ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

THIS SECOND EDITION was done to revise and reformat the First Edition. The First Edition has become a two volume set, with a resizing to a more readable size, one that has come to represent what a modern book of poetry has come to look like. Each volume has not changed the content of the pieces inside, however each poem has been edited for form, to enhance the flow of the unique narrative within each piece. All photos found inside have only been previously published in the First Edition.An ungrateful nation did not give the Vietnam Veteran the acknowledgment he or she was due. This book is an effort to correct that enormous travesty. The reader should be aware that there are many hundreds of stories that will never be told from that war, due to a lack of generous listening to the Vietnam Veteran. This work does not glorify the war in Vietnam, rather it is my intention for this work to serve to illuminate the experiences of the individuals who spent their year (or years) in-country. The entire focus is on how Americans stationed there lived, fought, died, and otherwise did their duty.These poems here provide "snapshots," rare glimpses of how it was, then and there. The poems in this work are written from interviews with Vietnam Veterans. The interviews were conducted over a two year period, 1992-1994. All events and experiences are true to the best memory of the interviewed Veteran. Names of specific military technology have been used to enhance the culture of the experience. As well, a deliberate effort has been made to portray these stories without filtering or softening the narrative poems here.There have been a few volumes written from the perspective of the individual soldier, pilot, seaman, or medical personnel, since this book was first published in 2015. All of these are written with a prose handling of the related event. These two volumes are written with a narrative poem format, as the stories seemed to fit better.