I greatly appreciate this book! I was an MP in the Republic of Vietnam a few years after Mr. Mixter's tour of duty. Mr. Mixter was there during the buildup. I was there during the draw down. His experiences ring very true. In a very positive way, his descriptions are clear but not excessively detailed. I find this very refreshing, as there are a lot of details that I am glad not to recall. Some of my experiences are so vivid I frequently recall them, but wish they weren't quite so vivid.
Standing guard for several hours before dawn over a ward in the heroin detoxification center is one of these. As MPs we were to protect the Medical personnel and maintain peace. I watched men suffer withdrawal while thousands of huge cockroaches flew into me and crawled up my legs. I watched, standing in a pool of light during the darkest hour, and then as dawn gradually lit the sky over the South China Sea.
Mr. Mixter relates a wonderful story about a huge and very aggressive rat during guard duty. The rat is the primary entertainment for the evening, and wonderfully so. Standing guard is filled with so many seconds of details: the variations in the light of night, the pools of electric light sucked dry by darkness, the intimate inspections by billions of insects, the minute sounds, the mind's searching for any variations that might harbinger impending disaster, the intense boredom, the desire for sleep. Mr. Mixter spares the reader these details. But for me, and I suspect other MPs, the details are added to his story, making reading the book a very large experience.
I read sections of this book out loud to my wife. It reads well, and she seemed to greatly enjoy the readings. Now she wants to read the book herself. And that is the quality of this book I really like. Randy Mixter wrote very personal letters to a woman he loved. When you are a soldier at war, what do you tell a loved one about what you are doing? How do you tell them without frightening, offending or boring? That he does this so well is a very rare skill. That we are able to share this is indeed a blessing.
I laughed often, remembered much, and had tears in my eyes as a number of the stories unfolded. If your Dad or Granddad was an MP in Vietnam but has never talked about it, this book does a remarkable job of talking for him.
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