Charles McNair M.D., a former primary care physician for 35 years, began writing after serving in Vietnam and has now self-published two war novels, Soldiers of a Foreign War & In a Dark Wood, with a third currently in the works.
His book trilogy, Three American Wars, deal with the costs of war. Three families across the generations sent their sons off to three of America’s wars: Vietnam, WWII and the Civil War.
McNair enlisted at 19 to train as an operating room technician. He served at the 45th Surgical Hospital, from June 1969 until he was discharged in September of 1971. He began the first book after he was discharged to self-treat his PTSD and wrote off-and-on for the next 44 years, finally finishing Soldiers of a Foreign War in June 2015. The book presents the Vietnam War in all its conflicted complexity. It is told from the enlisted soldiers' perspective and deals with the American and Vietnamese's, North and South, all teenagers, experiences as they leave their families and enter their countries' respective armies.
His second novel, In a Dark Wood follows the forebears of the main characters from “Soldiers” in the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War in 1864. McNair is now working on his thrid book “The Shape of Fear,” which focuses on the fathers of the main characters from “Soldiers” during WWII in the Huertgen Forest, ending in the Battle of the Bulge.
