My family was originally from Dong Hoi, a small town in central Vietnam
so flower-filled it was called “the Town of Roses.” In 1946, most of my extended family moved to Nghe An, in North Vietnam, where I was born in 1952. In 1954, after the Geneva Accords, my parents moved to Hanoi. In the early days of the bombing, our village, Dong Hoi, was almost completely leveled; all that remained was the charred wall of our church and the tower of a water reservoir. Bombs and artillery from the American Seventh Fleet killed 32 people in my extended family in 1965 alone.
Still, as far as I can remember, in spite of the death and destruction, people
did not seem demoralized. Contrary to what the Pentagon expected, the
relentless bombing motivated many of us to join the military. I wanted to sign
up in September 1969, a few months before my 18th birthday. Why? I wanted to fight foreign aggression, to be an honorable man and to be a good citizen. My parents urged me to go to college and refused to sign the form to permit me to enlist at 17. But I was determined, and in the end, they gave in. My mother cried when she signed the papers.
....
When I met those writers, I tried my best to keep my astonishment to
myself. Was Kevin Bower, this quiet man with a warm friendly smile who’s
squeezing my hand, really a machine-gunner in the First Air Cavalry Division in An Khe? What could the novelist Larry Heinemann have in common with a
combat soldier in the 25th Tropic Lightning Division who fought in the bloody
battles in Tay Ninh? How could Bruce Weigl, the author of such romantic verse, be a soldier who had helped relieve the horrific siege of Khe Sanh?
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