Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

I have read plenty of merchant mariners’ novels that collect dust on bookshelves at ship’s libraries and maritime museums. But there is one I read recently that has reached broad acclaim: The Greatest Beer Run Ever, written by John “Chick” Donohue. In the mid-1960’s, hundreds of American merchant ships were employed in the Vietnam war effort, to bring food, fuel, and ammunition from the United States to the front lines of conflict. Many of these ships were small-tonnage relics of the Second World War, and needed a large number of American mariners to crew them. In contrast, our war materiel buildup in the 2003 liberation of Iraq required a few dozen merchant vessels of large, modern tonnage. In the former era, carefree young men accepted the dangers of North Vietnamese enemy attack- which did happen too frequently, in exchange for twice the usual rate of pay. While Chickie’s true-blue membership in the National Maritime Union (NMU) facilitated this adventure to wartime Vietnam, the book is very approachable for landlubbers. We could say that our protagonist, Chickie, came from a different time when, in a transient and essential workforce, you could actually work a voyage onboard a freighter, without career consequences. Using the more-lenient rules of the pre-connectivity era, and his diplomatic tongue, he pulled a legendary shore leave feat to bring beer and morale to his fellow hometown soldiers in and around Saigon. While you’d likely be tossed by the union today for flagrantly violating shore leave policy, most mariners know a colleague who’s willing to venture beyond the pier, and official liberty restrictions, in Djibouti or Okinawa. Chickie’s spirit lives on.