Traces of a Lost War

During the height of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army resorted to a bait-and-switch scam that recruited thousands of unsuspecting college graduates into its combat ranks. This is the story of two of its victims—Andrew and Eliot—who join the Army to become signal officers but instead are reassigned to the infantry, a misfortune that treats their beloved diplomas as one-way tickets to the jungles of Vietnam. Finding uncertainty in a certain war, they manage to avoid the most dreadful duty—point man in an infantry company. Their misadventures—Andrew lugging a 25-pound radio on his back, and Eliot writing military propaganda in Saigon—lead them down different paths, one becoming a war hero, the other a casualty of war. Written from a diversity of perspectives—fictional, historical, and autobiographical—this book is about survival, not only on the battlefield, but in the mind of an artist caught between his pursuit of a masterpiece and his allegiance to the men fighting to stay alive.