The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Rating 3 of 5

The Greatest Beer run ever is John “Chick” Donohue’s story of his trip to Vietnam to “drop in” and thank his friends and acquaintances for there service in the war.

Chick is somehow goaded into the trip by a local tavern owner. So Chick departs upper upper Manhatten NYC to visit numerous friends and “bring them a beer of appreciation”. Chick uses his status as a merchant marine to secure passage as an “oiler” on a freighter to Vietnam. On arrival Chick weasels his way off the freighter and the adventure begins.

The story is pretty clearly Chick’s rambling and J.T. Molloy’s attempt to pull it all together into a coherent narrative. Its an interesting story as Chick gradually admits a fair bit of delusoinment with the war the longer he was in Vietnam. The story is an interest perspective on the experience of being in Vietnam during the war. The story gets fairly exciting when Chick gets stuck in Saigon during the Tet Offensive.

Its pretty clear Chick’s key skill is being able to talk to and get along with nearly anyone. He’s friendly and a creative liar and that gets him very far. My interesting notes about the book

• The longer he’s in Vietnam Chick clearly feels like the war is a lost cause.
• Compared to how I’ve seen the war in Iraq and Afghanistan the US involvement in Vietnam seems much larger scale and the North Vietnam and Viet Cong fighters appear more skilled and better equipped for fighting the American GI’s. America was “winning” the battles but clearly fighting a significant foe.
• Chicks ability to leverage his Union status to get himself well taken care of is pretty surprising. Unions in 1968 were much stronger then now.

I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed “Greatest Beer Run” it was a nice book. I think it captures and interesting point in history well and is an engaging read.