Overview

Upon his arrival in Vietnam, Lieutenant Paul Clement Pritchard found himself assigned to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam's Four Corps as a military Advisor. From Four Corps, he was recruited into the Phoenix Program, which was designed to neutralize, capture, interrogate, and kill influential Viet Cong operatives. Pritchard saw horrors as both a military Advisor and a member of a Phoenix provincial reconnaissance unit. He saw violations of the Geneva Convention on both sides and watched as the military slowly ceded the Phoenix Program to government agencies. Throughout his ordeal, Pritchard wrote letters home-letters that gave no indication he'd held the limp body of a bloody baby in his arms, stepped in to prevent the torture of a young woman by his erstwhile allies, or endured sniper attacks and mortar fire. His letters offer a stark contrast to the reality he lived in-the humid, wet world of the Vietnam jungle, where death was an ever-present danger. A unique, candid, honest look at the Vietnam conflict from the ground level, "A Young Man in War" covers months in Pritchard's life that are seared into his memory, no matter how much he'd like to forget them.