War Sketches from the Mekong and Coming Home

War Sketches from the Mekong: A Soldier's Reflections provides thirty brief and gripping human stories from the 1967-1968 Vietnam brown water operations of the Mobile Riverine Force. This nonfiction describes how America got into the war and provides vignettes of Army and Navy events at a personal level by a West Point graduate with both experience and academic credentials. It reflects the pain, skill, and courage of an American military intent on assisting Vietnam and her people in a mistaken conflict and the personal aftermath of unexpected rejection on returning home.

With verse, the author invites the reader to join him in spiritual contemplation, irony, and humor to underscore the emotion of loss and the impact of everyday events in a war halfway around the world. While most wars were recorded and later reported, Vietnam was the first TV war when daily events were seen by families at home as a routine. Vietnam is seared in American memory. Lieutenant Colonel Giacoppe personalizes and focuses Mekong Delta war events with retrospective clarity using events from the first US riverine warfare since the Civil War.