Only War We Had: A Platoon Leader's Journal of Vietnam

During his tour in Vietnam with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Lieutenant Lee Lanning walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, searching for elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted his way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting North Vietnamese Army regulars. He served as an infantry platoon leader, reconnaissance platoon leader, and company commander. He sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. And in all those experiences, he shared the terror, boredom, rage, and excitement of countless other American soldiers.

Lee Lanning's story is based an the journal he kept of his time in Nam -- an pages often mud-splattered and occasionally bloodstained. In his wards: "It was popular among many who taught to say that Vietnam 'wasn't much of a war, but it was the only war we had.' I can only add that it was enough of a war for me."