Young Writers Society

(Any criticism will be appreciated)
R rating-Some swearing and a very graphic description. This story is about a US marine and a VPA soldier during the battle of Hue.

Hue,Vietnam
1968
Battle of Hue
US marine Offensive

My name is Joseph Sullivan, At the age of 19 I was drafted into the US marines and after 3 weeks of training, I was assigned to the 7th marines battalion and sent to Vietnam. I arrived just in time for the battle of Hue. The next few days would be the worst of my life, not just because of what I went through, but also what I had to do.

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The building shook as artillery exploded nearby. Dust covered my face and uniform as we made our way through what was once a police station. The building shook again as the shells rained down on hue city. I crawled through the ruins, followed by my squad mates. At the front, our leader Sgt.Murphy put up his hand and we stopped. He crawled over to the window,looked out and then turned to the rest of the squad.

He looked at us and said,"Ok we 16 VPA soldiers outside. Private Bartowski, Cover us from the second floor. Rest of you, come with me."
He then stood up and made his way to a nearby door. We followed him. He opened the door a slight bit and looked outside. He then opened the door and walked into a side alley. He moved closer to the patrol which had just passed by and threw a grenade into them. Most of them cried out and the squad dissolved. Some hit the floor and others ran. The grenade exploded, killing 2 men that had hit the floor or tripped. Our squad ran out of the building and into the street. I fired my M16, not hitting anything but it didn't give the enemy a chance to fire. I heard the expelled casings clattering on the floor.

I then was pushed to the ground. I looked up to see a Vietnamese soldier with his rifle aimed at me. I closed my eyes and I fired my M16 upwards, not stopping until my clip was empty. Looking back on it I know it was excessive but I was a frightened 19 year old. I dropped my assault rifle and then felt something fall on top of me. I opened my eyes to find my self staring a the bullet ridden face. It was the soldier who was about to kill me. His body was littered with red holes and his face was torn apart, bone sticking out and limp muscle hanging where the bullets had hit, his last expression distorted and mangled by the damage done to it.

His face was no longer recognisable, the bullets destroying anything that was once human about him. I remained silent, not able to anything as I looked at the corpse. Sweat trickled down my face as I stared at the dead man and I tried to scream but my mouth felt like it had been glued together and all I could manage was a whimper of fear. The man seemd to be screaming, his mouth hanging open. In my head I could hear a scream so loud I thought my ears would bleed. My trousers felt damp and warm and for a mintue I thought I had wet myself from fear but as I looked down, I saw patches of red. I then a liquid surging up through my throat.

Just then Sgt. Murphy spotted me and ran over to me, pulling away the corpse and picking me up. I then jerked forward as I threw up.
Sgt. Murphy said,"Shit, hes gone into shock. Private, put him up against the wall for a minute."

A man in his early twenties came over me and set me down against the wall. After of a few minutes Murphy came up to me and said,"Come on, we're done here."
I saw what was left of the VPA squad. Dead bodies were being thrown onto a pile. A marine handed me my M16. I looked a the pile of corpses. Their bodies were tangled and a dark pool at forming at the bottom. The sight of it almost caused me to vomit again. We formed up into a squad.
And then we started moving towards our objective.

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Thats all I have done right now. I will do the VPA part next.

Welcome to YWS!

Okay, I know virtually nothing about the period you're writing about here - even your little introduction makes utterly no sense to me - and what I do know is derived from Good Morning Vietnam, so let's just make it clear that I will be of no real help on that front. I googled "Hue" though, and I think it's spelled Huế. At least, according to Wikipedia it is, but I don't think it's essential when you're writing it. Also, the Battle of Huế was in 1968, and it depends what source you read as to when the M16 was introduced as the standard issue rifle - i.e. whether it was before or after the battle - so double check that. I don't assume to have done the same level of research you've done with just a few searches online, though, so if a source has told you M16, go with M16. It's US history and not British we're dealing with here, so I'm even further out of my depth.

To the writing, something which I can comment on! The grammar and the punctuation was borderline most of the way through. I won't rip it apart because there's a few things that were just badly worded. The only time it really slipped was in dialogue.

He looked at us and said,"Ok we 16 VPA soldiers outside.Private Bartowski, Cover us from the second floor. Rest of you, come with me".

He looked at us and said, "Okay. We have 16 VPA soldiers outside. Private Bartowski, cover us from the second floor. The rest of you, come with me."

The second one is my correction, and that's how it should be written. It's not really a question of what sounds better with punctuation; unfortunately, there's just a right and a wrong. Everyone makes these mistakes at some point though, and it's just as important to make them and correct them as it is to spot someone else's.

You seem to have a continuing problem with how to close the dialogue. See these examples.

"Shit, hes gone into shock. Private, put him up against the wall for a minute".

