The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Arlen’s Gun: A Novel of War in Vietnam – a Journey from Alienation to Brotherhood by Edgar Doleman

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Arlen's Gun: A Novel of War in Vietnam - a Journey from Alienation to Brotherhood by Edgar Doleman https://amzn.to/3WQslvc The main character is Arlen Washington who grew up in a broken family on the worst streets of Baltimore. He is persuaded by a more fortunate friend to complete high school and enlist in the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army as the Vietnam War is raging. But getting into the Air Force did not keep them out of the Vietnam war. Arlen's friend gets an administrative job, but Arlen is assigned as a gunner on an Air Force AC-47 gunship. The AC-47 was a novel type of warplane in that era. Traditional, warplanes were designed with guns mounted in the nose or wings to fire forward and the pilot aimed the guns by aiming the plane at the target. However, the AC-47's guns were mounted to fire out the side of the aircraft aligned with axis of the wings. To attack a target on the ground, the pilot would bank the aircraft into a turn and whatever the wing tip pointed at, the guns would hit. The AC-47 was simply an armed version of the military's C-47 which was a military version of the Douglas DC-3 passenger and cargo plane that that had carried cargo and paratroopers all over the world in World War II. It could linger over a battlefield for hours and deliver devastatingly accurate close support fire for embattled troops on the ground. Arlen is an angry, alienated 19-year old and does not get along well with the rest of the crew.  The gunship crew includes two gunners, Arlen and airman Timmy Otis. Timmy is the opposite of Arlen, cooperative, positive, eager. One night at the height of the monsoon season, their gunship is hit by enemy fire and crash lands on a muddy road in a narrow valley unoccupied by either friend or foe. Bad weather grounds rescue helicopters. The nearest Army unit that could attempt a rescue is a motley Army engineer unit operating in the next valley on a road-clearing mission. The gunship crew manages to salvage the gunship's weapons, three powerful six-barrel miniguns, each capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds a minute. The rescue effort is successful, but at considerable cost to the engineer unit, which lose two armored combat vehicles representing most of their defensive firepower. Events strand Arlen and Timmy Otis with their rescuers who return to their mission opening a road to an isolated base near the border with Cambodia. The enemy used areas in Cambodia as both a sanctuaries from allied attacks and as staging areas for offensives into Vietnam. The road was to be cleared to enable a battery of heavy, long-range artillery to be moved to the base in anticipation of an expected major enemy offensive. Arlen had been harboring an angry, juvenile fantasy of somehow gaining possession of (stealing) one of the miniguns and smuggling it home to become the biggest badass in his neighborhood. This fantasy prompted him to argue for salvaging the guns during their rescue, especially one particular gun. The guns on an AC-47 were mounted in a fixed position and could not be individually aimed. However, one had been damaged and replaced with a different model, one that, depending on how it was mounted, could be individually aimed. Fantasy motivated Arlen to salvage the guns, fear motivated him to suggest and help devise a means to mount the flexible model on one of the engineer's dump trucks. Subsequently, both on the road and at their destination, they face desperate battles in the unfloding enemy offensive. Through these experiences, Arlen's shell of angry alienation cracks open, he learns true brotherhood and discovers an inner courage that, with Arlen's gun, proves vital to his and his rescuers' survival. The battles illustrate much the nature of combat in Vietnam based on actual events and individual actions, and of the character and compassion of American soldiers in that era.About the author Child of a career soldier,

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. For 16 years and over 2,000 episodes, we've been bringing you the Chris Voss Show. We just turned the big 16 in August.

