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draft letter, his friends honor their pledge. Each young man tells about his combat experiences in Vietnam in one of the novels in the series. In the first, I Pledge Allegiance (Lynch, 2011), Morris describes his first assignment as an aviation electrician’s mate on the missile cruiser USS Boston. He witnesses the superior firepower of the American Navy bombard the Vietnamese coast before the ship is damaged by friendly fire and must return to Boston. When Morris returns to Vietnam, he is reassigned as a radioman on a heavily armed Riverine Assault Force vessel on the Mekong River. Morris’s experiences are key to discussions of the ethics of a guerilla warfare waged by a superpower using technologically advanced weapons. Ivan, the narrator of the second novel, Sharpshooter (Lynch, 2012a), is a superior marksman assigned to the Ninth Infantry where he undergoes extensive training as a sniper. Coming from a military family, Ivan willingly honors the pledge to serve in Vietnam. He shares his thoughts as he is tested on his ability to be a sniper in the field, shoots his first Viet Cong sniper, survives a deadly ambush, and participates in a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol operation before volunteering for the Ninth Division’s Sniper School. Rudi, the narrator of Free-Fire Zone (Lynch, 2012b), the third novel in the series, struggled in school but thrives in the Marines because he can obey orders without having to think for himself. Rudi describes the patrols, the booby-trap in a deserted Vietnamese village that injures his leg, and his experiencA s the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War is being commemorated, there is renewed debate around the moral justification for the United States’ armed intervention in Vietnam and the ethical issues relating to the conduct of military personnel. Chris Lynch has revisited the Vietnam War for young adult readers in his five-novel series: Vietnam: I Pledge Allegiance (Lynch, 2011), Sharpshooter (Lynch, 2012a), Free-Fire Zone (Lynch, 2012b), Casualties of War (Lynch 2013), and Walking Wounded (Lynch, 2014). Teaching about war, argues Paul L. Atwood (2005), involves exploding the myths associated with war and helping students critically examine the rationales and justifications for going to war, including the concepts of patriotism and heroism. Lynch’s series can engage young adults in critical thinking about the Vietnam War through the experiences of four young soldier protagonists who serve in the US Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force. Drawing upon just war theory and writings on the ethics of war, I examine how Lynch’s series addresses moral and ethical issues that have been raised post-Vietnam and use examples from Lynch’s novels to suggest topics for classroom discussion.

Revisiting the Vietnam War: Chris Lynch’s Vietnam Series and the Morality of War