My Vietnam War

Writers have been writing about war since the siege of Troy, but few, if any, have captured the first-person experience of war as deeply as My Vietnam War. Set in 1967 (the deadliest year of the Vietnam War), this memoir-style novel depicts the psychological journey of a young man whose carefree days of studying philosophy at the university are ended by the draft. The story follows him from his initial rear-echelon assignment in Saigon, where he falls for a mysterious storytelling bar girl, to his eventual posting at an isolated front-line firebase in one of the deepest parts of the Vietnam jungle. While recovering from a leg wound (he is hit by a piece of bone from a fellow soldier who stepped on a booby trap mine), he becomes the assistant medic and sees the horrors of war close up. The experience begins his steady spiral down into PTSD. After he is seriously wounded, he ends up back in Saigon where, after an old friend from Arizona gets him involved in the underground drug trade, the mysterious bar girl may be his only hope for salvation. It is a powerful story, well-written, with vivid detail that you will never forget.