I think it's August 19th officially when it happens. 2024, what can you do? It's surprising we've been around this long, but help us out. For the show to your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, chrisvoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. As always, we have the most prolific and amazing authors on the show that come to us from all the great publishing houses we have another one today edgar dolman joins us on the show

he's written multiple books and his latest has been reissued it's called arlen's gun a novel of war in vietnam a journey from Alienation to Brotherhood. Came out January 18th, 2023. And we'll be talking to him about his book, his insights, his experience, and what got him into writing and made him such a great writer. He is a child of a career soldier. He grew up in two countries and eight states. On graduating from college, he followed his father into the Army,

serving in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, and various posts in the U.S. After retiring from the Army, he began a second career in information technology, and on retiring from that, he and his wife Donna retired to the Northern Neck, where she encouraged his writing and conceived the initial idea for a mystery,

the Chimera. But the project was put on hold as she fought an ultimately losing battle with cancer. Finding it too painful to continue with the Chimera, he focused on his work, and some years later, Arlen's Gun, a novel of war in Vietnam, came out. And he's since returned to the Chimera, which is now his second novel, expanded into a series. Welcome to the show, Edgar. How are you? I'm fine, thank you.

Awesome, Sauce. It's wonderful to have you. Congratulations on the books. Give us the dot coms or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs please. There's edgardolman.com, I think that's it. That's my website for books. There you go. And how many books do you have by the way? There's three that have been published, technically four.

And a fourth one, or a fifth one in that case, is coming out shortly. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of your book, Arlen's Gun. Okay. I tended to write mainly to try to understand a question I had to myself. And a lot of that was just writing short stories. And so the initial impulse for what became Arlen's Gun was almost like a memoir of, okay, what did I learn, do, and experience in Vietnam?

And it occurred to me as I started that, that it was really too kind of egocentric. And it's not what I really took away from Vietnam. What most stuck with me was the soldiers themselves. So it seemed to fit better into a novel. And part of what also stuck with me was an experience before Vietnam when I had a basic training company. That's where draftees and volunteers first put on a uniform and start learning how to be soldiers. And you run into kids who come from really lousy backgrounds and some with good backgrounds and some who are just normal. But the kids from really bad backgrounds and bad attitudes and so forth were the most challenging, but in a way, to me, the most important

because if they, in effect, flunked out of the army, they were probably toast for the rest of their lives. And so I would see the transformations take place as they basically grew out of their angers and alienations and things like that and became part of a team. And that tended to reinforce the notion or the experience, you might say, of how men acted and reacted and worked together in Vietnam in the dirty, grungiest edge of warfare when directly in the jungle and there are sort of two things that came out to me and neither one of which was really courage the most important one was to me compassion the first level of compassion was learning to worry about the guy

next to you and to back him up and to know that he's going to back you up and second part is to worry about him that guy next to you and the guy behind you and so on, because you wanted him to come through it just as much as you wanted yourself to come through it. Yeah. So it was that kind of team bonding on the one side really realized is that compassion was much more innate because even when they had, you watch soldiers dealing with enemy prisoners or enemy wounded and whatnot, that compassion would come out. The adrenaline would ebb away and, you know, the fighting spirit, so to speak. And then they start worrying about this guy's health, getting him well, getting him fed, things like that. And it was just kind of natural.

And that sort of struck me as very unique in a way because the enemy was certainly not that way. Yeah, they definitely weren't. And it almost made you feel sorry for the enemy because he wasn't that way. So the novel took a lot of that experience and put it in a novel form. And a lot of the characters were drawn directly from characters I knew, both soldiers I knew and junior officers and whatnot that I knew in my Vietnam experience. There you go.

And in the title, you referenced the brotherhood. I know that's what a lot of military folks that I interview on the show, and of course I have as friends, they talk about that brotherhood that, you know, they almost lose, they kind of lose when they come back to the States because they don't really, you know, in the field you have, you know they almost lose they kind of lose when they come back to the states because they don't really you know in the in the in the field you have you know you know your your buddy's got your back and having that brotherhood of men you know where everybody carries everybody not really carries everybody but you know what i mean and so it sounds like that was kind of the influence of that compassion thing the in the brotherhood maybe i think it's a key component to that and the in a lot of veterans but i think it's somewhat more difficult in vietnam because the tours were just one year

and if you were say a korean veteran, the tour was considerably longer. And if you're a World War II veteran, it was until the war ends. And so they had a lot more time together in a way. In World War II, in many ways, they didn't have that much more time together because they had such a much higher casualty rates. So there was always new guys on the block. And in Vietnam, there was that business. You get the new guy on the block, they come in, they're sort of dumped in your lap. And now they have to, you know, become, they're a bunch of strangers

and mixed in with people who know each other. And then a week later, they're off on patrol together and then you're wondering, what about this new guy? What's he like? And the new guy's wondering, geez, I feel all alone.

