It was winter at my home in Kansas, but here every day the temperature passed 100 degrees and seldom dropped below 80 at night. The rain was gone and clouds to shade the sun for [...]

Despite all the changes and chaos that exist in a movable firebase, almost anywhere my unit landed we had a view of the Black Virgin Mountain, also known as the Black Lady. She [...]

The rural Vietnamese did not sit on the ground as we Americans did. Starting from a standing position, they lowered their butts close to the ground, while keeping their feet flat on the ground and [...]

Tay Ninh’s weather consists of two seasons, wet and dry, but for us the seasons were better named mud and dust. They split the year fairly evenly, and change in seasons was gradual during both [...]

Dear John letters set off wild, erratic and dangerous behaviors and were among the most destructive explosive devices in Vietnam. A Dear John letter is one from a soldier’s soon-to-be ex-wife or girlfriend informing him [...]

When I landed in Vietnam, my tour of 32,572,800 seconds officially began. Most first-timers in Vietnam earned the designation FNG, and most of the men I was traveling and training with were also new arrival [...]

You may be wondering why an entire chapter on trash would be included. And, I will admit that had I not been in the Vietnam War, that would have been my first reaction as well. [...]

Zero. It’s not often in life that having nothing is a desire, much less an outright obsession. But in Vietnam, it was the most sought-after goal of every soldier, the beacon of light at the [...]

It was August 1968, and I had been in Viet Nam less than 20 days with no idea how quickly my life was going to change. I was assigned to A Battery, 7/11 Artillery, which [...]

Everything grows in Tay Ninh. The area is a large greenhouse, with near-perfect growing conditions for most plant types. Inside a firebase, weeds were walked on, driven on, doused with various toxic weed killers, cut [...]

Get your pay; get your shots. The first day of each month an officer was designated Pay Officer and handed a briefcase filled with cash and our pay records. But before you were allowed to [...]

During most of my tour, eight months or 21,168,000 seconds, our staple fare was 1943 packaged C-Rations until they were replaced by the 1968 Series in March of 1969. Thirteen basic meals were the total [...]