Vietnam War Essay: Dear John United States involvement in Vietnam initially began when the Truman administration of 1948 promised the French that the United States would help them continue their control in Indochina (Campagna). However, most citizens were not aware of this involvement until the official participation of the United States in the Vietnam War from the year 1964 to the year 1973 (Timeline). Vietnam was a new, strange, and often times dangerous land. Each individual soldier lived through a different experience. The one thing they all agreed on was that the country they were sent to save from Communist rule was the exact opposite of what they knew as home in the States Garey Guarisco was drafted into the United States Army in 1971. His experience in this conflict instilled in him a heightened sense of responsibility. Garey was nineteen when he entered the Army. The draft at the time was a lottery and if your birth date was chosen it did not matter if you were in college or not, you had to serve after you finished(Guarisco interview). A typical day in boot camp included a 5:00 a.m. wake up call, a mile run, weapon classes, calisthenics, lunch, more classes, and finally dinner. This action- packed day would eventually ended at 6:00 p.m. However, he was not to go to Vietnam quite yet. First he had to go to Fort Polk, Louisiana for Advanced Individual Training (Guarisco interview). Incoming troops realized that at any moment the enemy might attack (Frey-Wouters). The plane he was on was set to land at Cam Ranh Bay (Appendix C1). Garey, a specialist fourth class, was stationed in Quang Tri, an area approximately two miles from the demilitarized zone (Guarisco interview). Living conditions at the base camp were not great, but not altogether terrible. The buildings that the men lived in were referred to as hooches. A hooch would be divided into separate rooms that would hold a couple of guys. ...
