I guess if you’re reading this memoir, then you’ve already heard some of my story. I’ll not get into the details, most of those are available online or in the books they’ve written about us, but I will try to explain what our motivations were. I’ll try to explain why we “went rogue” the way we did and maybe shed some light on what was happening internally during those crazy days.

The operational tempo of our unit and its veterans was incredibly high. By some miracle of bureaucracy, almost all of our guys had served together before and were on our third or fourth tours. The commander had petitioned to stay with the unit and somehow pulled it off. The Army discourages this sort of thing, usually. It stops feeling like the Army’s unit and starts feeling like Colonel Kilgore’s unit. I was on my fourth trip to The Jungle and had seen how this “war” was being fought. I was sick of it. We were all sick of it.

And when Kilgore suggested we go up river and fight the war how it needed to be fought, I was with him.