Publisher's Synopsis
Twenty-five young men, gone one day in Vietnam. This book details the life and death of each man, drawing on their family and friends and their time in the field. As a Vietnam veteran, the author approached the survivors with care, giving us rare portraits. He's included photos of parents and family homes on quiet suburban streets, a poignant look at boyhood in the 1950s. Then they grow up and go to war. He details each man's mission, and what he was doing on his last day, as only a fellow veteran could.
He uses official documents, online archives, online posted messages, personal correspondence, diaries, interviews, news articles, televised reports, video clips, maps, and photographs (some of which he took) to reconstruct for the reader many of the details of their lives and deaths. More than ten background chapters place these stories in the broader context of the war. Collectively, these stories are a "micro-history" of one day out of the nearly seven thousand days of the Vietnam War.
