Bankrate:At what point did you realize you would one day create fiction from these experiences?

Griffin: This is a wild story. I was a master sergeant in the Army on my way to Korea and I didn't look like a master sergeant in the Army. And at New American Library, my editor also edited James Jones ("From Here to Eternity"). And here I was, James Jones starting to tell me how to get along with the Army, and I looked at James Jones, this great chronicler of the military, thinking this (guy doesn't know anything) about the Army (laughs)! And he was really trying to help me, being a really nice guy, on what I shouldn't say to the corporal!

I found out that a lot of these guys ... do you know what Hemingway did in the Army? He was a lieutenant in the Italian army. Do you know why? This is a true story; I got this from the guy who bought Hemingway's first book. The Italians realized they couldn't treat these nice young middle-class American kids like they treated their own privates, so they made them all officers. True story, absolutely true story. He got wounded; I'm not denigrating his service. But that's why he was an officer. Because an Italian private doesn't live too well. All the Americans who were over there were officers.

Bankrate: Were you able to make a living as a writer coming out of the service?

Griffin: No, I had a hard time when I first got out of the Army. I spent the worst year of my life selling Karo and Mazola in Philadelphia, hitting every grocery store in that area. Then my boss in Korea was at Fort Rucker learning how to fly and he ran me down and said, "Come down and work for me in the mornings and you can write your books in the afternoons." And of course he was lying. I went to Rucker and worked for him day and night for about 18 months when they were starting up Army aviation for the Vietnam War. I wrote FM1-1 for Army Aviation Operations. That was fascinating. And while I was there, I wrote my second novel and about 10 more books and then I quit, because I was making enough money and it didn't make any sense to have a government job. It was all technical material. It's a good way to learn how to write. It's a lot better than taking some course in creative writing.

Bankrate: How did you view the Vietnam War then?

Griffin: I had several emotions about it. I didn't go -- my wife wouldn't let me go. She said she would divorce me and ultimately did (he since has remarried). I would have gone out of curiosity because all my friends were going. We didn't lose that war militarily; we lost it politically. I'm a great dis-admirer of Westmoreland. I think he did a very bad job over there. And the villain of the century was McNamara, who was waging a war he had no intention of winning. I think that's the worst thing anybody's ever done to this country. You can hate Rumsfeld all you want, but Rumsfeld wants to win, or wanted to win. We could have won that war (Vietnam), but I don't know what the hell good it would have done us.