With the explosive firepower of his military classics Marine Sniper and Silent Warrior, Charles Henderson gives a startlingly realistic account of the Marines’ hellish introduction to a new kind of warfare in Vietnam—and the raw truth about how it produced a new kind of American soldier.

In 1965, the U.S. Marines landed in Vietnam. It was supposed to be just another deployment. America was going to do what the French before them could not—clean up that dirty little brush war in South Vietnam. But, new to the front lines, the Marines were experiencing the smoke and bloodshed of war for the first time. That year, the war’s carnage became frighteningly real to television audiences back home—but the Marines were already displaying the fighting courage of experienced heroes. They had quickly learned the first rule of combat: Kill or be killed.