Claymore mines and Cobra gunships - and more. This soldier’s memoir gives us the straw-sweet smell of JP-4 fuel mingling with the stench of stark terror soaked into bunker sandbag and chopper fuselage by GIs who were there before, and moved on - whole, or shattered, or in a body bag … vivid images from a bitter war. A Cobra mechanic, he offers a knothole view of short-timer daredevil pilots, S.O.S. and tepid coffee in the mess hall; classically stupid sergeants - and a paratroop general playing Santa Claus for grunts on the wire Christmas Eve. That’s just for starters… - William R. Burkett, Jr., Shadow of a Soldier Does this sound like your typical Vietnam book? Richard T. Edwards rebuilt an AH-1G Cobra almost by himself, get left on Firebase T Bone with Mortar rounds blowing off around him. He found parts where there were none, met the 5th Dimension in Osaka, Japan, got flown up to the DMZ and took a picture of a Red Flag there along with the remains of Hillbilly crazy chopper pilots who played capture the flag and lost. Did we also mention that he rode shotgun on a trash truck filled with C-4 donated by the grunts? Does this sound like you’re average Vietnam storybook? It’s not.