There are hundreds – no thousands of guys waiting to get on that magic flight back to the world. I’m just a grain of sand in the desert of people with a single thought: home!

I’ve been raised by a father who is the consummate macho man. He has a face carved of stone and wouldn’t give anyone the chance to believe that he might have any feelings of pain or sadness. He brought me and my there brothers up not to cry.

You don’t know LONELY till you’re in a war zone and cut off from everything and everyone you know and love.

The talking works most of the time. Sometimes though, it isn’t enough. Then, many turn to drugs. It’s widespread in Vietnam. Pot is the drug of choice for most casual users. Only the hardcore users step up to the harder drugs like cocaine, opium or heroin.

I want to forget this awful place. Yet, at the same time, I never want to forget the many lessons that enabled me to mature quickly from just a skinny kid with a scraggly mustache, into a young man working so hard to seem older than his few years, as he evolves into early manhood.

Something people don’t think much about when they write a soldier in a war zone is how much diversion can refresh the soul.

When you have so much to live for, fear is more predominant than ever.

After all, how many people can understand what it’s like to be a young male in the 60’s and being scared to death, without showing it? I taste it, I cry about it, but the only way I find to handle it-is to face it. FEAR!

Friendship here is like a flower that blooms in the desert; it blossoms from the harshest environment to add something special to the lives it touches.

The reason for the shaved heads and plain olive drab uniforms when you are recruited into the military is to immediately begin training “you”, the individual, to think as “us” the team.