Pictures from Forward Observation Base II, Kontum, Vietnam; Laos and Cambodia during the period December 1969 thru October 1970, presented by former Green Beret Sergeant Lee Burkins, One Zero, Recon Team Vermont.

Rob Schultheis, war correspondent for Time Magazine and CBS since 1984 and author of Night Letters: Inside Wartime Afghanistan, The Hidden West, Fools Gold, and Bone Games, says this:

SOLDIER'S HEART is a rare book, one that dares tell the truth about what war really does to people. Anyone interested in the Vietnam war, the experience of combat, and the problems facing ex-soldiers should keep a copy in their library. It should be required reading at West Point, the War College, Fort Bragg, and in every high school and college course dealing with the Vietnam era. As a young Special Forces Sergeant in Vietnam, Lee Burkins led small units of Montagnard tribesmen on recon missions deep behind enemy lines. Many of his fellow soldiers, Americans and 'Yards' died before his eyes. He came home to America angry, alienated, deeply scarred by what he had experienced on the battlfield, and found himself fighting another war, on behalf of himself and his fellow Vietnam vets, against a nation that shunned its own heroes and a Veterans Administration that refused to recognize the very real psychological traumas that plagued Burkins and hundreds of thousands of his fellow vets. In the end, Burkins won out against his own PTSD, and helped his fellow GIs get the help they needed and deserved, to heal themselves.
I rate SOLDIER'S HEART as one of the half dozen truly great books on the Vietnam War, up there with
DISPATCHES, WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE AND YOUNG, and Charles Anderson's THE GRUNTS.

Left: One Zero Team preparing for insertion                 Center: Sgt. Burkins with skull collected from BDA mission       Right: Recon Team Vermont Montagnards
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