Morgan Miller
I very much enjoyed working with Morgan on his memoir, which is due for publication in the fall of 2023 by W. Brand Publishing.
I knew very little about the Vietnam war before I met Henry Morgan Miller and helped him with his book. Sure, I knew the background history; Walter Cronkite’s intense broadcasts are hard to forget when you are of a certain age. But reading Morgan’s manuscript for the first time cut through all the rhetoric and let me see the war from the perspective of a new, raw, recruit. Someone who didn’t choose to put their life on the line. I was pleasantly surprised that his approach was almost matter-of-fact, taking the reader through the day-to-day life of a draftee who becomes a Cobra helicopter pilot.
Drafted tells the story of Henry Morgan Miller’s year in Vietnam at the invitation of Lyndon B. Johnson. It is the story of a meat-cutter—wannabe commercial airline pilot—whose life was rudely interrupted by being inducted into a war that he considered someone else’s battle for a lost cause. Other than the meat-cutter/commercial pilot bit, that could describe many of the almost 300,000 men drafted in 1968 along with Morgan, or, for that matter, the 1.85 million drafted between 1964-73. It is the story of your brother, your son, your friend—some who came home safe and sound, and others who perished, or were no longer whole.
Morgan’s memoir provides readers with a “lived” experience. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to suffer the indignities of learning to be a soldier, or flying into battle in a mechanically dubious Cobra gunship, then this book is a must-read.