From Vietnam's Battlefields to a Life of Faith and Service

Randall O'Brien begins his Vietnam memoir in a familiar, poignant manner.

"I was there. Sometimes I still am," he says early on in "Finding Me: A Vietnam Memoir." Thousands of Vietnam veterans say the same thing--the war never left them.

Not a big man physically -- a virtue over there because it probably helped him at times to hide from enemy forces during combat -- the McComb native did big things in the unpopular war, then continued to do big life things after leaving behind the Army and the 101st Airborne.

O'Brien served the Lord in big ways. He earned a Ph.D. at the Yale theology school and became a Southern Baptist minister. He taught theology at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and served in several executive-level positions at the large Baptist-related school.

He finished his academic career as the 10-year president of Baptist-affiliated Carson-Newman University in Tennessee.

In one of his biggest moments, long after Vietnam, O'Brien, the son of the mechanical superintendent of the McComb Enterprise-Journal, presented his Bronze Star award for gallantry to a perhaps-surprising recipient.

He gave it to Brenda Travis, who as a teenager led a student walkout from McComb's Higgins High School at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and was sent to reform school.

O'Brien's gift to movement-hero Travis, who recently died, was one of the most magnanimous acts I could ever imagine.

What was war like for O'Brien upon arrival in Vietnam? He first noticed a huge C-130 plane whose ramp was covered in black bags. "Bodies. Could be yours one day," a comrade explained.

O'Brien tells readers much about his 'Nam experience:

At Quang Tri, an outpost seemingly always under fire, O'Brien was "baptized" on his first night in-country facing guard duty. He spent the night ducking from Vietcong snipers.

Two weeks later, he got a "Dear John" letter from the woman he had hoped to marry. She told him "things have changed." He later found and married Kay, his true love.

Guys in his unit wanted to know if he was a "head" (dope) or a "juicer" (alcohol). "Neither, I'm a Christian ... a fraternity of one," he told them. They accepted him because he was a warrior.

As an enlisted E-5 (rank) soldier, he earned $357 per month, non-taxed.

"The Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale "revolutionized my life."

O'Brien was awarded a dozen or more medals for his service in Vietnam, yet "my experience in Nam doesn't make me any better than anyone else, nor any worse, nor an expert on the war. My perspective is just that: mine ..."

"I was merely a young 21-year-old grunt doing what my country asked me to do."

"When one was in Vietnam, where he or she was stationed, and what one's job was made a huge difference. Every link in the chain was important. