First time in trade paperback, from the bestselling author of Marine Sniper and Goodnight, Saigon .

In 1965, the U.S. Marines landed in Vietnam. It was supposed to be just another deployment. America was going to do what the French could not: clean up that dirty little brush war in South Vietnam. But the Marines were experiencing a brand-new sort of enemy-the guerrilla fighter.That year, the war's carnage became frighteningly real to television audiences back home-but the Marines were already displaying the fighting courage of experienced heroes. They had quickly learned the first rule of combat: kill or be killed.

With the explosive firepower of his military classics Marine Sniper and Silent Warrior , Charles Henderson gives a startlingly realistic account of the Marines' hellish introduction to a new kind of warfare-and the raw truth about how it produced a new kind of American soldier.