Army Green

Army Green is a fictional study encompassing the lives of two friends from Kansas City, as they encounter the events and situations of the last half of the 20th Century. Their backgrounds are similar, yet differ enough to provide an intriguing level of contrast.



It is the sequel to Century's Child.



The two men meet as teenagers in the Kansas National Guard of 1954. Their lives develop over the next 50 years, separately for the most part, but along parallel career and family lines.



The protagonist, Bill Anderson, begins his post-high school life intending (and wanting) nothing more than to have a "steady lifetime job" at Sears, Roebuck's gigantic mail order plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Thirty-five years later he has developed a completely-unexpectedly steady lifetime job as one of the Army's seniormost enlisted logisticians. He describes his life as a series of accidents which turned out well. The reader can't avoid the conclusion that the narrator made those incidents bear fruit, and his protestations to the contrary, chance had only a small part in their outcome.



The turning point of his story is the crucial accident of his activation and posting to Vietnam in the wake of 1968's Tet Offensive. After that, even with twelve years' seniority, Sears doesn't have a chance.



During his career, he continues to encounter his friend, now-Doctor Coe Richards, the protagonist of Century's Child. Richards' more-conventional civilan-and-reservist's life provides an engaging ongoing counterplot from the first to the last stage.



During his first Vietnam tour in the Second Battalion, Eighth Infantry, Fourth Infantry Division in Central II Corps, he is able to meet once with Richards, the narrator of Century's Childm who has already been in-country for six months.



Anderson's duties in subsequent assignments call for him to return to Vietnam three times over the next seven years.



Certainly, the rich detail of Anderson's and Richards' peacetime service, and their Vietnam and Middle Eastern experiences in both combat- and rear-areas ring with the authenticity of men who were there, and saw it all.



In the novel's concluding pages, the reader sees that these mens' name was legion; individually, they won out over personal adversity, as a group they won the Cold War, and even in old age they continue to be typical of the group that makes the United States viable and stable.