Author Description

By the spring of 1970, politicians had determined the outcome of the war in Vietnam. In I Corps - northern South Vietnam - the Marines of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel "Wild Bill" Drumright, were assigned to cover the withdrawal of 1st Marine Division. Michael C. Hodgins served in Company C, 1st RECON Bn (Rein), as a platoon leader during Drumright's reign. In powerful, graphic prose, Hodgins chronicles his experience as a patrol leader in. Myriad combat situations, both traumatic and poignant, while capturing the essence of tactical decisions and the self-doubt that accompanies them. From hasty ambush to emergency extraction to prisoner snatch to combined-arms ambush, Mike Hodgins takes the reader step-by-step through the "troop-leading process" and the numerous anxious, at times fearsome, events that process inevitably involves in war.