Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
They were little more than boys in the turbulent 1960s when Lee Roy Herron and his high school buddy, David Nelson, signed up for Marine Corps officer training. Decisions during college took the pair in different directions—Lee Roy to the infantry, language school, and the cauldron of Vietnam, David to law school, the JAG office, and eventually to Okinawa. When Lt. Lee Roy Herron was killed on the front lines in February 1969, only two months into his tour of duty, Nelson mourned the tragic loss. Haunted for years afterward, he questioned his own choices, his relative safety, and his backstage role in the conflict while his friend paid the ultimate price. A chance encounter with a retired officer in 1997 spurred Nelson to delve more deeply into Lee Roy’s death. What really happened that day on the hillside above A Shau Valley on the Laotian border? A quest to understand his old friend’s experience and sacrifice led Nelson to military archives, to the homes of friends and family back in West Texas, and even to battle sites in Vietnam. What he learned caused him to rethink the nature of fate, friendship, and heroism—and touches lives even today. The final chapter in Nelson’s journey to honor his fallen friend, David and Lee Roy will resonate with Vietnam veterans, their families, and survivors of any war who carry the memory with them.
Synopsis
They were little more than boys in the turbulent 1960s when Lee Roy Herron and his high school buddy, David Nelson, signed up for Marine Corps officer training. Decisions during college took the pair in different directions--Lee Roy to the infantry, language school, and the cauldron of Vietnam, David to law school, the JAG office, and eventually to Okinawa. When Lt. Lee Roy Herron was killed on the front lines in February 1969, only two months into his tour of duty, Nelson mourned the tragic loss. Haunted for years afterward, he questioned his own choices, his relative safety, and his backstage role in the conflict while his friend paid the ultimate price. A chance encounter with a retired officer in 1997 spurred Nelson to delve more deeply into Lee Roy's death. What really happened that day on the hillside above A Shau Valley on the Laotian border? A quest to understand his old friend's experience and sacrifice led Nelson to military archives, to the homes of friends and family back in West Texas, and even to battle sites in Vietnam. What he learned caused him to rethink the nature of fate, friendship, and heroism--and touches lives even today. The final chapter in Nelson's journey to honor his fallen friend, David and Lee Roy will resonate with Vietnam veterans, their families, and survivors of any war who carry the memory with them.Editorials
Kirkus Reviews
Haunted by a continued sense of loss and guilt, a former Marine Corps Captain investigates the death of his childhood friend in Vietnam.
As teenagers living in Lubbock, Texas in the 1960s, David and Lee Roy knew that their road to an education would be through the military. In this poignant debut memoir, Nelson looks at how the friends' two paths diverged, and he examines his own attempt to find spiritual affirmation. Caught up in concerns about his life and career advancement, Nelson began to drift away from Lee Roy, and decided to seek Marine Corps backing for a law degree to qualify for a JAG assignment. Lee Roy opted to serve in the infantry, graduated and went through a year at the army's Monterey Language Institute, learning Vietnamese. He received his papers to go to Vietnam in November 1968. By the end of February 1969, he was dead, killed in the course of Operation Dewey Canyon; he was 23. Nelson didn't attend the funeral, telling himself that he couldn't spare the time from law school. A chance encounter with one of Lee Roy's comrades in Lubbock in 1997 put Nelson on the trail of reconstructing his friend's story. In 2001, Nelson established the Lee Roy Herron Scholarship Fund in Texas Tech's Vietnam Center. The scholarship program helps Texas Tech students study in Vietnam.
Nelson neatly pulls together the story of two lives, representatives of their generation, to build something more durable and more valuable than personal memories alone.