Nam Sense: Surviving Vietnam with 101st Airborne Division: Vietnam - 101st Style

Nam Sense is the memoir of a combat squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division. Arthur Wiknik was drafted by the army in 1969 at the age of nineteen, promoted to sergeant ‘without ever setting foot in a combat zone’, and sent to Vietnam. He was flown north to Camp Evans, a mixed-unit outpost near Phong Dien, only a few miles from Laos.

Wiknik was then thrown straight into the action: he was the first man in his unit to reach the top of Hamburger Hill during one of the last offensives launched by US forces, and later discovered a weapons cache that prevented a sneak attack on his advance fire support base. Between the sporadic episodes of combat he mingled with the locals and defrauded an unwitting US supplier to provide his platoon with a year of good food. This book offers a perfect blend of candour and humour– and it spares nothing and no one in its attempt to convey what really happened during this unpopular war.

Nam Sense is not about heroism, mental breakdowns and haunting flashbacks: the GIs Wiknik lived and fought with during his year-long tour were there to do their duty, support their comrades and get home alive.‘The soldiers I knew’, explains the author, ‘demonstrated courage, principle, kindness, and friendship – all the elements found in other wars Americans have proudly fought in.’