"Then after a while you become one of them. That is when your body, your mind changes. You are out there all the time; you get separate from the Army. You don't belong to the real Army." (Video Interview, 28:22)

Philip Thomas Randazzo

Philip Randazzo in Vietnam, late 1967 War: Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Branch: Army Unit: 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division Service Location: Cu Chi, Cu Chi Tunnels, Iron Triangle, Black Virgin Mountain, Tay Ninh, Michelin Rubber Plantation, Tan Son Nhut, and Dau Tieng, Vietnam Rank: Specialist Place of Birth: Grosse Pointe, MI

In a war like Vietnam, without discernible front lines, engaging the enemy often meant going on patrols, looking for trouble. Philip Randazzo served with the mechanized cavalry, a self-contained unit that lived in the bush for weeks and months at a time, forming its own subculture. Randazzo's vivid descriptions of this elemental kind of wartime living are both eloquent and brutally honest. (His interview includes about 30 minutes of silent home movie footage shot in country.)