RATTLESNAKE DREAMS / METCALF PUBLICATIONS (ePub)

Rattlesnake Dreams is my memoir. It begins April 19, 1966, in the Viet village of Tho An, near Chu Lai. I was attached to Foxtrot Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. We are in the process of destroying Tho An, after we received hostile fire from the village.

The story leaves Tho An to tell several chapters from my childhood growing up in Washington and Oregon, then a year in studies of engineering at Oregon State University, which I left in 1962 to get my military obligation out of the way.

I joined the US Marine Corps, where I served 4 years.

Then I entered Colorado College as a sophomore, studying Philosophy and Political Science. I was the Nam vet who always had 3 or 4 books under my arm, and was reading them all. I had to find some kind of understanding about what I, and indeed the world, had just lived through.

I graduated in 1969, cum laude, then spent that summer in Leningrad, in a course of Advanced Russian language. My fellow students and I spent a few days on our way home in Prague, Czechoslovakia, arriving just in time for the Soviet Army to re-invade the city on the first anniversary of their 1968 invasion of the country. We were tear gassed in Wenceslas Square, and ran from the Russian troops.

Besides those episodes, my memoir includes journalism stories from Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Honduras, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Miami... always seeking some kind of answer to my life's question: Why War?