In April 1968, we were a country at war with ourselves and increasingly with a small country halfway around the world: Vietnam. I don't recall ever thinking about Vietnam when I started college in 1963. By 1968, it was all any of us could think about. The book begins with my being drafted into the Army and ends with my return to civilian life. I wrote this for my grandchildren, but it will give anyone some sense of what it was like to serve a tour of duty in Vietnam. The job I had gave me an excellent overview of how the gears of the war machine meshed together. I have tried to convey this as best I can.This is a memoir with a point of view. In these times, when we seem to be constantly marching off to yet another war in yet another faraway place, creating yet more generations of wounded warriors, the lessons learned (and forgotten) from Vietnam are more important than ever.