A hundred miles of bad road

by Dwight W. Birdwell

Dwight Birdwell's coming of age took place, as it did for many young men of the sixties, in Vietnam. There he fought the war from the command cupola of an M48 Patton tank, an experience far removed from the stereotypical grunt in the rice paddies. The M48 was fifty-two tons of hell on wheels, equipped with a .50-caliber machine gun and a 90mm main gun, and Birdwell's hard-charging unit was responsible for securing the main supply route between Saigon and Tay Ninh. After extensive interviews with Birdwell, acclaimed Vietnam War historian Keith William Nolan transports the reader to the confident days of 1967 when Dwight Birdwell, then nineteen years old and raring for a fight, was first assigned to Troop C 3d Squadron, 4th Cavalry (25th Division) - a time when there really seemed to be a light shining at the end of the tunnel. Then came the Tet offensive and everything changed. Birdwell won the Silver Star and Purple Heart on January 31, 1968, when the tanks and armored personnel carrie