A New Book

I want to inform "all" Alpha Company vets of a recently published book inspired by the letters, journals and poems of A 1/501 namvet Phil Woodall. Phil was a member of the original Alpha company that arrived in Vietnam in December 1967 and he extended his tour to July 16th, 1969. For those that never met Phil he was the easy going son of a preacher man and in Nam his nickname was "Memphis". Well, Phil had a way with words and he left his mark in many places before his untimely death in January 2007.

The book is titled "RESURGAM" which is Latin for "I shall rise again" and is subtitled "Standing on the Ground of Remembrance". This work is an interesting blend of both fact and fiction which has literally been twenty years in the making. In late fall of 1987 author Jean A. Niedert decided to pay a visit to the "Traveling Wall" Vietnam Veterans Memorial which was then in Charlotte North Carolina. Curious about an envelope laying up against the wall she took a closer look at the words written on it expecting to see a name but instead saw the words "Alpha Company".

I'm not going to spoil it for you but will say that Jean happened to stumble onto this blog while searching Alpha company images and wondered if I was the Joyner that Phil wrote about. My mind got blown bigtime at that point. A limited edition printing was done December 30th, 2008 and I was one of the lucky ones to get an advance copy. Jean recently told me she is doing an accounting as to how many from this first printing are left. She also said positive responses she's received have far exceeded her expectations and a second much larger printing is imminent.

One other point I'd like to mention is that "RESURGAM" is actually part one of a trilogy and Jean is hard at work on part two. One thing I think you can count on is Alpha company being prominent throughout the trilogy. Anyone that ever served in Alpha company from WWII to those currently serving in A-Stan are going to want this on thier bookshelf. Here's what you need to do to get yours. Go to this link: Ground Of Remembrance and click the link there to request a copy. If first print books are still available you'll get one asap (ask Jean to sign it for you) if not you'll be added to the waiting list for the second printing. I was one of the first at Jeans blog and she said she has drafts of more posts she intends to make. This will be an ongoing story so I'm suggesting that you A 1/501 vets sign in there and leave your mark to see what develops.

Last but not least: Over in the Geronimo TV link I've added Dear America, Letters Home From Nam This is an HBO special first aired on The History Channel in 1988. One of the letters featured in this film was written by Phil Woodall. About 53 minutes into the video comes a segment about Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination and Phil's letter follows. I apologize for the quality and audio miscues but it was the best copy I could find.

Later, Joynt