admit I was glad I waited when the “Gold Star” story arrived just in the nick of time. In many ways it is our story, the story of the ARPs / Air Cav Troop then and now.

I’m glad I did the book and what a great book it is, filled with memories both good and bad and it will even get you laughing to yourself too, and isn’t that what a good book is about anyways?

Ed and I both think that after the release of Patton’s Boys there will be a flood of stories coming our way as our old friends see that they have nothing to fear by sharing with us just a moment from their time of war. Maybe enough for a second book? It really isn’t as bad as getting a tooth pulled you know!

Allons