War in the Central Highlands of Vietname 1968-1970: An Historian's Experience Book

Now a Professor of Modern Asian History, James T. Gillam served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. Gillam began flunking undergraduate classes at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in 1968 which led to his student deferment being revoked and receiving a draft notice in the mail not long after.

Gillam recounts in great detail his time in basic training and advanced individual training. He then went to the Non-Commissioned Officer Course (NCOC) where he became a "90-Day Wonder" or "Shake-and-Bake" NCO before he headed to Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Gillam served with B Company, First Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, of the Fourth Infantry Division, in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. His unit participated in several major operations that included Putnam Wildcat, Putnam Power, Hines, Putnam Paragon, and the Cambodian Invasion of May 1970. Throughout this memoir, Gillam recounts in vivid detail many episodes of combat and hand-to-hand fighting that he engaged in with NVA and guerilla forces.

Gillam also remembers many aspects of soldiers' culture in his unit that included how FNGs were assimilated into the unit, the tensions between conscripts and lifers/REMFs, and how music, home front news, and influxes of replacements brought "the World" into conversation with soldiers serving in Vietnam. Gillam also recounts a growing culture of soldier dissent in 1969 typified by the mantras "Don't mean nuthin'" or "What are they going to do? Send me to 'Nam?" Finally, Gillam describes how Battalion Command and even company commanders became obsessed with body counts in Vietnam, often sending their men into dangerous situations to "find bodies" or other evidence of an enemy soldier being killed. Thus, Gillam's unit developed an informal command culture that obfuscated or omitted action in the field in communications with battalion HQ to avoid the perils of having higher command order men back into tunnels or elsewhere desperately searching for weapons, blood trails, or bandages.

Sometimes Gillam slips from the first-person narrative of a memoir into the third-person narrative of a historian. Given his background as an academic, readers will find that Gillam meticulously researched his unit history in the National Archives, interviewed former comrades to cross-reference his memories of events, and applies his present-day analytical skills to the past. If anything, Gillam's work shores up the veracity of his story in many ways because he did not rely solely on memory, conjecture, and speculation to write his memoirs.