And again, that capacity for compassion helped bridge that gap much faster. There you go. And so in your novel, you basically talk about some of these personalities. Tell us about your main character. The main character is Arlen, and he actually is an airman, not in the army. And he and a friend of his, he grew up in lousy circumstances on the

wrong streets of Baltimore. But his friend convinces him to enlist in the Air Force with him. That way they'll avoid the draft and they won't get sent to the jungle. And he does and but his buddy ends up in an administrative job and he ends up as a crewman on an air force gunship but his buddy has a much more stabler personality and whatnot and that's probably why he ended up in a nice job and arlen doesn't even get along with the other members of the crew because he's just a loner. He's got a chip on his shoulder for life and so on, but the one thing he does like are the powerful machine guns that the gunship is equipped with.

He's enamored with them, and he has very juvenile fantasies about them. And as I mentioned, he doesn't get along well with the other crew members and is slow and kind of surly. But then that gunship

is shot down. And they crash land successfully and no man's land. And it's crappy weather, monsoon season, and rescue helicopters can't get to them. Oh, wow.

So a small army engineer unit is the nearest ground unit that's available and they get ordered to go rescue them. Hmm. And they're kind of a motley crew because they're on a road clearing mission. So they've got some attached units like engineer, combat engineer vehicle and a road grader

and mine detectors and some infantrymen to provide security. And they make the trip to the next valley where this plane crashed and managed to rescue them. But in the process, suffer some losses, including most of their firepower, two armored vehicles. Oh, wow. But they do rescue the crew, one of whom is seriously wounded. Excuse me. And Harlan conceives the notion that we ought to rescue the machine guns from the gunship. So they do that and managed to get back, managed to

get a helicopter. And this is one of the examples from sort of real life in the book the helicopter medevac medical evacuation helicopter unit says no the weather's too bad the weather's too bad and then another voice comes on the line and it turns out it's the commander of the unit and he says where the hell are you? And they tell him, he says, can you get to this road junction? Yes, you can. He said, okay, I'm heading up there. I'll be at an altitude of about 50 feet.

And he makes it there, and they rescue the crew, except for Arlen and the other gunner. And what sort of traps Arlen and the other gunner. And what sort of traps Arlen is the other gunner is a really nice kid. He says, we ought to stay with these people because we know how to operate these miniguns and they don't. And at first Arlen is really angry because he doesn't want to do that. And then he suddenly thinks, if I go back on the helicopter, I'll miss out on the miniguns. And he keeps having this fantasy of sneaking one. So they end up sort of stranded

because of other events with this unit. And the bulk of the book is how he ends up relating to these small group of infantrymen and small group of engineers and whatnot in their very primitive encampment and the work they have to do. And then they come under enemy attack because the enemy is launching a major offensive.

And the transformation that takes place is his kind of like a lot of the kids in that basic training unit kind of coming of age if you will it's a kind of coming of age and a kind of realization that my survival depends on these guys these strangers these people i you know in dirty green suits there you go and on it goes from there right yeah but then at the same time he begins to realize that because he is the gunner on this powerful machine gun and they've lost their heavy weapons that he becomes really a key to their survival and these intense battles that start coming up oh wow that's the transformation he's from alienation or brotherhood on his case but he's also in effect the savior of the group wow there you go you go from being the newbie to being the guy who helps save everyone.

This should be an interesting story as it develops out. When did you know you kind of had a knack for writing? When did you first start writing? Tell us a little about your experience growing up, and maybe you started writing early on and just didn't get around to publishing. I did sort of start writing early on and just didn't get around to publishing. I did sort of start writing early on. Like I mentioned earlier, I would sort of write to try to understand something. And it might be just, why does so-and-so think that way?

