Two days before the picture was made, Daniel got his first Purple Heart. You can't see the bandages under his shirt, but they were there. Big RPG fragment cracked a rib on his left side. I sent him back to Cu Chi to the 12th Evac Hospital, but he went AWOL from there and showed up on the supply bird next day, grinnin' and sittin' on a stack of C-ration cases. Couldn't decide whether to skin him or hug him!

Jim, getting us some gunships to help Bravo Company, who had all the war they could handle at the moment.

Here he was in the hospital at Cu Chi, smiling, but he had a chunk of flesh out of his neck under the bandage. Nineteen years old, but with old man eyes. My brave boy.

Scruffy troopers getting ready to go on overnight ambush patrol out of Fire Support Base Jackson, Spring of 1970

Don't let anyone tell you American boys can't survive in primitive environments for long periods of time. That war was lost in Washington, D.C., not Vietnam.

We owned the top and bottom, Charlie owned the middle. My pal, "Daddy" Dutcher, commanded a reinforced rifle company on top of the mountain--to protect the communications equipment there, and the guys who operated the equipment.

When they weren't firing their weapons in deadly earnest, they were always practicing. The shirts-off, no helmet-casual appearance shows that this was a drill.