Labelled "fiction," this book has a hair-raising feel of the author having been there...in that war we remember as Vietnam. "Gripping" is an understatement, as the narrator (a young Marine medic) whipsaws schizophrenically between loving men's bodies while on R & R and working frantically to heal men's mutilated bodies while on duty. Among the war memoirs with gay themes that I've read, I rank it #2 after T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom." The book also leaves one with a realization that all the current hoohah about "gays in the military" is peacetime mickey-mouse. In wartime, it seems that the brass don't care who sleeps with whom, as long as the troops get the job done. This searingly honest and uncomfortably original novel deserves to be back in print and made into a film. ( Amazon customer) - from Amzon