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Marvin J. Wolf, Author and Photojournalist, with more than 20 award winning nonfiction, fiction and photo books. Known for 'Abandoned in Hell,' his newest nonfiction is 'They Were Soldiers,' written in collaboration with Joseph Galloway.
- BIOGRAPHY, MARVIN J. WOLF, AUTHOR AND PHOTOJOURNALIST
Oh, and he's written hundreds of magazine articles and 18...
- MARVIN J. WOLF - Marvin's Blog - Short Stories, Fiction ...
FROM Marvin J. Wolf. On this page are true stories, magazine...
- BIOGRAPHY, MARVIN J. WOLF, AUTHOR AND PHOTOJOURNALIST
Oh, and he's written hundreds of magazine articles and 18 books, including best-sellers Fallen Angels and Where White Men Fear To Tread. Wolf didn't start out to be an author. His writing career arose from his work as a U.S. Army combat photographer in Vietnam.
5 days ago · Marvin J. Wolf. Marvin J. Wolf served 13 years on active duty with the U.S. Army, including eight years as a commissioned officer. He was one of only 60 enlisted and warrant officers to receive a direct appointment to the officer ranks while serving in Vietnam.
A Los Angeles Times bestselling author, Wolf has three times been recognized by the American Society of Journalists and Authors for his professionalism. In 2001, Wolf took a nine-year detour through the movie and television business, an education in writing fiction.
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- Saving Memory
- Under Fire
- Meeting The Natives
- Working with Nguyen Cao KY
- War Against The Client States
- The Withdraw and Forgiveness
- The Return
- Proving Self-Worth
- Sorrow of War
What was your duty as a combat photojournalist in the field? About three or four days a week, usually, my duty was to go out with a combat unit, typically an infantry company, on an air assault. An air assault means flying on a helicopter to a landing zone, a hole in the jungle usually, and you land. You hope that there’s nobody there to kill you. ...
Can you tell us about the time you got wounded? I was walking with a rifle platoon down a finger of a ridge through thick elephant grass. Elephant grass is 6 to 8 feet high, very sharp edges, when you walk through it you put your arms up so your face doesn’t get cut. When you run through it you put your arms in front of you. And we came under morta...
What types of Vietnamese did you interact with during the war? And how did they feel about the war? For the most part, the only ones that I’ve met were in the field, and for the most part, they were peasants. Not very well-educated, not very well aware of what’s going on in the larger world. Most of them greeted us neutrally. Some were quite afraid...
So, you helped Nguyen Cao Ky, the former Southern Vietnamese prime minister, write the book, Buddha’s Child. How was that experience like, working with such a prominent figure? I spent about a year sitting down with him almost every day for a few hours, talking about his experiences in the war. I had to write the book in first person, so I had to i...
What was your perspective about the US intervention in the war and did that perspective change before and after you participated in the war? Initially, I subscribed to the domino theory and I saw, probably correctly, that North Vietnam was a proxy for the Soviet Union and for China in this war. It was a war against a client state of the United Stat...
What is your opinion on how the war ended? By 1975, the South Vietnamese could fly very few of their helicopters. They had no fuel. They couldn’t even move most of their tanks. They had no fuel. This is because despite their obligations under the treaty signed during the Paris Peace Accords, the United States Congress decided to end the re-supply a...
How did you feel when you returned as a tourist to Vietnam? What changed and what didn’t? Well, I went back in 2005 as a tourist for a press reunion. And I spent some time in what is now called Ho Chi Minh City, it was Saigon. And then I went to Hanoi, where I have never been before. What’s changed, of course, is that country is much more fluent th...
If you could go back in time, would you serve again? Yes because this was, for me personally, as much about a rite of passage about proving myself to myself. I’m a very short man, as you noticed. And this is not a society that looks up to short men. Looks sort of down on short men. Almost in the same way they look down on women. And it was importan...
Was there anything you regret during the war? I regret seeing so many of my friends killed. Very much so. That’s not the same thing as would I go back. Yes, I’d go back. I’d serve again. But I hoped that the ones who are killed didn’t. I lost a lot of good friends. All photographs were given by Mr. Wolf to assist the profilers on this multimedia pr...
FROM Marvin J. Wolf. On this page are true stories, magazine articles, excerpts from books and unpublished works, short fiction, and photographs, each offering a glimpse of my life, work and times. Your comments welcome. © Marvin J. Wolf. All rights reserved.
A Vietnam combat veteran and author of more than 20 books, Wolf lives in Asheville, NC. He is also the author of 8 novels, the Rabbi Ben and the CID Mysteries. Read writing from Marvin J....
