Gunning for Ho: Vietnam Stories

by H. Lee Barnes

Book Overview

In this collection of short stories, former Green Beret Lee Barnes deals with the war itself and its aftermath, focusing on the human aspects of men in armed conflict and their families at home. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874173469
• ISBN13: 9780874173468
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The Truth

Despite having been born in the latter years of the Vietnam War, and not having read deeply in the field, I am confident this collection of six short stories and a novella by a former Green Beret, is destined to be a classic of Vietnam War fiction. Destined because they resound with the truth--and aren't really concerned with making any political statement. Barnes's stories tell you about the young men who went off to war in an alien landscape, and how they--and those they left behind--were transformed forever. The first three stories are thematically joined by strong surreal elements that speak to the wider confusion and disorientation felt by many who served. More like Kafka than Conrad. The fourth and fifth stories are more straightforward tales of aftermath and picking up the pieces. I found the novella ("Tunnel Rat") to be somewhat more elusive than the stories, and less forceful. It may take a re-reading or two to really get at it. The final (and title) story is a direct descendant of Heart of Darkness, and succeeds in spite of traveling that well-worn path. As a whole, this collection is a testament to the humanity of the men who went to Vietnam.

A Powerful Book

There are now well over 700 novels and short stories published about the Vietnam War. It seems that everyone that was ever involved, even peripherally, and a number who were not, in that tragic war has written a book. Most can be found, and deservedly so, on a remainder table in a used bookstore. However, every now and then a book comes along that is destined to find it's place on a bookshelf along side the precious few truly good Vietnam War stories. This is such a book. H. Lee Barnes is a combat veteran of Vietnam.He earned the Combat Infantry Badge as a member of the U.S. Army's Special Forces "Green Beret" units while serving near the Laotian border. He was on the ground, up-close and personal. It has taken him some 30 years to sort out his feelings, earn a MFA in writing, and write this superb collection of short stories. What distinguishes this work and makes it unique is the author's uncanny ability to have the characters seem real and believable, sometimes in the face of almost unbelievable circumstances, real and imagined. They are not talking to the reader but to each other. The reader is an observer that is ultimately drawn into the conversation or action in an almost imperceptible manner. The object of the character's attention is not the political correctness of the war or why and how they got there. Multitudes of other books have done that. Rather it deals with their emotions and feelings and how they individually and collectively managed to survive the madness. It is at times humorous, tragic, maddening, gentle, uplifting and unsettling. Come to think of it, much like everyday life. The book contains six short stories and a novella. They all deal with how both the combat participants and family at home cope with the hand fate has dealt them and ultimately, on somve level, prevail in the spirit. This is one powerful book. I have read it twice now and seem to get something different from it with each reading. This is destined to be a classic collection of Vietnam War stories. It should also be noted that Gunning For Ho is another example of the fine books being published by University Presses. Such presses may not get the attention afforded the major houses in the east but they do compete in the quality of their releases.

MASTERFUL STORYTELLING

Don't let the simple cover of this book fool you. Don't shy away from this book because it is a book of war stories (as I was tempted to do, as my taste usually runs along a different venue). Anyone who appreciates beautifully written and compelling stories will enjoy this book. Within its pages are some of the most beautiful stories and interesting characters that I have had the pleasure of reading and meeting. What is striking is the author's blazing talent for storytelling and an extremely well-honed and cutting talent for writing literature. The stories in this book do not merely entertain; they perfume the senses of the mind. The characters are so well drawn they come to life within the pages. What has stayed with me long after finishing the final page, are the haunting and beautiful images the author Barnes has (seemingly effortlessly), managed to create. In "The Cat in the Cage" the tragic picture of the soldier Widerly trapped within a too-small cage clutching a kitten - his father Calvin years later, carrying away with him the delicate glass rose given him by Mai, the Vietnamese woman who was the only human to show his son compassion in his last days. In "Stonehands and the Tigress" my personal favorite of these stories with its strong, if surreal streak of mysticism - the image left with me is that of the slow waltz between the giant Stonehands and the powerful tigress with the soul of an Indian princess. The aggrieved father and his wife bouncing along in a pickup enroute to a dreaded meet at the end of which lies at least, resolution in "The Return". Barnes writes with a delicate yet probing insight on the subtleties and nuances of relationships, whether they are between a man and woman, soldiers and veterans, or parent/child. One is able to grasp the intense and sometimes agonizing loyalty and yes, love between men, with whom such feelings need not be spoken aloud. He captures the fleeting, yet painful yearning that we have all felt for a lost love during a poignant moment in "Tunnel Rat" as well as a wealth of other complex and intricate emotions. In "Tunnel Rat" main character Paez comes vividly to life, and the narrator Rowe (who in my mind's eye played like a young Nick Nolte) broke my heart with his final line at the end of this novella. I will be keeping my eye out for the next piece of work from H. Lee Barnes. There are many more gems to be discovered within the seven tales told within this book. It is well worth the read. Happy hunting.

