Harry Ransom CenterThe University of Texas at Austin

"In between monsoon rainstorms, when the heat and humidity became too oppressive, the Marines found survival itself almost intolerable within the acrid shell of their own sweat and red dust. So they stripped and waded into the nearest natural bathtub . . . They stripped, that is, except for helmet, flak jacket and boots, which after a few weeks on that shrapnel-saturated Vietnamese hillside were viewed as perfectly normal parts of every man's body. [Con Thien, September/October 1967.]" War Without Heroes, p. 86.