A Vietnam War memoir by Martinsville, Illinois, farmer Donald E. Stephen who served in Vietnam as an Army infantry platoon leader in 1970-71. Stephen, a Special Forces-trained officer went to Vietnam as a 24-year-old soldier and led men barely out of high school through days of prolonged fighting and uncertainty in the jungles of Vietnam. He writes about those days in which, if the enemy and the bobby traps were taken away, mere survival in the jungle with the heat, rain, insects, snakes, rodents, leeches and all the attendant problems caused by these conditions would have been traumatic enough for most young men. Contact with the outside world was made through a door gunner on resupply helicopters. Sometimes weeks would go by with no word from home, and then suddenly, the backlog of mail would be there bringing word of the death of a family member, a Dear John letter or other aspects of life back in the world would add to the homesickness and fear the men felt. Military protocol made things extremely difficult when surviving the jungle was the only thing that mattered.