My Senior Trip: Memories of Vietnam

Vietnam, 1968. There are recounts of the Vietnam War that span lifetimes. There are countless stories of battle plans and strategies and how one battle was won, and another lost. My Senior Trip is less about the physical and more about the emotional aspects that come with going to serve your country. This story is based on actual accounts of a young kid who quickly became a man as a member of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and six months later was deployed to Vietnam.Howard Carson grew up in a small Indiana town. It was 1968, and after graduating from high school, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He wasn't interested in college, not then. His job for the past year had been selling shoes. He had no skills to speak of, so he decided to join the Armed Forces as a Marine.My Senior Trip takes readers through the day-to-day experiences of a living hell. Howard would have never expected to see his newly made friends shot or blown to pieces, with their blood splattered across his own body. But he had to grow up pretty fast when he found himself carrying a wounded Marine to the helicopter while under heavy fire, being on patrol during the monsoons, being in the company of leeches, tigers, mosquitoes, and snakes, and stumbling across booby traps and guerilla warfare set up by a relentless and determined enemy. This is a story about what Howard and others had to do and how they dealt with the fear, the anger, and the pain.When the early 70s rolled around, Howard had finished his military service and started college, which had an entirely new set of struggles. Anti-war advocates screamed at, spit on, pushed, and hit him for being in the military and serving his country.This story is about a different time and a different America—a different story of war. Read more