Excerpts


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Chapter 1
The shell had hit the bunker roof at an angle. A few degrees down would have been a direct hit and would have buried him alive. In Nam, minuscule distances separated pain, death, and God. Intense memories filled his mind about collapsed bunkers and the men he had dug out before. He remembered how suffocation etched agonized death masks on their faces.


Chapter 9
Uncle Sam was an equal-opportunity employer for black country boys who yearned for adventure and black inner city youths who were trying to escape the bad streets. Black country bumpkins or city hustlers developed a common survival instinct that swept away differences. United by their blackness and their determination to stay alive, they were blood brothers. They called each other "Bloods," which bonded them beyond white friends or yellow enemies. Their rituals of hellos and goodbyes could take twenty minutes with the slaps of hands, elbows, knees, and butts. Whites thought it was some type of street dance, but it was in many ways a creation from home, and, more importantly, it was a black thing.

Recon teams were closer kin than Bloods. Very little blatant, racial conflict surfaced in recon. Staying alive demanded too much energy. In noncombatant units, racial tensions contributed an undercurrent to the continuous, jangled background beat of Nam, adding further fear to the uncertainty.


Chapter 12
...where was God in Nam? Nam gave JD the license to kill based on how he felt. In his mother's church, he was taught that determining life and death was an act of God. In Nam, though, JD was able to determine death, which destroyed the simple notion of the God he learned about at home.

Praying was a request to God, but he wasn't sure if God heard everyone's prayers. He heard dying men hollering and begging, "Oh God, help me, please God," and that didn't help. JD didn't expect too much from praying. But, just in case God was listening, he would say a short prayer every so often.


Chapter 21
Living on the edge in Nam and coming home so suddenly was like driving a car off a cliff, then slamming on the brakes.