Unfortunate Sons
A True Story of Young Men and
War
L.D. James
A little after nine in the morning on March 2, 1968 ninety-two American soldiers began a search-and-destroy mission near the Saigon River just a few miles north of the capital of what was then the Republic of Vietnam. The operation was expected to last all day but in just eight minutes, forty-nine of those Americans were dead or dying, twenty-eight were wounded and the U. S. Army had suffered one of its most catastrophic losses of the Vietnam War.
Drawn from the official military record, interviews with survivors, including the senior American officer in command on the field, a Viet Cong officer who commanded one of the companies that carried out the ambush, and the Viet Cong intelligence officer of that battalion, Unfortunate Sons tells the story of how it happened and what is was like for those who went through it. It provides a rare glimpse of what it is like to die for your country.