Caputo entered Vietnam with the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade on March 8, 1965, as part of the first US combat unit sent to Vietnam. He left Vietnam in July 1966, and he returned in April 1975 as a foreign newspaper correspondent to report on the fall of Saigon. These two ocassions—10 years apart—frame the narrative and highlight the length of this expensive and destructive war: costly in manpower, resources, and idealism. His stated goal is that his honest, unflinching portrait of war might prevent more idealistic young people from being killed in another war, but he is not hopeful that this will be true.

Part One examines Philip Caputo’s childhood, college career, and the first months of his tour of duty as a second Lieutenant in the first Marine battalion sent to fight in Vietnam in March 1965. Caputo describes how Charlie Company endured many of the skirmishes that marked this jungle, guerrilla-styled war. At the end of May 1965, he is ordered to an office job as an adjutant. Each chapter begins with a short quotation about war from literature, including Shakespeare and Wilfred Owen’s WWI poetry.