All Chick Donohue wanted to do was bring some guys beer. It shouldn't be a big deal, right?
Except in this case, with Donohue in New York City and the intended recipients of his beer largesse in Vietnam, it was a big deal. And it was an especially big deal since the men Donohue was looking for were a little bit preoccupied fighting the Vietnam War.
It all started in 1967 as Donohue was sitting in his local bar — Doc Fiddler's — in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. The bartender and some patrons were talking about how many local young men had gone off to fight in Vietnam. They worried that, given growing public resentment over the war, that the soldiers didn't feel supported.
So the bartender suggested that someone bring those guys a beer to show them that their home neighborhood was thinking about them. After a little pressure from the bartender, Donohue volunteered to do it.
This is the opening of "The Greatest Beer Run Ever," Donohue's 2020 book. It is a story so incredible, so preposterous, that it seems impossible that's it's actually true. Yet it is.
Even as Donohue volunteered for the beer run, he doubted it was possible. "Some authority figures will probably stop me, but I have to try," he recalls thinking.
Donahue was in the Merchant Marines, so he managed to get himself onto a ship delivering ammunition to the troops in Vietnam. Once there, he heads off to deliver beer.
The story takes a series of surprsing twist and turns. Donahue travels around with U.S. troops and gets shockingly close to the front lines. Despite his prediciton, no "authority figure" stopped this civilian from traveling around a war zone trying to deliver beer. In fact, Donohue was surprised how readily he was able to get rides on U.S. military planes and helicopters and was even treated with deference by Army officers.
Finally, a buddy explained why:
"Don't you get it, pal? They think you're CIA! Because why the hell else would you be here? In jeans and plain shirt, no less."
After successfully delivering some of his beer, Donahue ends up in Saigon when the Tet Offensive breaks out. This opens up a whole new chapter of the adventure. Frankly, Donahue was lucky to get out of Vietnam alive.
I don't want to give up too much of the story, but this is a book you should read. It's fun, it moves fast and you'll learn some things about the Vietnam War.
You may wonder, as I did, whether this story is just too good to be true true. Could Donahue have just made it up? So I was pleased to discover that a professor at Columbia University closely fact-checked the story and confirmed its authenticity.
There are three "bonus" chapters tacked awkwardly onto the end of this book. One is a "Where are they now?" section, another describes the neighborhood of Inwood, and the third recounts a quirky Vietnam War story, but not one involving Donahue. Each of these might be of some interest, but they don't mesh well with the rest of the book. The "Where are they now?" chapter, in particular, goes on too long.
