Vietnam, a Memoir

In Airborne Trooper, the author is a semi-trained infantry platoon leader trying to quickly climb a steep learning curve in one of the Vietnam War's legendary units, the 173rd Airborne Brigade. The central ingredient of the book is not so much actual fighting as the hard, almost animal-like existence of the U.S. infantryman-the grunt, the line doggie, and the boonie rat-during Vietnam. The fighting itself ranges from brief, sometimes one-sided, engagements to one of the most costly efforts of the war, the Battle of Dak To in November 1967.