I'm always fascinated to learn which parts of "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War" strike a chord with readers. For Ed Bremer, it was the story of the soldier who set out to kill his dog. 

Ed is news director for KSER-FM. When he interviewed me about the book I co-authored with Grady Myers, he asked me to read Grady's anecdote about Stiletto and his ailing puppy.

The grunt in question was a gung-ho, let's-kill-Charlie type. He had an affection for knives -- which is why Grady dubbed him Stiletto. It wasn't a knife, though, but a .45-caliber pistol that Stiletto borrowed from Grady the evening he decided his dog had rabies and had to be dispatched. Things did not go as planned. Things went badly. Ed saw that episode as a reflection of trauma and conflicted emotions of many American soldiers in the Southeast Asian conflict.

You can listen to the KSER interview here. The Stiletto story comes shortly after the 34:20 mark, where Ed is asking me if I had a moral or lesson in mind when I was assembling Grady's tales for publication.

Ed asked lots of questions. Among them: Did Grady suffer from PTSD? Did I leave any of his war stories out of "Boocoo Dinky Dow"? How did the book come to be written? How did Grady's children react to it? One of Ed's memorable observations was that Grady struck him as a man of integrity. Which I agreed was definitely the case.

Another memorable moment for me came right before the interview started. That's when I reminded Ed that  as a writer and former journalist I would, truth be told, rather be the one asking the questions.

"So would I," he replied with a grin. Then he put on his headphones and switched on the microphone.

In "Boocoo Dinky Dow," Grady -- known in Vietnam as Hoss -- tells lots of passed-along stories. One has to do with platoon mate Teddy Fisher holding a microphone to record sounds of a battle at a previous firebase and being wounded as a result. Here's a version of that 1968 story from Patrick Flanagan, who was there when it happened. Patrick was assistant machine gunner to Andy Day, the fellow whose M-60 Hoss inherited. After reading Grady's memoir, he wrote to say:

"On page 78, the account where Fisher was holding a microphone was actually me.  I was outside taping and pretending to be Walter Cronkite as the jets were dropping bombs and we were getting hit by mortars.  Fisher might have been outside with me; I can't remember.  All I remember is the sound of an incoming mortar and jumped into the bunker.  I got grazed slightly.  Fisher might have gotten a bit more.  You could hear on the tape "I got hit."  We put in for Purple Hearts but were rejected as word got out that we were taping outside and endangering government property, us.  Court martial offense so we gave up on the Purple Heart.  This was way before the major battle on FSB29.  Wish today I had that tape.  It was great."

Patrick sent the photo here, showing In the back, left to right: Andy Day, Brent Longest and Steve Stotka; he doesn't know the soldier in front.

Here's Patrick in front of that bunker at Fire Support Base 29; it was later blown away. He writes: "After the battle on FSB29, we escaped and built FB25.  I left the unit then to start the first mobile PX and pretty much stayed at Dak To or Blackhawk where most of the survivors of the ambushes ended up.  There weren't very many left at that time."

Patrick, who lives in Virginia City, Nev., shares stories of his own on the Charlie Company website.