Cry havoc Research

Every character’s perspective had to be written though the lens of 1968, and the only thing that could inform that perspective was their life experience up until 1968. I did not want any character to have the benefit of applying over fifty years of hindsight to their decision making. I couldn’t just write that this was 1968 and throw some Creedence Clearwater Revival on in the background. This had to be a book that immersed the characters and the reader into what was the bloodiest year of the conflict in Vietnam.

It became a thriller more akin to historical fiction than I intended at the outset. CRY HAVOC became a period piece that required a deep understanding of the war, the politics, the terrain, and most of all, the mindset of the men who fought there. To do it justice, I needed to step back in time and see the world as my characters would have seen it. I had to write it through the eyes of warriors operating in the fog of war, with limited intel and a narrow window on the truth. From memoirs and after-action reports to maps, field manuals, and oral histories, and even a dictionary from the late 1960s, I surrounded myself with resources that helped strip away modern bias and put me squarely in-country with the men of MACV-SOG. Below is a glimpse at the research that shaped CRY HAVOC—the foundation of fact beneath the fiction.