Five Stars

In Gunning for Ho, Vietnam Stories, author Lee Barnes accomplishes something unique. He manages to capture the human drama that flows in that eerie twilight zone between unbridled violence and static tension. Like a surgeon dissecting a vital artery away from the surface of the brain, Barnes works in that most subtle of literary interface -- a place where a slip in one direction dissolves into bloody chaos or, conversely, into the babbling incoherence of introspection run amok. Barnes' scalpel is creepy-sharp. His discipline shimmers. He is a pro's pro, both in the Tules and on the written page. I'm stunned, not by the bangs but by the whispers. This man Barnes, a Green Beret in I-Corps, based 40 clicks from the Laotian border, has experienced that unique hell that doesn't come at you out of the instant like a car wreck or a drive-by. His hell, like that of those combat vets on both sides and of earlier times, is the kind of terror you saddle-up for each morning at zero-dark hundred. Contemplative courage. Real courage. Few, if any writers on the Vietnam experience have taken this path. This a book for "professional" readers, an act of sharing, an analysis of bonding. Not only does he walk this dark trail, Mr. Lee Barnes walks point.-submitted by reader Bill Branon, author of Let Us Prey (a '92 NY Times notable Book of the Year), Devils Hole, Timesong, and Spider Snatch.

Gunning For Ho

I read Gunning For Ho from a unique perspective...I've known the author, H. Lee Barnes, for some twenty three years. I can truly say (and should, in honesty for this review) he is a rare jewel in my current group of lifetime friends. But...when I met him, he was impenetrably wrapped in the shield of his own personal darkness...the major souvenir he (and so many others) brought home from Vietnam. I cared for him, and wanted to know him...but there is no caring for a man who cares for nothing...and there is no knowing a man who has lost faith in everything he ever believed he knew. Lee and I lost touch with each other for over eighteen years. In those years, this man, who I predicted to do a slow and certain self destruction, was busy rebuilding and refilling himself. He achieved academic degrees by going to school at night while working full time in the emotionally and intellectually draining environs of a casino. He learned that he loves the language, and the sculpting of it. He found that he enjoyed and was gifted at sharing knowledge and imparting skills to the young and bright and eager. He became a writer, then a teacher, and then a professor. Eventually he grew to use his new comfort with words as self-therapy, and somewhere during this healing (exorcism?), he emerged with a full and freed soul. He is now a man with much to say about the experience that so tainted his youth; indeed, tainted all the youth of our nation for a decade. This book contains the essence of his considerable insight about the unique experience that was the war in Vietnam. You have never in read any other author's work the same perspective that you will find here. Lee's mastery of characterization is unequalled. You not only believe these young men he offers you, you earnestly care for them. You agonize for them, and your heart is warmed by them, often unexpectedly. This author has refused to be pulled into the trap of polishing his subjects, or glorifying their motives or results...he steadfastly writes them as they surely were; scared, brave, ethnic, dumb, smart, real. You will never read anything on Vietnam that more accurately conveys the uniqueness of this conflict; the simple geography of it, the unconscious sociology of it, the fragile humanity of the boys our nation dispassionately sacrificed to the experience of it. Read this book. It's not a war novel; it's a seriously creative collection of stories about a surreal experience that was arguably the grittiest and most definitive reality of a generation. I expect many more books of quality from H. Lee Barnes, but I don't expect any more work on this subject. This man survived, returned home, reclaimed himself, and acquitted himself. He now offers his exceptionally literate view of the experience and the men who died in it, the men who lived through it, and those who just got lost in it. H. Lee Barnes no longer qualifies as one of those lost. I think his Vie