Fighting the Bad War

Stories about the tortured relationship between U.S. occupiers and Vietnamese.

In November 1966, Angelo Presicci found himself manning an M50 machine gun atop an armored personnel carrier in the jungles of Vietnam’s Tay Ninh Province. He was a 22-year-old gay draftee from a small town in upstate New York. The linked stories in Fighting the Bad War are based on Presicci’s experiences in battle and on the long way home from America’s most unpopular war, the last entrusted to a citizen army. Presicci follows the travails of a fictional armored cavalry crew as they find themselves intruders in a civil war, neither welcome nor clear about their mission. As body counts and wasted countryside bleed the Vietnamese, the GIs do as soldiers have always done fight, grieve over their own, try to survive. The friend by day is often an enemy by night. The return home is nearly as treacherous. This was not their fathers’ good war. These stories tell a tale of shattered naïveté. “I believed in my country’s ideals when I was drafted, but, also, I was young and welcomed the adventure.” says Presicci. “I have tried to convey the awe of war and the shame of it.”

(from the collection’s Amazon’s page)

More about this collection

Review from The VVA Veteran

Author Angelo Presicci answers questions on Quora about the Vietnam War

Chris’ note: There appears to be no author website or ebook-version of this collection. If you know of either, please contact me with details.

Special Note

Important changes to the site
Sep 23

Site Changes

From September 2023 this site will only be an index site for new entries. If I can find interview bits from the authors about the craft writing linked short stories I will add that, otherwise there will be no additional information. You are still welcome to contact me if you want to add links, etcetera to an entry on a collection you have authored.  I hope to get the resources to expand all entries further in the future. Unless otherwise noted all blurbs are from Goodreads.
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