Andrew Atherton

Married for several years and just shy of twenty-six, philosophy student Andrew Atherton receives his draft notice and suddenly finds himself immersed in a military culture for which he is neither well suited nor prepared. After surviving basic and advanced individual training, he is sent to Vietnam as an infantryman. Instead of humping in the boonies with the 101st, however, he is assigned to be a clerk and ends up editing Bronze Star and Purple Heart recommendations and publishing his battalion's newspaper. And at night, he goes back to the office to type letters home to his wife and stories-both amusing and disturbing-that reflect his awakening to the heroism and horror, tedium and terror, and the incompetence and banal cruelty of life in a war zone