Steel Rain, the Tet Offensive 1968

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The book,
Steel Rain, the Tet Offensive
, covers thebloodiest year of the Vietnam War, 1968, including the 1968 TetOffensive, but many of the stories in the book are actually very funny.They were after all a bunch of American boys long before they weresoldiers. John Harrison was commissioned as a Lieutenant at 20 years old for example.

Like the original Band of Brothers from World WarII, his unit was formed and trained in the States specifically to make a combat parachute jump, this time in the Vietnam War. Officially theywere the 3rd Battalion , 506th Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division.

The book starts with John attending JumpSchool and ends with a case he had as a lawyer long after the VietnamWar was over defending a former 173rd Airborne trooper from criminalcharges related to his use of marijuana while undergoing cancertreatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

John's story is toldepisodically with each chapter capable of being read alone. Many of themen that served with John have read and commented on the stories. Someof their comments appear at the beginning of each chapter. My Mother's Machine Gun is John's favorite chapter, but others prefer Staying Alive by Being Inept, or the one about the magnificent fart. John believes that you cannottell the truth about American soldiers without telling the funny stories along with the rest. Even in a war zone it seems they actually did have fun sometimes.

In
S
teel Rain, the Tet Offensive
we met "rock apes", tigers, elephants, snakes, peacocks and many otheranimals, great and small, in the wild, sometimes with deadly results for the animals. However, other than snakes, the Army mentioned none ofthem in training. While the unit trained mostly for combat patrols inthe jungle, it fought mostly in pitched battles in cities, towns andvillages in II Corps.

Steel Rain, the Tet Offensive,
is about American men doing the best they could in a war they did notchoose, in a place America never really understood. They managed to bethere on the bloodiest day, the bloodiest week, the bloodiest month andthe bloodiest year of a long bloody war. The 1968 Tet Offensive is a big part of what John and his men saw and did in their year in country.

War never really leaves you, it brings out the best and the worst in menand because of those two facts normally the story of a war is well told. However, the Vietnam War was different. Never have there been moremyths reported as facts. Never has the actual story of the war been more ignored. If you read almost any history of the Vietnam War at somepoint it will say something like: "The enemy attacks during the TetOffensive were quickly beaten back except in Khe Sanh, Saigon, Hue andPhan Thiet." Then the history will go on to describe the fighting in Khe Sanh, Saigon and Hue, but Phan Thiet will never be mentioned again.This is that story.