Arts of War on the Web

Francesco Quinn (kneeling, left), who played Rhah, a member of the platoon in Oliver Stone’s pioneering 1987 Vietnam War film Platoon, died August 12 at age 48.

Quinn, the son of the famed actor Anthony Quinn, collapsed on the street where he lived in Malibu, California. He died of a suspected heart attack.

After Platoon, which was his first film, Quinn appeared in many movies and TV shows with recurring roles in several TV series, including “JAG,” “24″ and “The Shield,” and the soap opera “The Young and the Restless.”

W.D. (Bill) Ehrhart’s account of his recent trip back to Vietnam with Ken Takenaga, with whom he served in the Marines in 1967-68, is now on line on Ehrhart’s web site.

“On February 5th, 1968, during the fighting in Hue City, two young Marines were wounded by a North Vietnamese rocket-propelled grenade,” Ehrhart writes in the introduction to the essay. “Corporal Bill Ehrhart, from a small town in rural Pennsylvania, had arrived in Vietnam almost exactly a year earlier. Corporal Ken Takenaga, who had grown up in the small Japanese city of Yatsushiro, arrived in April 1967.

“In the aftermath of the explosion, Ehrhart, the less seriously wounded of the two, stayed in the fight. Takenaga’s wounds required his immediate evacuation. Forty-three years later, having reunited after decades, the two men traveled together first to Japan, and then to Vietnam. This is the story of their friendship and their journey. ”

That’s Takenaga on the left in the above photo, with Ehrhart at Hoi An in July 1967.

Bob Burns, who served two tours in Vietnam with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 128, has written and recorded “Forgotten Heroes,” a ballad that is a moving tribute to those of us who served in Vietnam.

The chorus goes:
Boys that became men

And boys that did not

They lost their hope; they lost their minds

Mostly they lost the trust of bygone time

They gave it their best shot

The heroes America forgot

For more info on the tune, email Burns at menabobburns@googlemail.com

The Pentagon announced last month that Retired Army Lieutenant General Claude M. Kicklighter will be the Director of the official DoD Vietnam war 50th Anniversary Commemoration. Gen. Kicklighter retired from the Army in 1991, having served two tours of duty in Vietnam: from February 1966-February 1967  with the 1st Logistical Command, and from August 1970-August 1971 as Assistant Chief of Staff (G-4) for the 101st Airborne Division.  Gen. Kirklighter   was Executive Director of the U.S. 50th Anniversary of World War II Commemoration Committee from 1991-95. 

DoD’s Vietnam War 50th Anniversary Commemoration Program began officially in January of this year.  Through it, the Pengaon will be working with other federal agencies; veterans’ groups; and state, local, government, and non-government organizations on a wide array of commemoration activities.

For more information, call 877-387-9951 or go to the official website.

VVA honored the internationally renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp in 2004 with our President’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for her big Broadway show Movin’ Out, the Vietnam War-themed production done to the tune of 23 Billy Joel songs.

Another winner of the President’s Award, Nancy Sinatra, has had a hand in Tharp’s latest Broadway musical, Come Fly Away, which features the tunes of her father, Frank Sinatra, and which has just begun a North American tour. Several veteran dancers who have performed in Movin’ Out on Broadway and on the road—including Laurie Kanyok, Matthew Stockwell Dibble, Cody Green, John Selya and Ron Todorowski—are a part of the Come Fly Away road show ensemble.

Conceived, choreographed, and directed by Tharp, and by special arrangement with the Sinatra family and Frank Sinatra Enterprises, Come Fly Away tells the story of four couples falling in and out of love during one song-and-dance-filled evening at a bustling nightclub. It blends the recordings of Frank Sinatra with a live onstage big band and fourteen exceptional dancers.

The show opened on Broadway in March of last year. It just ended its initial tour run at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, and opens August 16 in Toronto. Other cities on the tour include Detroit,  Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

For complete details on those and the other road venues, go to www.comeflyaway.com.

On September 10, the San Francisco Opera will present the first of seven performances of the world premiere of Heart of a Soldier, based on the life of Rick Rescorla, the Vietnam veteran hero of the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack.

Rescorla, the head of security for Morgan Stanley, personally led the rescue of some 2,700 people out of the burning building. He then went back into the building, and was last seen climbing up the stairs on the 10^th floor searching for stragglers.

The opera, with music by Christopher Theofanidis and libretto by Donna Di Novelli, is based on the 2003 book of the same name by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist James B. Stewart. In that book, subtitled “A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11th,”  Stewart traces Rescorla’s life from his birth in England, through his mercenary service in the former Northern Rhodesia, to his death on September 11th.

He includes a great deal about Rescorla’s romance with his second wife, Susan Greer, as does the opera. Rescorla’s last words to her were in a frantic cell phone call that fateful day: “Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.”

The acclaimed baritone Thomas Hampson will sing the role of Rick Rescorla. Tenor William Burden is Daniel J. Hill, Rescorla’s best friend, and  soprano Melody Moore portrays Susan, Rescorla’s wife.

Rick Rescorla also acted heroically in Vietnam as a platoon leader during the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. A photograph of Rescorla in the heat of battle (below) graces the cover of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, the seminal book about that engagement by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway.

The writer Clyde Edgerton, who was a USAF Forward Air Control pilot during his 1970-71 Vietnam War tour of duty, flying missions out of  Nakhon Phanom Air Base in Thailand, has written nine novels, a memoir, short stories, and essays.  Edgerton’s latest book is Night Train (Little, Brown, 224 pp., $23.99), a mostly comic novel set in 1963 in rural North Carolina, where the author was born and raised. It focuses on the interracial friendship between two teen-agers.

“Edgerton sustains a wry tone in this lightly plotted novel,” the Publishers Weekly review said, “where the action is confined to band practices, a chicken flung over a cinema balcony, and well-intentioned but comically inept attempts at integration. ”

Clyde Edgerton teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.