The Phantom Blooper by Gustav Hasford (1990, Hardcover)

At the end of The Short Timers James "Joker" Davis was counting the days until being shipped home to Alabama when a Colonel transferred him to a grunt unit in I corps where he reunites with Cowboy whom he met on Paris Island. In the latest telling of Joker's Vietnam saga we meet "Beaver Cleaver", "Black John Wayne" and a host of memorable characters destined to make his remaining time "in country" a memorable experience. In the midst of a firefight an unconscious and wounded Joker finds himself being dragged off into the jungle by the VietCong with mere weeks remaining in country.
Joker certain he was destined for a North Vietnamese prison camp convinces the VC sympathizers in the village where he's being held that he now embraces their cause as he plots his escape.

It's a well told tale of love and war and the strange creatures of opportunity & circumstance born of both. In this brilliant follow up novel Hasford gives us insight into the lives of simple Vietnamese peasants in a time of war. Tells us of the politics within a Marine Corps infantry unit and how the changes wrought by war can make men and cultures alien to those who love them.
With Hemingway like style Hasford creates bold, beautiful and human characters that seem to pull you into the pages of this incredible book as you join him in an odyssey that takes us from Khe Sahn, to a small Vietnamese Village, to Japan and eventually to a small town in Alabama that can never be home ever again. Hasford completes the saga of a man whom we first met standing in the faded yellow footprints of Paris Island, South Carolina in a style worthy of a literary giant. A must read for history buffs, sociologist, anthropologist, psychologist and anyone who was touched by America's longest war. It's a brilliant novel by a literary voice which was taken from us entirely too soon.