Best-selling author Wil Haygood’s tenth book, The War within a War – the black struggle in Vietnam and at home, was released earlier this year. Haygood, who grew up on North Fifth Street in Columbus, appeared at the National Veteran’s Memorial & Museum’s welcoming home event this past March to honor veterans and talk about the plight of America’s black soldier in that ugly war. U.S. Vietnam veterans on hand kicked things off by marching in, to a standing ovation.
Columbus native TC Brown (pictured above) released Made In Taiwan in 2025, a book about his personal experiences serving in the Vietnam War. TC has written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, freelanced for national and local publications (New York Times, Playboy, Columbus Monthly, Columbus CEO and others), was a Kiplinger Digital Media Fellow at Ohio State and an adjunct professor of Journalism at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Arriving as an “unsophisticated eighteen-year-old” in August 1968, TC served in Taiwan in the military police. He was responsible for providing security for the ‘Dirty Dozen,’ a strip of bars frequented by the U.S. military and locals. He survived bar fights, racial confrontations, typhoons, rocket attacks in Vietnam, friends suffering from heroin withdrawals, and a cheating fiancé.
Overt racism was prevalent in 1960s America which carried over into the war. At home, blacks rarely rose to captain within metropolitan police departments. In Vietnam, only 2% of officers were black. According to Haygood, nearly half of African Americans served on the front lines. Soldiers in the theater wondered out loud why racism was brought into war.
In March 1965, during a visit to Howard University, Dr. Martin Luther King jr went on record, “The war in Vietnam is accomplishing nothing.”
The Hollywood Club was part of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ that TC and his military police compatriots patrolled. One night a couple of black soldiers showed up and were denied service. Understandably angry, they told their friends and the next night a large group showed up and staged a sit-in. TC was notified of the incident. Along with his Chinese MP and a local policeman, they made their way to the bar.
“OK guys. What’s going on?” Brown recounts in his book. “You can’t just come in here and take over the place and not spend money. What are you doing?” Everyone talked at once. There were 15-20 angry black airmen. TC was the only white guy there. Frustration escalated. TC knew at least one of the guys. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to get his ass kicked, he decided to just throw up his hands. “Know what, the hell with it. Tear this place apart if you want. I don’t give a shit. I can’t stop you guys from doing what you want, so have fun. I’m tired of this bullshit. But tell you what, this is only going to get bad for you later if you tear this place up.”
It worked. Guys began leaving. TC didn’t get pummeled. And the local tavern didn’t get trashed. But racism, as we all know, persisted.
Haygood sat alongside actor Matthew Modine for the Columbus welcoming home event. Modine talked about his 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket which was written about the Vietnam War and filmed in London. Director Stanley Kubrick would ask him about the movie’s ending and should Modine, the lead, live or die. The two disagreed on which way it should go and even didn’t speak for a month.
Then the silence was broken. Kubrick asked again. Modine, who really hadn’t thought about it much, blurted out that his character had to watch two of his close buddies get killed and then another soldier in his regiment put a gun in his mouth. Modine said his character should live, because living the rest of his life after what he had witnessed in war would be hell.
Haygood’s book, which took him five years to write, is meticulously researched and loaded with stories of overt racism that white America – even today – may not be aware of.
United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had military entrance IQ requirements lowered from 31 out of 100 to just 10 out of 100 in the early days of the Vietnam War. Black recruiters were then sent into America’s inner cities. The program – launched in 1966 with the approval of President Lyndon Johnson – was named Project 100,000 because that was the goal every year.
“The program gave court systems across America leeway to drop charges against those accused of criminal actions, provided they’d agree to sign on with Uncle Sam,” Haygood writes. Half of those targeted were black. Most who signed up were sent to the front line.
TC finished his service in the United States Air Force and collaborative partnership with the Taichung Armed Forces Police and left Taiwan on February 10, 1973. “I had learned to love the Chinese people and their society,” he writes. “While they too can cling to ego and power and greed, so many of their customs were fascinating, different and embraceable. Though not all of the locals were big fans of Americans, many were.”
After Wil Haygood’s talk in Columbus, I bought his book and stood in line to have him sign it. I decided to have him make it out to my wife “To Theresa, For your dad! Wil Haygood 3/2026”, he wrote. Theresa had just lost her father, a U.S. Air Force veteran, a month earlier. Haygood’s book is certainly not an easy read, but a critical and important addition to the American journal.
TC Brown’s personal account of his ‘formative years’ in the midst of that same chaotic war, is loaded with entertaining and heartbreaking stories of a young man experiencing an alien culture 8000 miles from home.
I’ve known TC (which stands for Totally Crazy) Brown for close to thirty years. He has always struck me as smart, thoughtful and charming. While reading his book, my ‘badass meter’ kept going off. Needless to say, I now understand his crazy moniker.
Thank you ‘Crazy’ man – and all veterans – for your service.
Both books are available on Amazon.com.
Sources: Made In Taiwan by TC Brown, 2025; The War within a war – the black struggle in Vietnam and at home by Wil Haygood, 2026; Stanley Kubrick Movies Definitively Ranked by Jesse Hassenger, March 23, 2026, www.gq.com; Meet the 10TV Team, www.10tv.com; Vietnam War Veterans Day Welcome Home Ceremony, Sat March 28, 2026, at the NVMM; US Military Casualties – Vietnam Conflict, https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil; Columbus Living with Crystal Mazza, Nov 9, 2026, NBC4-TV Columbus; Featured picture is TC Brown in Taiwan in 2025 where he returned after 52 years. A local guide helped him find his old apartment where he lived with his girlfriend. “I got emotional at one point when I remembered how I said goodbye,” he said.