The story line derived from real events. The author, drawing from some of his personal experiences, tells this story about HA Harry Rumsford, a navy corpsman, assigned to serve with the marines in Vietnam.
Harry Rumsford, a naive country boy being only half told what his duties could be, joins the United States Navy under the guarantee that he will get to work in the medical field.
Eventually he gets the ultimate duty assignment - duty with the marines in Vietnam. He is assigned at the squad/platoon level with a line company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division of the United States Marine Corps in South Vietnam during the middle part of 1970.
Having long held certain high ideals about the marines, he suddenly has his world turned upside down. He learns through experience what ‘Semper Fi’ really means.
While on a patrol during his first day in the bush, the young corpsman finds himself staring into the small black hole of death, at the end of a rifle barrel. It is then that he learns a hard lesson about trust. From that point on, he learns to adapt and survive, while dealing with a perceived enemy on three fronts. Each combat engagement is a personal struggle for him, as he relies on his own internal guidance.
This novel filled with mind twisting, high intensity, explosive action events, grabs you by the throat, keeping you in a breathless state of mind right through to the last word. A fictionalized story, based on real events, from one standpoint of the American involvement in the historic Vietnam War (Police Action is what it was politically defined as back then). A novel that is both entertaining and informative.