Letters Home: Reflections of a Marine Rifleman

Letters Home is written from letters home to family, official U.S. Marine Corps documents, military maps, conversations with fellow Marines, and hospital records. The author recounts his very personal combat experiences as an infantry Rifleman in Vietnam. It is a candid and often uncomfortably frank description of the brutal conditions Marines faced in Vietnam in 1968. The year, 1968 was the most violent of the entire war for the Marines - the operational tempo was extreme and unrelenting. During the long hot summer in the war, the new Marine was challenged with ethical and moral dilemmas, and decisions young men in war are often forced to make - sometimes just to survive. As many warriors do, the author grappled with the consequences of the war in Vietnam for a lifetime. Letters Home captures much of what warfare is like for individual Marines.