FROM POOH BEAR TO RAMBO "You're never more alive than when you're almost not." Profound sentiments like this will immerse the reader in one soldier's experience in "the Nam." From an idyllic childhood to the brutal realities of war, join author and veteran Leland Austin Gagnebin as he guides you through the struggles in the jungles of the A Shau Valley and rugged Annamite Mountains during the Vietnam War-and experience how, decades later, he journeyed back to this source of troubling dreams and PTSD in search of peace and closure. And found it. In the author's words... We walked the earth like giants. We felt strengths pulse through us like few will ever know. Tested to the core, we embraced the very essence of what it meant to be men and soldiers. Like color washed from my fatigues, my innocence eroded, my essence blurred. I separated from the familiar. It was as if my mind became as sun-drenched as everything else I carried or was burdened with. Strength is often not measured in capacity for burden but rather in magnitude of tolerance. How do you fight the shock and dread? And when it's finished, how much remains intact? Shame and guilt are not good things. Having to live with the antithesis of forgiveness is a struggle until you get beyond it...