Enlisting to avoid the draft, John Rixey Moore survives his combat assignments by the thinnest measure of improbabilities...A profound odyssey of a young college graduate who enlist in the military to avoid being drafted, becomes a Green Beret Airborne Ranger, and is sent to Vietnam where he is plunged into high - risk, deep - penetration operations under contract to the CIA - work for which he was neither specifically trained nor psychologically prepared, yet for which he is ultimately highly decorated.From being wounded when his base camp is overrun with devastating losses his very first night there, to his on - going efforts to learn from the Chinese he is supposed to be leading, Moore's existence becomes one of relentless hazards, enlighted disillusionment, and desperate fortune. His book is a sigular journey through both the physical and emotional landscapes of suicide operations into places where the jungle has grown with fierce determination ever since the last geologic epoch - and the enemy knows it best.Highly classified, long - range interdiction and assassination missions (of which very little is known to this day), leave Moore in profound isolation, sometimes in a country where he is officially not supposed to be, far from timely rescue and knowing that the information he's risking to retrieve is at best redundant; that each time his team is sent out, carrying no identification and wearing clothing made in China, their lives are considered anonymous and officially expendable.His life in the cloying embrace of the jungle, where even the prettiest flowers are poisonous, becomes a paradoxically labyrinth: the hard - learned language of the jungle's sounds speaks equally to both sides, the verdant canopy acts both as cover and a hazard enabling the enemy to work in close; the missions are given as important, yet the war is pointless. Moore survives his combat assignments ty the thinnest measure of improbabilities. But survives he does.Upon his return, he seeks santuary in a Scottish monastery and then works as a rock drill operator in a large industrial gold mine in Canada, and ultimately a career in television and film.