Dong Xoai: Vietnam 1965

In 1967, Joe Kubert illustrated a Veterans' Day series run by a newspaper syndicate and included a dramatic rendering of an episode from the battle of Dong Xoai in which two members of a Special Forces team helped one of their wounded comrades to safety. Years later, the wounded man, Col. Bill Stokes, contacted Kubert about the drawing, and the conversations that followed inspired Kubert inspired to create an original graphic novel about the harrowing battle. In 1965, a Special Forces “A-Team" was lifted into a remote Montagnard village near the Cambodian border. Its original mission was strictly advisory, but a change of plans relocated the team to Dong Xoai, a crucial point the Vietcong needed for control of the region. In the middle of a torrential downpour, a massive force of Vietcong launched an attack on the A-Team and its contingent of poorly trained South Vietnamese soldiers. Kubert tells the story of the assault, with waves upon waves of black-clad guerrillas storming the barbed wire, in clipped, docudrama fashion (he based this lightly fictionalized account on heavy research and interviews, and the attention to detail shows). While Kubert's dialogue can slip into clenched-jaw heroics, his epic but personal treatment of one incredible but little-remembered battle is in the running as one of the greatest war comics ever made. (July)