This is the report of an American Paratrooper, Infantry, boots on the ground, in Viet Nam in the mid 1960s. It is not a romanticized, sanitized, fantasized Hollywood version of ground combat. It is a description of life on the ground for your military grandfathers, fathers, uncles and brothers. When they returned from Viet Nam, this is not what they talked about. It was too painful, too raw, too uncivilized and too inhuman. The accumulated fear and pain of a full years tour of duty was over-whelming, physically and as modern research shows, psychically. They didn’t want to talk about it, they didn’t want to think about it . This is a description of what they endured. Your grandfathers, fathers, sons, uncles and friends were pushed beyond any reasonable limits of human physical and mental endurance and it ultimately had a lifelong bad effect on their bodies and mind. They were called by their Country, as volunteers or as draftees, to be on the front lines in a war of ideas, in the middle of political debates wherein the good citizens had no idea of what was required of their young citizens and their families. This is my story but it is also the story of thousands of young citizens who answered their Country’s call. May God bless every one of you and your families who suffered along with you. All the Way.
