Collection of Vietnam stories, pictures, and memories of the men of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines.

Introduction:

"It has been 50 years since the men of Second Battalion, First Marines landed on the shores of Vietnam to begin what has been for some a journey that is not yet over. It should not be difficult to understand--especially after reading the contents of the following pages--why for many of us this war does not seem to have an end. The things that happen to us when we are young often loom larger-than-life over the horizon of all the rest of our years. And when the events are shattering and life-shaping-centered around life and death matters and colored with the indelible hues of brother-love--it would be more surprising if they were forgotten than that they are not.

Words cannot, of course, describe in the abstract the pain and terror of the experience we call war; but words can describe the particular experiences that produce such feelings as pain, loss, and fear. The struggle to describe these experiences through simple, concrete details has been for many writers in this book painful in itself. It is important to understand that the crisp, clean black lines that march across the white pages here belie this struggle. For while the stories came to the editors in different forms--from the disjointed phone interview to the typed manuscript--very often they came painstakingly handwritten on lined note paper or haltingly, almost shyly, spoken on tape.

Often there seems to be on those lined pages filled with pencil and ink markings and on the tapes full of awkward silences, an element of fear: fear of telling too much or the wrong thing or in the wrong way, fear of exposing parts of a past to specific criticism, fear of revealing oneself. For so long we "didn't talk about it." For so long no one would listen. Not to the simple truth, anyway.

But however difficult and painful, the stories came, and the result is this history of the Second Battalion, First Marines made up of the personal experiences of the 2/1 Marines and Marine-Corpsmen in Vietnam--their history, though one shared in all the basic and profound ways by any Marine who served in that war.

These personal accounts present the Vietnam story of 2/1 as it happened and is remembered by the men (and, in a few cases, by their relatives). Readers will find fear and guilt in these stories; confusion and boredom; homesickness and sorrow; satisfaction and pride. They will hear different voices; the matter-of-fact presentation of the professional soldier; the sad telling of the death of a best friend; the proud recounting of a job well done long ago and under the worst of conditions; the reluctant retelling of something important that no one wanted to happen, but which did happen--in a place, as one of us put it, "no one especially wanted to go." And even after all the years, the stories seem new.

Readers looking for a more "traditional" history will find some of that at the end of the book, where it will probably mean more to those who have first read the personal accounts. For the accounts, read from front to back, provide a version of traditional history as well as their own rich, personal ones. Appearing as nearly as possible in chronological order, they lead the reader all the way through 2/1's six-year tour of duty--from the first landings to the final farewells. In addition to a sense of what happened and when, they reveal the personal memorable events, the significant things that stick in the memories of of men because they have captured their imagination, touched their heart, wounded their soul, or otherwise changed their world.

If it's not perfect history, it is perhaps more perfectly human experience in an historical context. After all, history is not merely what happens: it is what happens to people.

Sometimes several writers provide quite different glimpses of the same event. We see things differently because we are different, and so our truths--especially truths about such incomprehensible semi-abstractions as war--can and do vary. Our stories are as varied as we are.

And we are varied. Some of us joined the Marines to fight in Vietnam; some of us were professional military; a (very) few were drafted. Some of us knew exactly why we were in Vietnam; some of us still don't understand why we were there. Some of us served as many as three tours--33 months--in country; some of us served only a matter of weeks, medevaced home almost as soon as our tour had begun. Some of us have "talked" about the war before, even written about it, perhaps. Some of us can't talk about it yet. (Many of us have talked about it for the first time in these pages.)

We came from all over to go to our war--from every corner of the country, and from some places outside of it. We came as Corpsmen from the Navy, as career Marines from Marine bases, as boots from Parris Island and Camp Pendleton, as young officers from OCS and PLC and the Naval Academy. And we came to those places from high schools and colleges, from jobs on farms and in towns, and, yes, from the justice system. Hundreds and hundreds of men fro hundreds of places, and all of us different in at least a hundred ways.

But we should never forget, nor are we likely to, what it is we have in common. Because, of course, what we have in common is more important to who and what we are as a group--and perhaps even as individuals--than are differences are. And that common bond is simply this: we served. We are Marines who served together in the Second Battalion of the First Marine Regiment in the Vietnam War. And we remember."

Author: The men of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines
Hardcover: 457 pages