Dimensions
145 x 177 x 13mm
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
Vinnie Moran can hear his watch ticking on his wrist. Around him, the watches of dead men tick. His platoon is caught in an ambush in Long Tan and he is the only survivor. He must play dead as the Viet Cong come in to finish off. Vinnie is a third-generation Moran - the army is the only life he knows, a life he recalls as he lies, playing dead, expecting soon to be dead.
Vinnie has grown up with a father haunted by demons and an Italian mother who gives him the gentle stability he needs. His father has shared his recollections of World War II. The Vietnam War has divided the family, and Vinnie's sister, Mirella, becomes an activist. She is charged with murder after a bomb explosion. Her story comes in letters to Vinnie as he fights.
As Vinnie becomes aware of the corruption in South Vietnam and the useless brutality of the war, like his grandfather, old Jacko, and his father Robert, he becomes disenchanted with war. He returns home to find his father is dead - from an 'accident' cleaning his gun. Vinnie is disillusioned - as they were - and knows that he will pay for it all his life.
