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Zusatztext "He tells the story ...with crisp! clean! fast-moving prose! unromanticized and unsentimental! but not without affection for the men of Charlie Company." -Carl Schoettler! Baltimore Sun April 7! 2004. “His straightforward! low-key account of horror! boredom! camaraderie! humor! heroism! the…turmoil…at home! and his own…discomfort at how it was being conducted! demonstrates…the experience of a typical rifle unit.” -Bostonia! Spring 2004 Awarded the "Writer of Excellence Award for 2004" by the 199th Light Infantry Brigade Association Informationen zum Autor Robert Tonsetic was born in Pennsylvania. He was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant out of the University of Pittsburgh in 1964. After a one-year tour with Special Forces in Thailand, he joined the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam. Assigned to Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, he served as company commander for six months during the Tet and May Offensives of 1968. He returned to Vietnam in 1970 and served as a senior advisor to Vietnamese Ranger and Airborne units. He retired from the army in 1991 with the rank of Colonel after twenty-seven years of service. After leaving the army, he earned a doctorate in education and taught for five years as an adjunct professor at the University of Central Florida. He lives with his wife Polly on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Warriors is his first book. Klappentext On the ground, in the air, and behind the lines, grunts made life-and-death decisions every day—and endured the worst stress of their young lives. It was the tumultuous year 1968, and Robert Tonsetic was Rifle Company commander of the 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry in Vietnam. He took over a group of grunts demoralized by defeat but determined to get even. Through the legendary Tet and May Offensives, he led, trained, and risked his life with these brave men, and this is the thrilling, brutal, and honest story of his tour of duty. Tonsetic tells of leading a seriously undermanned ready-reaction force into a fierce, three-day battle with a ruthless enemy battalion; conducting surreal night airmobile assaults and treks through fetid, pitch-black jungles; and relieving combat stress by fishing with hand grenades and taking secret joyrides in Hueys. During that fateful year, as unrest erupted at home and politicians groped for a way out of the war, Tonsetic and his men did their job as soldiers and earned the title "Warriors.”chapter one programmed for war As if I were a river The harsh age changed my course Replaced one life with another… —ANNA AKHMATOVA, “As if I Were a River” October 1967, Bien Hoa, Vietnam I awoke as the giant transport aircraft lurched into a steep final descent. As we broke through the cloud cover, the pilot centered the nose of the aircraft on the pattern of blue lights marking the runway before he lowered the landing gear. Seconds after a jarring touchdown, the four jet engines of the C-141 transport screamed into reverse thrust. The soldiers on board braced themselves as best they could in the nylon paratrooper seats as the giant transport barreled down the dark nine-thousand-foot runway of Bien Hoa Air Base. The decelerating aircraft turned abruptly onto a right taxiway and lumbered slowly toward a group of cinder-block buildings some five hundred meters away. Day 1 of my 365-day tour in the Republic of South Vietnam began. Inside the aircraft, the temperature and humidity soared as the air-conditioning shut down. The cramped soldiers jostled and cursed each other as they scrambled to find their gear. Most of the men had napped fitfully on the final leg of the flight from the refueling stop at Yokota, Japan. A few had slept deeply as if anesthetized by the steady whine of the jet engines. Others who had dozed with their limbs outstretched made movement to and from...
