EXCERPT FROM `SCARS OF VIETNAM'

"We went to Oran, Marble Hill, Lutesville, and finally to the town that had more of an effect on me than any other during my tour on recruiting duty -- Marquand. I parked in the Creek Rock parking lot in the center of town. The first thing I noticed was the three oak trees at the edge of the parking area -- the location where I met with applicants when I came to town two decades earlier. As I looked around, it was as if those 20 years had been erased. The funeral home had been remodeled but was in the same location; the stores, covering less than a block, were all the same except for a beauty shop in place of the J.C. Penney catalog store; and the two-pump gas station still featured an attendant with country gestures, coveralls, and flip-billed hat that reminded me of Mayberry on `The Andy Griffith Show.'

We walked to a monument on a street corner that was dedicated to the town's 23 men who had served and died in U.S. wars. "Twenty-three!" I exclaimed as I scanned the list of names.

`Shush,' my wife, Shirl, whispered. `Someone might hear you.' She was right -- I had enlisted a lot of people out of this town."