This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The transformation of young American men from civilians to combat infantrymen in Vietnam occurred with shocking rapidity, as soldiers barely out of high school found themselves thrust into a tropical warfare environment that bore no resemblance to anything in their previous experience or military training. These young men, average age nineteen, arrived in country with Standard Operating Procedures designed for conventional warfare in European theaters, only to discover that the enemy they would face operated by entirely different rules in a landscape that seemed designed to frustrate every tactical doctrine they had learned. The process of adaptation to Vietnamese combat conditions was brutal, swift, and often deadly, separating those who would survive their tour from those who would not within the first few weeks of their arrival.

The initial shock of Vietnam service began with the physical environment itself, as young soldiers accustomed to temperate climates suddenly found themselves operating in tropical conditions that tested human endurance in ways their training had never anticipated. The oppressive heat and humidity of Southeast Asia made simple tasks like carrying equipment or digging fighting positions exhausting endeavors that sapped strength and morale even before enemy contact. The monsoon rains that turned the landscape into a swamp for months at a time created conditions where staying dry became impossible and where skin diseases, foot rot, and other tropical ailments became constant companions that undermined military effectiveness as surely as enemy fire.