In September 1966, at the age of twenty-four, Dalton Henson was drafted into the US Army at the height of President Lyndon B. Johnsons Vietnam buildup that would increase to five hundred thousand the number of US military personnel in the country. Henson, who had held a draft-exempt status up until thenhaving been a college student and then a schoolteacher (athletic coach for one year)took basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, then was stationed at a military reservation in California for nine months and then volunteered to be sent to Vietnam. Being much under the influence of Ernest Hemingways fiction, he was certain that experiencing combat would be the ultimate adventure, and he continued volunteering to try to place himself in combat situations. This fact-based novel recounts his experiences as he travels around the combat-torn nation at the height of the Tet Offensive.

This is John Veteran's third novel in which Dalton Henson is the protagonist. The first was a novel entitled Three Novels by Dalton Henson, published by Exposition Press in 1977. The second was the Friendly Stranger, published by Vantage Press in 2000. Dalton graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa in June 1965, with a degree in physical education. He was employed as a physical education teacher and athletic coach at a junior high school in Tampa during the 1965-1966 school year. On July 30, 1966, he turned twenty-four years old, and on September 14, he was inducted as a draftee into the US Army. After having a basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was ordered to report for duty at Fort Ord, California, on December 2.