When Can I Stop Running? A New Vietnam War Novel by John Podlaski
John Podlaski’s first novel, Cherries, introduced us to John Kowalski (“Pollack”) as he began his year In Country as a U.S. Army Private First Class (PFC). In my review I used the descriptive term, novelized memoir, since much of the book reflects the author’s own experiences during his Vietnam Tour (or in current Army terminology, deployment. See my review of Cherries at Amazon.com). This first effort was a meticulously detailed day by day account of the life of an Infantryman in a guerilla war of attrition. We are talking up close and very personal combat in the most hostile of jungle environments. It was also a coming of age story and a white knuckle, cold sweat page turner of an adventure story.
Podlaski’s encore novel brings back “Pollack”, the central character in Cherries, and introduces us to the unforgettable Louis Gladwell (aka LG). LG is African American or a “Blood”, a moniker used by African Americans for each other even when I was in Vietnam (1967-68). Pollack and LG are a “Salt and Pepper” team and best friends, buddies and brothers in a way that only those of us who have gone to war can truly understand. They are also an Abbot and Costello/Marx Brothers/Our Gang kind of comedy act that keeps them and the rest of the unit laughing and poking fun. This may even be harder for non-veterans to understand; you had to be there!
The premise for When Can I Stop Running? is very different from Cherries, although no less dramatic. The story opens at a field FSB (Fire Support Base) which sounds very similar to the many FSB’s I inhabited during my tour as I moved with a field artillery unit and mechanized infantry on combat missions throughout the III Corps war zone. However, while Pollack and LG are “outside the wire” I, as Signal Corps (Radio Communications), was inside the wire. We simply called this mostly invisible line around the field base the Perimeter. The story follows Pollack and LG during a long night at a Listening Post (LP) outside the perimeter where they are to act as an “early warning system” to detect enemy movement or activity in time for the FSB to react. It is very, very dark at night in the “boonies” and the tricks and skill sets that Pollack and LG use to stay awake and alert (and alive) during the night recall the kind of detail that we first read in Cherries.
What makes When Can I Stop Running? quite a different read from Cherries are the interludes where Pollack, his memories brought to the surface as warily he watches for any movement near the LP, recalls his many adventures with school friends, some terrifying, some funny, while growing up in Suburban Detroit in the 1960’s. It is in these stories, so familiar to those of us of the Boomer generation, that the author treats us to some of his finest writing. His childhood comes to life in his rich, poetic descriptions. It is a lost world which haunts all of our generation’s memories, just as we are haunted by our memories of the central and defining event of our generation, the Vietnam War.
 

Incredibly well written. It took me back to Nam in a positive way and brought back some great childhood memories.

Outstanding read that paints a dramatic picture of what it was like to man an LP (listening post) in enemy territory on a night that never seems to end. Interwoven with the story is flashbacks from the author's youth, when terrifying events scared him into running for his life. But now, in the darkness, a short distance from the enemy, he cannot run. He must stay at his assigned station, maintain total silence, and report enemy activities to his headquarters.
This book reminds me a lot of the Pulitzer-nominated book The Things They Carried. It's one thing to read that our soldiers were sent out from their outposts, in teams of two, to maintain reconnaissance of the enemy territory. It's quite another to learn the intimate details of what that entailed. This book paints a graphic picture of everything involved in LP duty - constant mosquito bites, sitting in a mud hole being pelted by rain, hearing (and smelling) enemy soldiers taking their latrine breaks mere feet away.
The descriptions are extremely well-crafted and vivid, and the flashbacks evoke memories from my own reckless youth.
After you read this, you will really want to find a vet who humped the boonies in Vietnam just to say "Thank you for your service"!
Welcome home, brothe​r

John does an outstanding job of describing his time in Nam, and referencing some of his experiences as a young man in Detroit adds not only some humor and also some comparisons to his Nam experiences in Nam. This is a GREAT book to read as is his other book, Cherries.