Prompts – A Collection of Stories

Tank Gunner is a pseudonym for a combat cavalry soldier decorated for gallantry. In response to classroom creative writing prompts, this collection of 60 stories includes ingenious and clever approaches to share non-fiction war stories as fiction. Following discovery of four combat daily operational reports he wrote 50 years ago, he knew more of the story than the three or four formal military sentences written for each daily entry over a four-month period and began adding detail regarding tactics, places, and people. Detail grew into elaborations, clarifications, and in some cases, corrections to the daily entries of these historical documents. He used his detailed work as answers for the 108 questions in The Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas Oral History Project questionnaire. For unexplained reasons the Center claimed their questionnaire was proprietary and denied his request to publish their questions with his answers. He respected their wish. Energized to write again, a community college class on creative writing gave the opportunity to present the non-fiction stories for evaluation and critique. Inspired by encouragement from the instructor and classmates, the odyssey began. From there, his answers, elaborations, and clarifications formed the nucleus for over 200 non-fiction war stories, and adding two albums containing over 350 photographs, images, and graphics, he published his non-fiction work. Prompts — a collection of stories is a mix of fiction from creative writing prompts and war stories based on real people and events.