There It Is: A Canadian in the Vietnam War

Tim Cook is the World War I historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is
the author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War.

Les Brown, a Canadian, was like your average teenager in California
during the 1960s—more interested in surfing, cars, and feeling his way
through life than the geopolitical situation in Vietnam. But the Vietnam
War changed everything for Brown, just as it did for so many young
Americans. Brown does a fine job of articulating the difficult choice he
faced: should he return to Canada in order to escape the war, or accept
the ramifications of attending his draft-board hearing? Not willing to
abandon his life in the United States, he joined the army.

Brown served from 1969–70, the nadir of the American war effort in
Vietnam. In this book, he details the breakdown of cohesion in the
frontline fighting units. The stress of combat, the fear of ambushes,
the ravages of tropical diseases, and the superabundance of drugs
destroyed morale and discipline as soldiers struggled not to be the last
man killed in this already lost war. Although there is nothing uniquely
Canadian about this book, it reminds us that although Canada was not
officially at war, between 5000 and 40,000 of its citizens were heading
south to recruiting stations just as thousands of Americans were heading
north to escape the draft.

It is difficult for those who lived through the Vietnam War to write
dispassionately about the subject. To Brown’s credit, he does not
attempt to do that; this is a view from the patrol line, and it succeeds
in every way.