Gustav Hasford was born in 1947, in Russellville, Alabama. He joined the Marines right out of school in 1967 and used his experiences as a Combat Correspondent in Vietnam to write his first novel, The Short-Timers, which Stanley Kubrick turned into Full Metal Jacket (1987). Hasford's second novel, published in 1990, was a sequel to The Short-Timers titled The Phantom Blooper. It detailed Private Joker's transformation after living in a Vietnamese village. Hasford's final novel, A Gypsy Good Time, was a dialogue-rich detective story. When he died of a heart attack in 1993 he was living on the island of Ithaca in Greece.