Bowman’s experience in Vietnam evidently impacted his emotional state and stability. In one scene, he is talking with Gary about what they are going to do if they ever get home. He had to concentrate “to remember what [his] younger brothers and mother looked like” and “felt like [he] had lived in Vietnam all [of […]
This is a picture of Gary Heeter, one of Charlie Bowman’s best friends during the Vietnam War. Bowman characterizes Gary and his other friend Paul Frisbee as being like “brothers” because of what they had been through together. Bowman loved “them more than life and [prayed that] they [would] make it home in one piece”. […]
In his story “Heat Stroke At It’s Best”, Bowman sufferers the effects of severe heat stroke. He declares that the temperature was “110 or higher” during the day and dropped to “80 or 90 degrees” at night. Bowman his lieutenant, who he saw as cowardly. This anger intensified as he grew woozy from the heat. […]
During part of his tour in Vietnam, Bowman was stationed in Trang Bang. His photographs during this time show the American soldiers building and repairing the Base Camp there and the Vietnamese children watching. The soldiers used sandbags as makeshift walls and bathed in wells. Supplies would often arrive on clipper planes.
The troops were frequently transported from place to place by small planes called choppers and sometimes they would have to run through a stream of bullets to reach them. In addition, the choppers did not have doors and so one had to be careful not to fall out of them. When the men “loaded up […]
Charlie Bowman’s story “Kidnap Mission” is from July of 1967. In this segment of his experience in Vietnam, Charlie Bowman and his group were flown “into a forward base camp somewhere northwest of Trang Bang near a village named An Loc”. He frequently mentions his good friends Gary and Paul. He recounts how they were […]
Bowman named another one of his stories “Who’s Friend was That?”. This one was dated May, 1967. During this time he was somewhere along the Cambodian border in a place called Angel’s Wing. He expresses how the soldiers are filthy, covered in dust and have dark circles surrounding their gaunt eyes. The soldiers were so […]
Another one of Bowman’s stories is titled “Easter Sunday” and it takes place at an abandoned pineapple plantation. He describes the pineapple plantation as not “all neat and orderly with beautiful rows of pineapples like the Dole pineapple plantations” but instead as “hell turned upside down”. During this dry season, lasting from November to April, […]
In July of 1966, Charles W. Bowman was ordered to report “for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States”. He depicts his life before the war as “nothing much” and he was just 18 years old when he was conscripted, fresh out of high school. Bowman was from Bordentown, New Jersey. He became […]
Charlie Bowman’s story “Picking up the bodies” is from April of 1967. During this time Bowman was outside of Chu Chi in the Wolfhounds company area. The Viet Cong had built an extensive network of tunnels underneath the city, which it used during the war to set booby traps and transport troops. In fact, Bowman […]