Our 41st Year
Incoming Rounds by Hamel Morris is a minimalistic but powerful record of one young man’s experience in the Hell of Viet Nam. For any reader who has never been in combat, this account is shocking, poignant, and enlightening.
The juxtaposition of the ordinary—receiving mail, getting food rations after two days, being able to bathe in a river after days of sweating on the trails of the jungle—with the deeply horrific is like a jolt of lightning to any complacency.
Within one day’s entry, the writer may describe anything from building a “hooch” out of his poncho to keep out the monsoon rains, to the brutal interrogation of a VC member by a Lieutenant, from a sandbag-making detail to the massacre of villagers in retribution for a mortar attack, atrocities he despises but is powerless to prevent….