One company commander's battle against drugs and racial conflict in the war to rebuild the post-Vietnam army

In 1974, being a soldier was neither an easy nor a popular profession, as Captain Michael Lee Lanning found out when he assumed command of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division in Schweinfurt, Germany.

The start-up problems of the all-volunteer forces were still painfully evident in the United States Army. Morale was low, drug abuse high, racial conflict frequent, discipline poor, and criminal activity common. Even the barracks were a pathetic...

Vietnam was a different kind of war, calling for a different kind of soldier. The LRRPs--Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols--were that new breed of fighting man. They operated in six-man teams deep within enemy territory, and were the eyes and ears of the units they served. This is their story--of perseverence under extreme hardship and uncommon bravery--and how they carried out the war's most hazardous missions.

"In my year in Vietnam, I walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Delta, searching for the elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted my way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting the North Vietnamese Regulars. . . . I sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. Somewhere in all my experiences, I overlapped the situations of nearly every infantryman and many others who served."
Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field--the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative...

Lieutenant Michael Lee Lanning went to Vietnam as an eager young patriot who was confident of surviving the war. After six months in-country, he was promoted at age 23 to company commander, and his sense of duty began to shift from his nation to preserving the lives of the men in Bravo Company.
Lanning and his men faced an enemy who was patient, elusive, and firm in the belief that they could outlast the Americans. The young commander also confronted the prospect of sudden, violent death, bone-numbing weariness, and the stench of blood and decaying flesh. He would lose friends and would...

If the costs of the Vietnam War were great to Americans and staggering to the South Vietnamese, they were even worse for the North. And those costs were borne largely by the individual soldiers--the soldiers who won the war.
Based on interviews, soldiers' diaries, letters, and government documents, this book, first published in 1992, gives a classic, soldier's-eye account of the war our opponents fought and the men who fought it.

These are the stories Vietnam vets tell each other at reunions and over beers. Episodes of valor, hardship, humor, and everything in between from more than forty veterans of the Vietnam War Covers all branches of service and all areas of operation in Southeast Asia"

From its inception, graduates of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A&M University, have marched off to fight in every conflict in which the United States has been involved. The Vietnam War was no different. The Corps of Cadets produced more officers for the conflict in Southeast Asia than any institution other than the US service academies. Michael Lee Lanning, Texas A&M University class of 1968, has now gathered over three dozen recollections from those who served.

As Lanning points out, "anytime Aggie Vietnam veterans get together--whether it is two or two...

Texas, home to more than 1.7 million living veterans (the second largest number of any state), is also home to six nationally run and four state-run veterans cemeteries. The Veterans Cemeteries of Texas recounts the stories of these ten official final resting places for Texas veterans, creating a complete guide to these solemn bivouacs of the dead.