In 1968 James T. Gillam was a poorly focused college student at Ohio University who was dismissed and then drafted into the Army. Unlike most African Americans who entered the Army then, he became a Sergeant and an instructor at the Fort McClellan Alabama School of Infantry. In September 1968 he joined the First Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Within a month he transformed from an uncertain sergeant—who tried to avoid combat—to an aggressive soldier, killing his first enemy and planning and executing successful ambushes in the jungle. Gillam was a regular point man and occasional tunnel rat who fought below ground, an arena that few people knew about until after the war ended. By January 1970 he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge and been promoted to Staff Sergeant. Then Washington’s politics and military strategy took his battalion to the border of Cambodia. Search-and-destroy missions became longer and deadlier. From January to May his unit hunted and killed the enemy in a series of intense firefights, some of them in close combat. In those months Gillam was shot twice and struck by shrapnel twice. He became a savage, strangling a soldier in hand-to-hand combat …

Memoir describing historical events and personal accounts of Gerald Andrew Howell based on his experiences during World War I, originally completed in 1946 : "His narrative was a study of a small group of American soldiers attempting to survive some of the most ferocious combat of the 'Great War.' He included information on the movements and activities of his 39th Infatry Regiment and the 4th Division, but Howell kept the focus of the story on his squad, a typical cross section of the A.E.F. {American Expeditionary Forces]" (p. 2) This edited version has some introductory and supplementary information and has made minor corrections to the original text. Index starts on page 338.