Defenders of Men

War affected three generations of Donald Sanders's family, including his grandfather, who suffered the effects of mustard gas long after World War I ended, and Sanders's father, who survived Pearl Harbor at age sixteen and went on to serve in the bloody Pacific campaign.

The author remembers waiting at an airport in Tennessee for his father's return home, unaware the man's horrendous experiences have driven him insane. Within hours of their reunion, Sanders's father attempts to kill his own son.

From there, Sanders spends his youth in a Catholic orphanage until he is old enough to serve like his father before him...this time in Vietnam.

The experience is a nightmare, pure and simple. He returns home only to plunge into years of drug abuse-with all the attendant mental and physical anguish that accompanies addiction.

Sanders ultimately winds up in the California Department of Corrections, where he is allowed to fight a different and more satisfying war: battling forest fires with the California Department of Forestry.

"Defenders of Men" is the engagingly true story of a multi-generational family of veterans...and the lifelong cost that came from sacrificing themselves in service to their nation.