Synopsis "Tan Tru: Expanded Edition"
At the height of the Vietnam War thousands of young men who were drafted into the United States Army for two years of military service found themselves transplanted from their hometowns and neighborhoods directly into ground combat in Vietnam's jungles and rice paddies within a span of just six months. For many of those fortunate to have survived those two years, the experience turned out to be life altering.This book takes the reader along on a personal voyage into events that unfolded during 1968 and early 1969 when the author served as a young infantryman with Charlie Company, 2nd/60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. In that remarkable year, events in Vietnam's jungles and rice paddies bore witness to the most aggressive military tactics of the war. A year that saw more than 300 young American men dying there every week.Tan Tru tells the unusual story of the author's accelerated journey from a Southern California blue-collar neighborhood to a yearlong combat odyssey into the Vietnam War that featured, among other things, a quick, mid-tour, eye-opening, trip home to Southern California to perform official military body escort duties and the attendant full military honors funeral for a fallen brother, during the bloodiest week of the War, that was followed by an extremely reluctant and often cynical return to the Mekong mud and blood to complete seven more months of combat duty there.Looking back into a tumultuous time in America that deserves to be remembered, this memoir tells the true stories of extraordinary and courageous fellow young soldiers in Charlie Company chosen by fate and forced by necessity to quickly become seasoned combatants struggling to survive the challenges, the sorrows, the madness, the stupidity, and the tragedies of mortal combat in an unpopular war.This expanded edition contains several added chapters to the original book, with a look back at few more of the previously unchronicled events from the author's Vietnam tour of duty, in addition to taking the reader through four months of post combat service to military separation.
