This is an unexpectedly great read. At under 300 pages it is a quick read with no getting bogged down with unnecessary details. Estes is an efficient writer. I had never heard of this book before so I decided I would try it out being an unknown entity among my past reading history. Estes writes a memoir although he does changes names and places to protect various events and people. This is a commonplace for war memoirs however unfortunate for veracity's sake. This book was originally published in 1987.
Estes is from Portland, Oregon the book chronicles his desire to get back home to his fledgling family. He goes to Camp Pendleton where his boot camp instructors leave a lot to be desired. From other memoirs this was not rare. He is then sent off to Vietnam to patrol near the DMZ in 1968. 1968 was accounted one of the bloodiest years of the war and marked the turning point for future US engagement in the White House and Congress. Much of the book recounts his acclimation to the Marines CAPS (Combined Action Program) unit where US military soldiers worked with popular Vietnamese forces to work with and protect South Vietnamese villagers from being eradicated by the Vietcong. Estes, or Jackson for short, was part of a mobile CAPS unit. This book keeps the characters to a minimum but those that do make appearances are memorable. Some are just names but what can you do with a war memoir where part of the narration’s goal is to show that widespread human death is mind-numbing. This is a book by and about US Marines which makes me proud that some have been able to articulate what they have felt as humans and soldiers during a turbulent and traumatic time in American history. ( )

This is a memoir of Jack Estes who joins the Marines at age eighteen. He leaves home and the girl he loves and is in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.

I was in the service during the conflict but not stationed in Vietnam. The descriptions of the Marines in action were so intense and dramatic that I had to pause to consider how bad it was for those young men.

"I'm hit" yelled more than one Marine, "...kill me" begged another who was in terrible pain.

The author provided a good insight into the other Marines he came in contact with and we viewed his own feelings in the letters he wrote home to his love, Kristen.

I enjoyed reading about the Vietnamese landscape and places like Da Nang and Ti Lon One. The memoir was so realistic that I could almost feel I was close to the action.

I think other people who were in the service during Vietnam would find this memoir a good book to read. ( )