In the Shadows of the Dead is a story of unbelievable courage, acts of bravery and good will, a story of good versus evil, right versus wrong, enlightenment versus darkness. It’s a story of unimaginable sadness, cruelty and brutality. This story takes place in the jungles and villages of Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. At one telling, the war in Vietnam is both a tragic and noble story. It is a story of historic global significance for humanity and a personal story of a boy soldier caught up in a brutal war. It is a story about an eighteen year old boy who naively joins the United States Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War, 1968-69; the war’s bloodiest years. A kid whose father and mother were at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. A military brat raised on U.S. Army bases. His father was a first generation Italian American, born in Vermont and proud to be an U.S. citizen. His father was a Korean War veteran who retired from the Army in 1964. Believing America could do no wrong this young man joins the Marines to defend his country against the global threat of communism. He would soon discover that the war in Vietnam was much more complicated than a war against communism. He would grow to admire the courage of both the U.S. Marines he served with and the Vietnamese people. He graduates boot camp and infantry training on September 6th, 1968 and arrives in Vietnam on October 25th, 1968. His MOS would be 0331, machine gunner. He would serve in Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines (Landing Battalion).Vietnam was a war strewn with horrific scenes of brutality; the dead and decaying bodies of men, women and children, combatants and noncombatants, the enemy and the innocent.He is a combat veteran who proudly served his nation as a United States Marine forced to question both his own actions while in Vietnam and the morality of the war itself. It is a story of one boy’s journey into manhood and the loss of innocence. a young man who returned home from the country of Vietnam but never home from the war.
