For Self and Country: For the Wounded in Vietnam the Journey Home Took More Courage Than Going Into Battle

"I step off with my right foot and look down. I spot a grenade just in front of me and off to the left, where I'm about to drop my left foot. In back of the grenade a C-ration can sits in the bushes. C. L. has tripped the wire attached to the grenade and pulled it from the can. It's live. I know it's too late. I'm in the middle of taking a step. My left foot has yet to hit the ground. My mind say, Run, duck, evaporate, but my body won't react fast enough. It's like sliding on ice. No way to stop, and nowhere to go but in the direction gravity moves you. I feel a rush go through my body. I feel the stillness. My left foot touches earth. I start to take a running stride. The grenade explodes....." This is the true story of a young Marine lance corporal who was severely wounded in Vietnam. His account of hope and survival carries a special message for those who fought there or were wounded there, and for those who stayed home, especially the women who love their men and have tried to understand what they endured and how it changed them. For the author, Vietnam meant five months of combat and a year in Ward Three South at Great Lakes Naval Hospital. When he left the hospital, he was twenty - the oldest man on the ward. Vietnam was, more than any other conflict, a teenager's war, and Rick's account is one of teenage love and despair, as are those of his buddies. How these young men were joined together in a special fraternity for which the only initiation dues were pain, and how they managed to cope, makes M*A*S*H take a back seat to real life." Especially relevant today as thousands of vets wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan make their way home.