Okay, so you're missing an apostrophe on "hes", for one thing, but that's not what I pulled this out for. Look at the end of the sentence.

a minute".

That full stop should be inside the speech marks. That's just how it works. And you don't need another one outside the speech marks; it ends the sentence inside. Okay? It should be like this.

a minute."

Second thing is the opening, oddly enough. You should have a space after a comma. I understand that may be just your computer, but when typing, it's grammatically correct to have a space after a comma.

Lastly, the title. It should read, The People's Army - Chapter 1. Spaces around the hyphen, and an apostrophe in "People's". That way, it advertises a good writer to the reviewer and more importantly, the reader. You want to read a book with a misspelled title?

Moving on to the writing itself, and this is where you start to have a bit of a problem. Not one that can't be fixed, but one I need to draw your attention to.

You tell us everything. Showing vs. telling: it's something you'll hear all the time on this site. If you're unsure about what I mean by "showing", look it up in the YWS Knowledge Base or google it. That link is a link to the YWS article on showing, not telling, and will give you a few basic pointers. Now, I'll just explain telling.

Basically, you advertise this with "graphic" description. Now, I have no problem with that, but what you've given us is hardly graphic description.

His body was littered with red holes and his face was torn apart, bone sticking out and limp muscle hanging where the bullets had hit. His face was no longer recognisable, the bullets destroying anything that was once human about him.

You just picked a few of the worst images that came to mind and wrote them down. "Graphic" implies that it's described in "vivid detail", to quote an online dictionary. This isn't "vivid". We don't feel anything reading this; we're not horrified, or scared. We just see a description. There's no emotion.

That doesn't help your character either. We don't feel emotion in the writing, we don't feel for your character. This is a battle! As strategic as they are, battle scenes don't have to be boring to read. I'm yet to find one that I particularly enjoyed reading, but often I just lose interest because the author clogs up their writing with strategic details. Here, you've deviated from that side of things and you've got the framework, but there's no substance. Take another example.

The building shook as artillery exploded nearby. Dust covered my face and uniform as we made our way through what was once a police station. The building shook again as the shells rained down on hue city. I crawled through the ruins, followed by my squad mates. At the front, our leader Sgt.Murphy put up his hand and we stopped. He crawled over to the window,looked out and then turned to the rest of the squad.

All these sentences are similar lengths, and all of them just happen, one after the other. Artillery exploding? I thought artillery were guns themselves, but anyway, ignoring that, this could get it's own paragraph. What's it sound like? What's your character's reaction to it? Is he scared, used to it, is he scared that he's used to it? Elaborate. Description should link back to the story or the character in some way and explain a little more about them. Going back to your description of the Vietnamese soldier, you've basically just told us a bit about you, as the writer.

Take some details out and develop your character a bit. Stop telling us what he's doing and show us. That doesn't mean overloading your text with adverbs, adjectives and excessive description, but showing us a few things that will add to your story and present the character to us. Remember, this is the opening to your story. You've got to capture our interest.

Anyway, I hope this helped. I know I wasn't entirely clear on what showing actually is - though I think I warbled on enough about what telling is - but to be honest, I think it's different for everyone. Showing is that window into your imagination, and it's what makes your writing interesting.

Thank you for your comments, I have edited some of the mistakes I have made, I might've missed a few. I am aware that I have spelt hue wrong but I don't want to copy and paste everytime I want to type it. Again Thank you for your review.

I should start reading the historical fiction section a lot more, the stories here are brilliant and yours is one of them! I love how you begin your story; you manage to set the scene without overdoing it but giving just enough information to drag your readers into the story. Good job there. Secondly I love your descriptions, they’re done really well, so well that I can actually imagine being there myself hearing and seeing the destruction for myself. Please continue I’m really looking forward to it.

Thanks. At the moment I am drafting the VPA part of chapter 1.

Yes! I loved this. I have never read in this section before, but I am glad I did
Your description of his bullet-clad face was beautiful. ha ha, wrong word? I think not.
Anyways, I really admire you being able to catch such a devastating time into a story. I mean, we cant see much plot yet, but your final sentence gives me home!
Please PM me when the next chapter is up! I would love to read it.
I have nothing negative to say... ha ha
~Classy

I don't really have anything to say bad about the story. I love how you wrote it in the perspective of the soldier and how the soldier felt about seeing dead bodies. It was all described very well.
It's a very good story and I can't wait to read more.

As usual a lot of people beat me to the chase of pointing out a lot of the grammar and what not mistakes. So I think I'll just comment.

Great story you have here. I think the most intense part you have here is the beginning. It's so awesome to suddenly be in the battle. But then you begin to realize that it feels very sudden and random. But hey, that's war right?

Keep up the good work White knight.