SOURCE: "Civilian Perspectives in Peter Straub's Koko," in Fighting and Writing the Vietnam War, University Press of Mississippi, 1994, pp. 115-35.

In the following essay, Ringnalda addresses the issue of "civilians" writing about the Vietnam combat experience.

Up to this point we've looked at three writers who spent a year "in country." All three experienced combat—even the civilian "journalist" Herr. Peter Straub did not. So what's he doing in a book called Fighting and Writing? How can a civilian possibly write about war? How dare he claim that special privilege? To this day, many veterans of the Vietnam War share the attitude that if you weren't there and you weren't in combat, then you have no business (or ability) writing about it. I myself have been told that I wasn't qualified to write this book, because I'm only a Vietnam era veteran. Beyond the obvious rejoinder that if...