Sweetwilliam’s Reviews > A Rumor of War: The Classic Vietnam Memoir > Status Update

The foot soldier has a special feeling for the ground. He walks on it, sleeps on it...the ground shelters him under fire; he builds his home in it. But mines and booby traps transform that friendly, familiar earth into a thing of menace, a thing to be feared as much as machineguns and mortar shells. The infantry knows that at any moment the ground he is walking on can erupt and kill him...if he's lucky.