Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam veteran, served in Vietnam as a field radio operator in 1966. Back home, Lloyd was a heavy drinker until 1981, never talked about the war and suffered from PTSD. In the early 1980s, he confronted his demons by writing about his war experiences in an MFA program.
Running with the Enemy started as a memoir and then evolved into fiction.
His short story, A Night at the “Well of Purity”, named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards, was based on an event Lloyd experienced in Vietnam.
His novel My Splendid Concubine has earned ten honorable mentions in general fiction—a few examples: the 2008 London Book Festival; 2009 San Francisco Book Festival; 2009 Los Angeles Book Festival, and the 2012 New York Book Festival, etc.
In 1999, his wife, Anchee Min, the author of the memoir Red Azalea, a book that was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1994, introduced Lloyd to Robert Hart, the real-life character of My Splendid Concubine.
After an honorable discharge from the U.S. Marines in 1968, Lloyd went to college on the GI Bill to earn a BA in journalism, and then worked days as a public school teacher for thirty years (1975 – 2005) in addition to nights and weekends as a maître d’ in a Southern California nightclub called the Red Onion (1980-1982).
Please welcome Lloyd Lofthouse to Teddy Rose Book Reviews today!
The Vietnam War and Public Opinion
Unlike many Vietnam Veterans who formed opinions for or against the war, it took me years to develop mine. I’m slow when it comes to political issues, and I usually do a lot of reading and fact checking before forming an opinion. Even in December 1966 when I returned from Vietnam when more than half of America supported the war, I still hadn’t formed an opinion.
One of my first steps to educate myself started a few months before my discharge from the Marines in 1968. I drove to Los Angeles with a friend, who wasn’t in the military, to witness an organized mass Vietnam War protest. We parked in a paid lot where we sat in the car watching hundreds of angry protesters flowing like a human river down the street.
Because of the anti-war protests, that area was off limits to Marines on liberty, but there I was sitting in my car in that parking lot a block from all that boiling emotion.
My sense of safety sitting in a paid parking lot was quickly shattered when several Los Angeles police offers appeared without warning and surrounded the car. One of the officers said I had to leave the area. I replied that I’d paid to park in the lot and wasn’t doing anything illegal. The police yanked the car doors open and dragged us out on the pavement and were getting ready to club us when I loudly agreed to leave.
The police let us go.
By the end of 1968—after an honorable discharged from the U.S. Marines—when I was attending my first semester of college on the GI Bill, the war’s approval rating had tumbled to 37%. The turning point for most Americans was the Tet Offensive in January 1968, and then the My Lai massacre by U.S. Army troops where 504 Vietnamese civilians, ages 3 to 69, were raped, clubbed or stabbed to death.
While most Americans who’ve never experienced combat reacted in horror to the My Lai massacre, I understood the motivation behind the killings. Being in combat and seeing your fellow Marines and friends get wounded or killed builds a deep urge to get revenge against an often invisible enemy.
In my novel, Running with the Enemy, on the page before chapter one, there’s a quote from General William Tecumseh Sherman that may help explain this savage urge for revenge. He said, “There is many a body here today who looks on war as glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”
The next incident that brought me face to face with the mob’s anger took place in 1972 while I was attending CSU Fresno earning a BA in journalism. By then, more than 70% of Americans had turned against the war and the protests were ugly.
I wrote a short story about the war from a Marine’s point of view and was severely criticized in a creative writing class by the other students while the professor kept silent and observed. Instead of backing down, I attempted explaining the psychology of a solider in combat. The professor eventually had to step in and stop the students who continued to condemn me as if I were a war criminal.
That was the moment I lost respect for Americans who blamed the troops for what was happening in Vietnam.
In fact, in 1972, Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam as her way to protest the war. Many Vietnam veterans and their family members still harbor a bitter hatred for Jane Fonda but not me. Instead of blindly accepting the rumors about Fonda, I did my own research and discovered that many of the accusations against her—that persist to this day—are false. With more than 70% of Americans against the war, she was only expressing what most Americans already felt.
To understand why I took so long to form my own opinion of the Vietnam War, it helps to know that my parents were nonpolitical. I grew up in a family where no one voted and the only political opinion I ever heard my father say was that elected state or federal officials were all crooks and couldn’t be trusted. Even to this day, I find that hard to disagree with, but I do vote—for the lesser of two evils.
I place the blame for the millions killed and injured in Southeast Asia during and after the war on the Congress and the Presidents—Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon—who served during the nineteen years the US fought in Vietnam. My opinions of war may be found on my Soulful Veteran’s Blog.
The troops were only doing what their presidents and Congress ordered them to do. Unlike civilians, in the military if you refuse to follow an order you face a court martial, a dishonorable discharge and might spend years in a federal prison.
In fact, receiving a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. military is generally considered a bad thing. You may lose certain rights to which a normal citizen is entitled. In some cases, soldiers that have received this punishment lose the right to vote and the right to possess a firearm. And for career soldiers, they could lose their retirement and medical benefits.
Thank you for joining us today Lloyd!
Description of Running With the Enemy:
Publisher: Three Clover Press (February 1, 2013)
Category: Vietnam War, Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller
Tour Dates: March 2014
Available in: Print and ebook 384 Pages
Awarded Runner Up in General Fiction at the 2013 Beach Book Festival. Awarded honorable mention general fiction 2013 New York Book Festival!
In this suspense thriller set during the Vietnam War, Victor Ortega is a rogue CIA agent, and he needs someone to blame for his crimes. Recon Marine Ethan Card is the perfect patsy. As a teen, Ethan ran with a Chicago street gang, and he has a criminal record. He also has a secret lover, Tuyen, who is half Vietnamese and half French.
Tuyen is a stunning, beautiful Viet Cong resistance fighter.
Since she was a young child, Tuyen has lived under the control of her brutal, older, sexually abusive half-brother, Giap, a ruthless and powerful Viet Cong leader, who has forced her to kill Americans in battle or die if she refuses.
When Ethan discovers he is going to be court marshaled for weapons he did not sell to the Viet Cong and Tuyen will be arrested and end up in an infamous South Vietnamese prison, where she will be tortured and raped, he hijacks a U.S. Army helicopter and flees with Tuyen across Southeast Asia while struggling to prove his innocence.
Victor Ortega and Giap—working together with the support of an unwitting American general—will stop at nothing to catch the two, and the hunt is on.
The star-crossed lovers travel across Laos to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat; to Bangkok, Thailand, and then to Burma’s Golden Triangle where Ethan and Tuyen face a ruthless drug lord and his gang.
In the rainforests of Burma, Ethan also discovers Ortega and Giap have set in motion a massive assault on his Marine unit’s remote base in South Vietnam with the goal of killing the man he admires most, Colonel Edward Price, who is the only one who believes Ethan is innocent.
Ethan must risk everything to save Price and his fellow Marines. Will he succeed?
Read Chapter One.
Read My Review: https://theteddyrosebookreviewsplusmore.com/?s=running+with+the+enemy
This topic fascinates me, but I prefer to read nonfiction work about this period.
I can’t imagine growing up in a family where no one voted. As soon as we turned old enough to vote, our father took, the entire family, including 3 generations, to vote on each election day, whether it be federally, provincially or at the civic level. Our parents never tried to influence, who we voted for, unlike our friends’ parents, but made us understand it was our duty to vote. Now that our parents and grandparents are all gone, my brother and I still vote in each and every election. In fact, I now work for the Elections Canada, Elections Ontario and at the civic level too. My 92 year old aunt still exercises her right to vote.