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Zusatztext “REMARKABLE . . . This story! made even more poignant by today’s headlines! can stand shoulder to shoulder with the handful of classic accounts of Marines under fire.” —Flint Journal “In this short! readable account! Corbett describes his days at Khe Sanh in almost dispassionate prose and in great detail. . . . effectively convey[ing] the siege from a Marine grunt’s point of view.” —Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor John Corbett returned home to Nyack, New York, following his service in Vietnam. He now lives in Key Largo, Florida. West Dickens Avenue is his first book. Klappentext In January 1968! John Corbett and his fellow leathernecks of the 26th Marine Regiment fortified a remote outpost at a place in South Vietnam called Khe Sanh. Within days of their arrival! twenty thousand North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded the base. What followed over the next seventy-seven days became one of the deadliest fights of the Vietnam War—and one of the greatest battles in military history. Private First Class Corbett made do with little or no sleep for days on end. The enemy bombarded the base incessantly. Extremes of heat! cold! and fog added to the misery! as did all manner of wounds and injuries too minor to justify evacuation from frontline positions. The emotional toll was tremendous as the Marines saw their friends suffer and die every day of the siege. Corbett relates these experiences through the eyes of a twenty-year-old but with the mind and maturity of a man now in his fifties. His story of life! death! and growing up on the front lines at Khe Sanh speaks for all of the Marines caught up in the epic siege of the Vietnam War. 1: Enlistment Nyack, New York, July 1967 I left school during my first year of college. I romanticized about joining the French foreign legion, knowing I didn’t even need to speak French. All I had to do was sign a five-year contract and they would teach me French. My youthful dreams of riding a camel across desert sand dunes, wearing a white kepi hat on my head, had faded. “Greetings,” said Uncle Sam’s draft notice that arrived in the mail. The United States wanted me for military service and undoubtedly would send me to Vietnam. I ripped up the draft notice in front of my mother and father at the dinner table. My act didn’t go over well with my law-abiding, conservative, Irish-Catholic parents. I decided to go to Canada and be a draft dodger. Canada is much closer than Corsica, where the foreign legion was. I wanted some adventure, but not the adventure my government wanted to provide, such as sending me to Vietnam. I hadn’t thought much about America’s involvement in Vietnam. World affairs were just that, a world away, in my mind. I was rebellious and determined not to let Uncle Sam tell me what to do. I could dream about traversing sand dunes with the French foreign legion but not about being a drafted government-issue GI Joe. I prepared to leave for Canada; I was going to Montreal. Even my high school French books were packed. O’Donoghue’s Tavern, 66 Main Street, Nyack, New York The tavern was on lower Main Street, where the street slopes and terminates on the west shore of the Hudson River. The river is almost at its widest point here. The city of Tarrytown can be seen on the opposite shore, three miles across the river, night or day, except when fog enshrouds this section of the river valley. Nyack, my hometown, is twenty-five miles north of New York City. The river is not as clean as it was when Henry Hudson first discovered and explored it, sailing in his ship the Half Moon, but the river’s towering majestic palisades haven’t changed since Henry was here. Sipping a beer, I glanced around at familiar surroundings. I wondered if I would ever see this place again. I wondered how I would do in Canada.
