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I've read reviews of this seen this book pass me by at the library, but for some reason was always reluctant to read. Why? Maybe just hits a little to close to home, knew many of my friends brothers who served, some lived, some of course did not. My own husband was in the Air Force at this time, not sent to Vietnam, and not yet my husband, still just a friend. He did though unload the bodies of returning soldiers who did not make it through their service. It was thankfully near the end of the war.

Years have passed, and the Sisters group decided to read and discuss this, so I decided now was the time, it was now or never. We had a great discussion, for some reason I was under the misapprehension that this was non fiction. It is not though it is written as if it was, which caused a bit of confusion as to how we perceived what we were reading. Was what we were reading true or not? In fact the author discussed this in one of the stories, if it is not true but could have been true how does that change how one feels about the book. That did bother me a bit.

In the end I decided it didn't really matter because these stories in all their grimness, terrible situations, and yes occasionally humor, were an unfortunate and very unfair set of circumstances that these extremely young men found themselves shouldering. It made their experiences personal, gave these soldiers names, and detailed all the guilt they felt when they survived, or made a wrong decision that cost lives. A beyond terrible situation for me in their late teens or early twenties to have to handle. All wars are terrible but the way these soldiers were treated when they returned was surely criminal. At least as a nation, if we have learned nothing else, we have learned to treat our returning soldiers with the respect they deserve, and as the heroes they surely are.