A Jarhead's Journey

A Jarhead's Journey takes the reader through Marine Corps officers' boot camp in Quantico, Virginia, the Fleet Marine Force where a young lieutenant led the first platoon off the USS Guadalcanal during the Panama riots of 1964, the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, and back to Quantico as an instructor before returning to civilian life. An epilogue chapter relates the treatment of Vietnam veterans after honorably discharged from military service and frustrations experienced in dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs today. The source documents and photographs used were discovered when a plastic container stored in their attic for four decades was retrieved for Sandy, his bride of five decades. In there was a shoebox containing every letter 1st Lt. Jim Lowe had written to his young bride during his tour as an advisor in Vietnam, in the original envelopes, carefully arranged and sequentially numbered in the exact chronological order received.