The Twins Platoon

In the evening of June 28, 1967, 150 young Americans were sworn into the Marine Corps as part of the pre-game ceremonies of a Minnesota Twins baseball game. Before the end of the fourth inning these volunteers were being hustled on to buses, on their way to boot camp. It was a journey that would take them from a boyhood of baseball in the American heartland to manhood on the killing fields of Vietnam. Christy Sauro was one of the Twins Platoon, and in this book he tells what it was like—from the pomp and ceremony of induction to the all-too-real initiation by fire that would shortly follow: in mere months, he and most of the Twins Platoon were on the ground in Vietnam and promptly faced with some of the toughest fighting of the war, the Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, including the brutal Battle for Hue. From baseball to boot camp to brutal combat, his is a firsthand story of American life being lived at the limits—and changed forever.