You know, why is so-and-such a jerk? And then I would write a short story to try to understand the jerk or the other point of view or whatnot. And they just sort of stacked up. I never tried publishing them. It was my wife who said, you ought to do something with these short stories. And she started submitting them to contests and whatnot. And I actually would win some. Same with some poetry there you go and then when i

retired i was through a friend of hers i was offered a job to write one of the volumes of time life's vietnam vietnam war series and i had been working on a novel which was kind of an escape activity and so I sent them a chapter from the novel and said if you think that's good writing then I'll take the job and so they said yeah the writing is great but and we'd like you to write the book so I wrote one of the volumes of this time life series which was a history work not fiction and then went ahead and finished my novel or but about that time our kids were getting close to college age and playing starving author wasn't going to really cut it. That'll do it.

So I got a job in information technology and basically built a career there. And then finally, when we both retired, she got the idea for a mystery novel set in the area we'd retired in, which is the eastern part of Virginia's northern neck, which is very rural and surrounded by water. Beautiful place. They'll call it God's country. There you go. Of course, so do people in Wyoming. There you go. And people in Idaho and so on. So we started the first sort of mystery book, The Chimera, together.

And then, as you had noted earlier, she came down with cancer. I'm sorry about that. And I would probably be a rich Arthur now if she had survived because she was a brilliant marketer. And I'm not. So after she passed, I escaped into Arlen's gun, basically. And then got back to the Camara and realized I could perhaps make it a series. There you go. You've done it and now it's out.

I'm sure she'd be proud of you. Now you can share it with all the wonderful people and people can get into it. Did you feel that you went back to the Arlen's gun because you kind of tapped into that brotherhood, that, you know, kind of what you really know from your experience in war? In a way, I don't know. That feels like part of it. And part of it was probably just trying to escape from grief there you go yeah it's interesting how sometimes the toughest things that we go through in life sometimes help shape us and shape our stories and and sometimes the most

beautiful things come out of that grief some of the cathartic moments that we have you know so it's interesting how that goes what's the future for any books are there any books you're working on now that you anticipate the next couple years the the two mysteries in the series have been published and there's a third mystery called the broken chains that should come out pretty soon. And I'm working on a fourth one that has no name at the moment. There you go. That's the title of it, Has No Name? No. The current title is Book Four.

I wonder if anybody has ever done it. I'm sure someone's done a book called This Book Has No Name. I'm sure. If not, someone should get around to it, I guess. I don't know. But Edgar, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Give us your final thoughts and pitch out for people to pick up the book and.com so they can find you out. They can find me at edgarddolman.com.

And then, of course, they're available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and those places online. The mystery series features what would be called amateur sleuths, or they accidentally get involved in investigating a murder. And since it's a very rural side is a very young Indian American detective who chose to take a job in a small rural county because he thought that would put him in a position to learn a much broader range of things about being a detective. He's kind of a prominent feature. And then it deals mostly with part of it is illustrating one, both, you know,

human characteristics and whatnot that are kind of common everywhere, but human characteristics that are common, kind of common everywhere but human characteristics that are common every very good bad and indifferent but in the cultural settings which are rather varied here in the northern neck there you go it should be interesting to see we're excited to have it for you give us your.com one last time as we go out edgardolman.com. There you go. Thanks, Edgar.

It's been wonderful to have you on the show. Okay. Thank you very much. It's the first time I've ever done anything like this. There you go. Well, keep doing it. Go to all the podcasts. Hit them up.

I don't know if anybody is as cool as ours, but there's certainly some out there. But thank you very much, Edgar, for being on the show. Continue success on what you're up to. Thank you. There you go. And thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas, linkedin.com, Fortress Christmas, all those crazy places on the internet. Or at the book wherever fine books are sold.

It's called Arlen's Gun, a novel of war in Vietnam, a journey from alienation to brotherhood, out January 18th, 2023. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.