Pages 41-51

Ronald glosses over his childhood in a single paragraph, in which he describes himself as having been akin to “an abused lawn ornament.’

In one of the most outrageous accounts of military ineptitude, which would never have seen the light of day via traditional, corporate publishing, Ronald sketches the bizarre incubus of his disaffection with the U.S. Military in Vietnam. Corrupt officers and NCO’s selling soldier’s rations, mutiny, mass intoxication in an army were 30% were on heroin, 50% were smoking pot and eating psychedelics and the 20% in charge were drunk out of their mind, makes for a surreal read. Three of the Vietnam vets I have interviewed have told me similar stories of massive intoxication. But Ronald’s one account of men high on LSD at an airfield in a combat zone using a cargo plane as a giant see-saw as NVA regulars martial for the attack and the officer’s are too drunk to figure out how to open up the armory—where the weapons belonging to the least trusted soldiers in American history were locked down!—reads like something out of a sci-fi novel that would be rejected by any competent editor for lack of realism!

Ronald skulks about the underbelly of the American Imperial Leviathan in Vietnam as a disenchanted and alienated soul that refuses to avert his eyes, like some morbid ghost at a tragedy. Before he gets any older, Johnny Dep should be cast in a Vietnam-centric movie as Ronald. The chapter is so good, it’s worth the price of the book alone, and I won’t ruin it here. Suffice it to say that it is the best critique of America’s culture of drug addiction I have read, even though it does not purport to be such.