Free Bringing It All Back Home by Philip F. Napoli Page A

to do the best possible job I can. If I don’t owe it to myself, I owe it to my men.”
    In mid-August 1967, his unit moved into the Que Son Valley, southwest of Da Nang, in Quang Nam province.
    What I didn’t know about the Que Son Valley was that it was a very hotly contested place. I think Marines might have called it “Happy Valley,” but that’s because it was just the opposite. We started on a battalion sweep. I know now exactly the dates when this happened. It was August 12 when we went into the valley. Up until that time I had taken only four casualties, three from booby traps and one from friendly fire. That night I would lose my first Marine.
    He had sent Marines out beyond the company perimeter to listen and watch for any enemy that might approach. A firefight ensued, and in the confusion there was a friendly-fire incident.
    That was my baptism of fire. It was in the Que Son Valley. I only had about twenty-six Marines. Twelve or thirteen were hit that night.
    This particular incident would have relevance later, after Giannini returned to the United States.
    As the days and weeks passed, he knew the war was changing him, even as it happened, and he tried to make this clear in letters home. In a letter to his sister dated September 12 he wondered:
    Whatever happened to the student that was so interested in world organization and ways to keep the peace? I studied for 4½ years the efforts man has made and is making to bring world peace. Now I find myself fighting a meaningless war, in contradiction to everything I believed in just a short while ago. I just can’t go along with thinking that we have a good cause.
    By the end of September, Giannini found himself locked in a personality conflict with a superior officer. As the conflict had escalated, he wrote home that the officer wanted to relieve him of command because he believed that Giannini “lacked maturity” and had grown too close to his men. The tension reached a peak during an incident Giannini will never forget.
    [The officer] called me up for a meeting. We were on a hill looking down on a village across a small river, and he’s telling me that he wants my platoon to go down the river about a mile because the battalion is going to cross the river in the morning. My platoon’s going to be flank security. A mile down the river. This is ridiculous.
    It’s about dusk and this woman walks out of the village by herself. She’s carrying empty water cans, and she’s walking down to the river. I could see this clearly. I mean, she’s not far away, maybe forty or fifty meters away. I’m looking downhill at her.
    All of a sudden I’m standing there with [the officer] and someone opens up on her, a Marine. And they fire at her, but they miss. You could see the bullets, and [the officer] yells down to these Marines, “What’s going on down there?” And they said, “We’ve got a VC across the river.” And [the officer] said, “Well, if it’s a VC, kill it.” And I said to [the officer], “That’s no VC. It’s just a woman.” And they just opened up, and she actually—they were missing her, it’s weird, I mean, she actually bent down, got the water. She turned around and started to walk away, and I hear [ smack ], like that. A bullet right in the back. You could hear it. And she went down. I, at that point, didn’t make any more protests. I just said, “She’s not a VC.” And he just gave them permission to open up, and the whole Marine squad opened up on her.
    I turned around and I had this thought that I was losing my humanity, but I would just hold on. I felt like it was still there, but, I mean, I didn’t cry. I just turned around and I walked away. But I felt like, you know, I was losing it. I was losing it. But, then again, I felt there was just a little bit left.
    The next morning we went out early, my platoon. We get