In 1968, George Lanigan leaves the University of Maryland and sets off on the journey of his life. He volunteers to serve his country in the Vietnam War and enlists in the army where he becomes an elite Special Forces advisor in a top-secret program. The United States is clandestinely training the Cambodian Army, Forces Armees Nationales Khmeres, and Lanigan is at the heart of the mission.

In this personal memoir, LTC George R. Lanigan, USA (Retired), adapts his forty-year-old letters and correspondence to his parents into an emotionally compelling and suspenseful narrative that relates his daily life of survival and political tension. It’s an inside, firsthand look at a rare, and previously classified, Vietnam War experience.

But its scope reaches beyond the war itself and illuminates the realities soldiers face returning home, building a life, and even visiting war zones four decades later. Its openness and honesty will resonate with war veterans, their friends and family members, those suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, and people of all ages who are interested in American history. Readers will learn about war life, a volatile political environment, and how personal experiences weave together to create the person one eventually becomes.