The Only War We Had

Volume 11 in the Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series. Published by Texas A&M University Press. 2007. Paperback. By Michael Lee Lanning.

Michael Lee Lanning’s journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field—the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader’s eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran.