A gritty, gut-level look at the lives, times and trials of a rifle platoon of the 25th Infantry Division operating in the III Corps area of Vietnam circa 1967-68. Based on the script for Oliver Stone's Academy Award winning film, this book fills in the background of many of the main characters and gives vital context to operations near the Cambodian border that lead to an illegal killing of a Vietnamese villager and the subsequent power struggle that developed in the unit. The tale is told mostly through the eyes of a young, sensitive replacement rifleman who finds himself the focus of a struggle between good and evil as represented by two veteran sergeants.