How Do I Look From Behind?

In the Spring of 1967 Tyler Rawlings, a new photographer for the Associated Press, followed her eighteen-year-old brother over to the jungles of Vietnam, determined not to lose the only family she had left. Attached to the Third Battalion, First Marines, Kilo Company. The Thundering Third. The Balls of the Corps. This is their story, of how a simple black man from Mississippi could become the friend of a complicated Italian man from New Jersey. And how a pretty boy from Texas and a dumb surfer from California could find common ground and learn to die for one another. This is how a humble Mexican immigrant from Arizona and a brash pilot from Pennsylvania became blood brothers. And how a man running from his life back home in Montana, helped a man get back to his home in Ohio. This is how a Cuban from Miami who bought boys their freedom, helped a Jewish man from New York prove his rich daddy wrong. And how a young girl from Hanoi who wanted nothing to do with war, gave everything she could to give a prisoner of war from Arkansas who knew nothing but war, a second chance. Ultimately, this is the story of how Kilo Company became a family in eighteen months and managed to find a way to live life to the fullest in a jungle full of death. None of them knew what lied ahead in the Spring of 1967, nobody could know. The war in Vietnam was a mess from the beginning, but 2.5 million still answered the call to serve, to try and make a difference, and to do something that really mattered. How couldn’t they?