THIS IS A MEMOIR about my travails as a reluctant draftee straight off a college campus having to enter the Army and go to Vietnam.  I opposed the war, as well, but decided to serve as best I could, and did not take the option of going to Canada or to jail – other popular forms of draft evasion at the time.  In flashbacks from my time in Vietnam, I also tell about my shaping experiences growing up in the American South during the last stages of racial segregation.  As a white kid, I was not the victim of bigotry myself, but I saw it all around me and didn’t like it from the start.

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The first chapter describes my plane ride out of Oakland, California, to Alaska and then on to Vietnam.  It is a scary ride full of apprehensive soldiers, and in 1971, the year of our departure, we had few illusions we were on a mission that had any real meaning anymore.

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I describe the ins and outs of Saigon, the mysterious, chaotic place where I was assigned after completing two schools back in America: military police and river boat patrol.  The unique story line in this book is my comprehensive chronicling of life in its many forms in Saigon: black and white relations among American soldiers; American and Vietnamese relations (often tense); black marketing; street life, bar and night life; music and, in general, the social and political norms of that time.

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Since I go into service in a petulant mood, I have tough adjustments to make to survive military life, not to mention the specter of going to a war I strongly oppose.  I describe many experiences that make me see my high ideals are not always sufficient to mask my personal shortcomings.  I have to learn to make distinctions, and in so doing, begin to grow as a person and learn to see new truths about the military, myself and how I handle myself as I progress along. In my flashbacks, I begin with my first days in the Army and progress along through my training until I am in Vietnam, along with my recollections of my days growing up in rural North Carolina, where I face early scenes of discrimination to African Americans and a divided society.  I describe my feelings and what I do when I get a chance to strike a note for social justice.  I cite the influence of my progressive-minded parents in how my views were molded.

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I also draw parallels between my father’s struggles to hang on as a naval officer in the Pacific in World War II, and my own.  I relate to my own loneliness when I quote from my father’s love letters to my mother in wartime.  His compassion and decency and never-quit attitude, even if seemingly for naught in his starstruck life, act as an invisible hand on my shoulder, giving me pause when I am ready to strike out in ways contrary to my survival.

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This story, in total, is a ride through a turbulent time in social and political history in America, where I am doing what I do against the backdrop of those times, and where I confront Jim Crow, the Vietnam War, and my own challenge to do the right thing – not only for the big picture, but for myself.  It is not all dire stuff, for I write about the funny stuff along the way, the music and the sometimes goofy behavior we all have as we try to simply grow up.  In the end, I survive Vietnam and become a decent soldier. Never a fan of the war, but a guy who is there for his buddies and who learns to “blossom where I am planted.” 
— Charles Malone

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