Introduction

How do you tell someone what it's like to kill a man hand to hand, run a bayonet through his guts, or shoot a sniper in the face who turns out to be a woman? How do you explain the nine-year-old boy who throws a grenade and kills your best friend? How do you tell them what it's like? Or about the sunsets on the mountains or the green of Viet Nam, or the sounds and the smells, and the people, and the girl who can't even say your name, but you know you love her. There was nothing any of them could say. So most of them rode home in silence.

For seven years Paxton Andrews would write an acclaimed newspaper column for Americans from the front, before finally returning to the States and then attending the Paris peace talks. But for her, and for the men who fought in Viet Nam, life would never be the same again.