Life of a Skytrooper in Vietnam
By Joshua and Wilbur Bowe
Sent into the deadly Central Highlands of Vietnam, the true story of my dad and his fellow soldiers of the 1st Air Cavalry Division. Twenty-year-old Will Bowe was living on his family’s farm when he was drafted in 1965. The impossibly young men of his company would be trained in the new airmobile infantry and become “skytroopers,” flying into the jungle battlefield by helicopter, where they would learn what “search and destroy” meant and face the reality of this new war.
Awarded the Silver Medal for Vietnam Memoir by The Military Writers Society of America
Over a thousand ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and several Editorial Reviews
Letters Home by Alex Chhith, Chaska Herald, September 2018
MWSA Author Interview, February 2020
Paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IngramSpark
Signed-by-author copies available: Full-Color Hardcover or Black & White Paperback
Our story follows my dad and the men of his infantry company—Alpha Company, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry—as they march through rice fields, search villages, and climb jungle-covered mountains. It also features many of the photographs and letters my dad sent home from Vietnam’s most remote valleys and outposts. Written under the most austere conditions, his dispatches were often scribbled in haste before another mission or by flashlight under a poncho in the rain. They would travel over eight thousand miles across the ocean to be placed in a mailbox that stood across from a farmhouse along a rural county road in Wisconsin. Many who served in my dad’s company were interviewed, as were many family members and friends of the fallen. Their accounts recall much of the humor and friendship they shared, along with the sadness and tragedy that would accompany a year spent in Vietnam. Now these letters, photos, reports, and personal accounts have been brought together to tell of one infantry company’s war journey, from their training at Fort Carson to their historic voyage across the sea, their first steps into the dark highland jungles, their many battles fought together, and eventually, their final patrol.
This slideshow features many of the photos taken in Vietnam by my dad and fellow soldiers of the 5/7th Cavalry from their training at Fort Carson, to their voyage across the ocean, and throughout their tour of duty in Vietnam.
“It is a different type of country than we’ve ever fought in. Now flat and sunken with rice paddies, now rolling with hills and meadows, now mountainous and steep. It is hot, it is humid, it is thick with plants and vines. It is largely unpopulated, and in the military sense, it belongs to no one. Not to Viet Cong who roam it, not to the South Vietnamese. It is no man’s land. In Vietnam today, you will hold only the ground you stand upon.”
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