Rueben and Nancy Noel were struggling musicians, trying to keep their heads above water, when they were offered a good deal. Go to Vietnam, play some shows, support the troops, make some money, and get settled. Sure, it's 1969, but the country is mostly safe and the Army will take good care of you. They signed on the dotted line and took that bird into Saigon as civilians, with a trunk load of instruments, a husband-and-wife musical variety and comedy show, and a desire to help out however they could.

What they got was an introduction to the fractally fucked up Vietnam War. It turned out that entertainers were bureaucratically locked out of the American PX system: mail, meals, supplies. Everything was sink or swim on the black market. Club sergeants would book impossible shows and leave transportation through a warzone and Kafka-esque maze of checkpoints to fate. Agents and managers were alcoholic, on the take, or both. While they were dodging VC snipers and sleeping in rat infested hooches and playing shows before crowds of doped out combat vets, the bank was threatening to foreclose on their house.

While the Noels were playing 250 shows over six months in atrocious conditions, they discovered an immense conspiracy of kickbacks and money-laundering that went right to the top. Club sergeants demanded bribes from agents, treating some acts, mostly Korean and Philippine dancing girls, like hookers, and generally profited while boys died in the mud. Disgusted, Reuben Noel drew on his past life as a reporter to write a letter to Senator Goldwater, that started a corruption scandal that eventually brought down the first Sergeant Major of the Army William O. Wooldridge. Most of the conspiracy escaped real punishment, but these sergeants were apparently skimming a total of $150 million off the club system annually, and had their fingers all through the $2 billion PX system (in 1970 dollars, so more like $900 million of corruption today). It was just one example of the moral decay of the army, that career NCOs would get rich in a warzone while draftees died, and everybody looked the other way. Sure, it was just some musicians getting screwed the hardest, but honor is a core military value, and one that was betrayed in every way in Vietnam.

So why three stars? Well, this book is niche, and only okay writing-wise, although the Noels are charming enough to carry the story. The club corruption scandal never really went anywhere, being eclipsed by My Lai, Vietnamization, and the 70s in general. In worse luck, Robin Moore (author of The Green Berets) and June Collins (ex-callgirl and key witness in the Senate hearings) got there first with their 1971 novel The Khaki Mafia. This book is an interesting picture of Saigon high life and corruption, and how it ties to the mud and blood of the battlefield, but at the end of the day it's still marginal to the war as a whole.

Sidenote: There is a local connection, since the Noels lived in Phoenix before their tour. I picked this up at a giant Arizona used book sale, and my copy is inscribed by Rueben Noel (he has terrible handwriting). Rueben apparently passed away between 1993 and whenever the internet started archiving everything, but Nancy Noel was alive as of this past summer. Sadly, their music has not survived, or at least not in an easily googleable way. I think they would've been better live, though maybe without accompaniment by 105mm Howitzer.