Award Winning Military Author to Appear at Rancho Cordova Library
Feb 12, 2020 12:00AM ● By By Margaret Snider
Robert M. Pacholik shows the two medals he won from different organizations for his book Night Flares. Pacholik helped out at Veterans Connect at the Rancho Cordova Library for three years. Next to him, manning the station on this day, is Rell Schwanke, U.S. Army Aviation Retired. Photo by Margaret Snider
RANCHO CORDOVA, CA (MPG) - Robert M. Pacholik enlisted in the Army when he was 20 years old and didn’t even know where Vietnam was located. After 22 hours in the air from Travis Air Force Base to Vietnam, he landed at 4 a.m. on the third day of the Tet offensive in 1968. “I went to the mess hall to try to get food,” Pacholik said, “and these two guys from 9th infantry showed up and said ‘Are you Pachookatak or some damn thing?’” Pacholik admitted that he was the photographer that had been sent, the two men said, “Good, our guy got killed yesterday, so you’re with us.” That was his introduction to Vietnam.
Pacholik will appear at the Rancho Cordova Library at 10 a.m., Saturday, February 22, to tell about his experiences and his latest book, Saigon Summer. Since the Vietnam War the author has written three books, two of which are about the war. Pacholik became part of a five man unit whose job was to document their part of the war with still and motion picture cameras. “I trained the unit, we went into action, and we recorded all of the combat actions during the next two years, in probably 14 major combat units,” Pacholik said.
With almost 549,000 men in the country, U.S. Army logistics was delivering 9 million pounds of cargo a month to supply them, but the units were not receiving them. Saigon Summer is an indictment of those who were responsible for running the central core of the Saigon black market. It is also a record of what happened to Pacholik’s five man unit when they discovered the truth of the black market and what was happening. Though fictionalized in the sense that names have been changed, Pacholik said, “Every single event that occurs in the book happened to me or one of the five men in the unit.”
Pacholik is a journalist and was awarded the bronze medal by Military Writers Society for his book Night Flares. That book also won a silver medal from Independent Publishers. The author will have his books available for sale in his appearance at the library, including Saigon Summer. He has previously helped at Veterans Connect @ the Library in Rancho Cordova from 2016 to 2018. The library is located at 9845 Folsom Blvd. Sacramento, CA 95827.
