Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Proud Bastards | 1990 | E. Michael Helms | Buy |
Published in 1990, The Proud Bastards preceded Helms’s crime fiction by over twenty years. It is his account of serving with the US Marines in Vietnam, and it has been described by reviewers as one of the most honest and immediate accounts of combat in the existing literature on that war.
The memoir provides the foundation for understanding Helms as a writer: his interest in military culture, his respect for soldiers who carry out difficult orders under terrible conditions, and his willingness to write about violence without glamorizing it all flow directly from the experience recorded in The Proud Bastards.