Combat Bandsman

Memoir of a Tour in Vietnam with the 9th Infantry Division, 1969

Playing trumpet in the 9th Infantry Division Band should have been a safe assignment but the Viet Cong swarmed throughout the Mekong Delta, and safety was nonexistent. The band’s twofold mission—boosting morale and helping win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese—required them to leave their Đồng Tâm (a.k.a. Mortar City) base camp and travel through a vast area of rice paddies, dense jungle and numerous villages. By 1969, home-front support for the war had dwindled and the U.S. Army in Vietnam was on the brink of mutiny. No one wanted to die under the command of career-minded officers in a war lost to misguided politics. This memoir of a conscripted musician in Vietnam provides a personal account of the lunacy surrounding combat support service in the 9th Infantry Division during the months prior to its withdrawal.