Muddy Jungle Rivers

Description from muddyjunglerivers.com:

Muddy Jungle Rivers is a close-up look at life on a gunboat during 1968, the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War. It’s the story of a seven-man crew captained by a volatile pro-war enlisted man. Like Philip Caputo’s “A Rumor Of War,” this narrative ta......more

Description from muddyjunglerivers.com:

Muddy Jungle Rivers is a close-up look at life on a gunboat during 1968, the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War. It’s the story of a seven-man crew captained by a volatile pro-war enlisted man. Like Philip Caputo’s “A Rumor Of War,” this narrative takes the reader into frustration, rage, terror, death, betrayal, and the search for redemption.

Muddy Jungle Rivers has 29 chapters, maps, and photographs.

Today’s generation watch their peers returning from combat and cannot understand why their loved ones have changed after being blanched in the cauldron of war. In Muddy Jungle Rivers the reader will glimpse the genesis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).(less)

It’s one thing to write a book; it’s another to live it.

Wendell Affield never knew his father. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and an unpredictable stepfather. At twelve he and his siblings were placed in foster homes, his mother committed to a mental hospital. At sixt......more

It’s one thing to write a book; it’s another to live it.

Wendell Affield never knew his father. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and an unpredictable stepfather. At twelve he and his siblings were placed in foster homes, his mother committed to a mental hospital. At sixteen he rode the rails out west and lived in hobo camps. At seventeen he enlisted in the navy. At twenty, he was wounded in an ambush while driving a river patrol boat in Vietnam and medevaced home.

Affield retired from the food industry in 2001. He attended Bemidji State University (BSU) to learn the writing craft. His Vietnam “memory stories” evolved into a memoir, Muddy Jungle Rivers, which won the Minnesota Veterans Voices award in 2017. The memoir has ope

It’s one thing to write a book; it’s another to live it.

Wendell Affield never knew his father. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and an unpredictable stepfather. At twelve he and his siblings were placed in foster homes, his mother committed to a mental hospital. At sixteen he rode the rails out west and lived in hobo camps. At seventeen he enlisted in the navy. At twenty, he was wounded in an ambush while driving a river patrol boat in Vietnam and medevaced home.

Affield retired from the food industry in 2001. He attended Bemidji State University (BSU) to learn the writing craft. His Vietnam “memory stories” evolved into a memoir, Muddy Jungle Rivers, which won the Minnesota Veterans Voices award in 2017. The memoir has opened surprising new paths. Today he speaks to groups about PTSD and leads an Expressive Writing Therapy group for veterans.

In 2010 Affield discovered a treasure trove of family history, dating back to 1822, in the chickenhouse on the family homestead in northern Minnesota. Each day as he works on the stories, he discovers new family ties, heartaches, loss, and victories.

He has led workshops and spoken at colleges throughout Minnesota and the Midwest.

Affield lives with his wife, Patti, in northern Minnesota. They have three children and several grandchildren. Sadly, their son, Jeff, died in 2015. Affield continues to study writing and psychology. His greatest fear: that he dies before all the stories are told. (less)