WEST, Francis J., Jr. 1940-

(Bing West)

PERSONAL:

Male. Born May 2, 1940, in Boston, MA; married; children: Owen, Patrick, Alexandra, Khaki. Education: Georgetown University, B.A., 1961; Princeton University, M.A., 1967. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Home—226 Carroll Ave., Newport, RI 02840. Agent—Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, 55 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—bing@westwrite.com.

CAREER:

Former U.S. assistant secretary of state. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, analyst; Department of Defense, Washington, DC, director of program development in office of assistant secretary of defense, 1971-72, assistant to secretary and deputy secretary, 1974-75, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs during Reagan administration; Naval War College, Washington, DC, professor, 1973-74, dean, 1977-81; Tufts University, Boston, MA, visiting professor, 1975-77; Department of the Navy, Washington, DC, consultant to secretary of the Navy and chief of naval operations, 1977-81; Hudson Institute, vice president; CNN, military analyst during Operation: Desert Storm; founder, GAMA Corporation, Springfield, VA. Military service: U.S. Marine Corps, 1962-67; served in Vietnam conflict; attained rank of captain.

WRITINGS:

Small-Unit Action in Vietnam, Summer 1966, U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters, Historical Branch, G-3 Division (Washington, DC), 1967.

The Village, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1972, with new preface and foreword, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1985.

Naval Forces and Western Security (report; "Atlantic Alliance and Western Security" series), Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1987.

(As Bing West) The Pepperdogs: A Novel, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

(As Bing West; with Ray L. Smith) The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Francis J. West, Jr. is a former assistant secretary of defense and a Vietnam veteran. Since leaving government service, he has served as a military analyst during Operation: Desert Storm and founded GAMA Corporation, which conducts military training in decision making using digital video simulations.

West served in Vietnam as a rifle platoon commander with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines and 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, and as a mortar platoon commander. He was also a member of the reconnaissance team Primrose, which initiated Operation Stingray with their ambush of a North Vietnamese battalion. Because the Vietnam conflict was so different from previous wars, in 1966 West was assigned the task of documenting the fighting. He took a reel-to-reel tape recorder along with his rifle and interviewed both American and Vietnamese soldiers. His report, titled Small-Unit Action in Vietnam, Summer 1966 was used as a basic text for years.

West's The Village is considered a classic account of the Vietnam conflict. The author patrolled with the Combined Action Platoon in the village of Binh Nghia in Chulai, an area in which the United States lost more troops than it would during the subsequent Desert Storm conflict. In 1966, a dozen young marines entered Binh Nghia, which was then controlled by 120 Viet Cong; two years later, when the surviving six marines left, no enemy troops remained. The Village is a true account of guerilla warfare as seen through the eyes of these men, who were stationed in a village where the residents became family. Although the communists controlled Binh Nghia as late as 2002, when West returned he found that the villagers still remembered the Americans by name and continued to maintain a memorial to those who died.

West's combat experience comes into play in his novel The Pepperdogs, published under the pseudonym Bing West. Set in the present-day Balkans, it is about a reconnaissance team, so named because they "run like a dog with pepper up its arse." The team consists of reservists with varying backgrounds—a computer programmer, auto mechanic, fireman, toy salesman, and futures trader—led by Captain Mark Lang who, against orders, leads them on a mission to rescue a fellow team member. A Kirkus Reviews critic wrote that West "takes on complex themes here—duty, loyalty, and what to do when they conflict—and deals with them capably. Mostly though, this is a story about warriors, told authoritatively and brilliantly."

Captain Tyler Cosgrove has been kidnapped by rogue Serbian guerrillas who specialize in atrocities. He was abducted just as he was about to return to the States to see his dying mother, and now his fiancée is receiving ransom demands in New York City. In pursuing the culprits from Kosovo into Serbia, the Pepperdog team faces brutal winter conditions, mountainous terrain, and the disapproval of national-security leaders who feel the team may be creating a difficult diplomatic situation. They use heat-sensing devices to locate the enemy and are aided by the performance and endurance-enhancing drugs they have been given to them by the military. West gives the story a techno twist by having the computer nerd, Harvell, put up a Web site, Pepperdogs.com, initially created as a dating service to find attractive English-speaking Kosovar women, but with which they also provide updates of their progress. With the information out there for the world to see, a situation soon develops between the White House and the nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Marines magazine contributor Cindy Fisher wrote that West "uses his first-hand knowledge of combat and experience in a high-level government position to combine a gritty, down-in-the-trenches military clash with the behind-the-scenes intrigues of politics at home and abroad."

William E. Turcotte reviewed The Pepperdogs in the Naval War College Review, saying that it "ranks with The Hunt for Red October. It is a fine work of fiction constructed around reality, brimming with action and genuine insight into the emerging war-fighting capabilities of the new ground soldier."

During March and April of 2003, West accompanied eighteen marine units from Kuwait to Baghdad with Major General Ray L. Smith, one of the most-decorated marines since World War II. Together they wrote an account of this period, including their sixteen days of combat, as The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Armor, November-December, 2003, review of The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, p. 52.

Booklist, September 15, 2003, review of The March Up, p. 199.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2002, review of The Pepperdogs, p. 1655.

Library Journal, January, 2003, Robert Conroy, review of The Pepperdogs, p. 161.

Marines, April-June, 2003, Cindy Fisher, review of The Pepperdogs, p. 38.

Naval War College Review, summer, 2003, William E. Turcotte, review of The Pepperdogs, p. 173.

Publishers Weekly, December 9, 2002, review of The Pepperdogs, p. 60.

ONLINE

Bing West Home Page,http://www.westwrite.com (October 11, 2003).

Princeton University Web site,http://www.princeton.edu/ (March 11-12, 2002), Louis Jacobson, review of The Pepperdogs.*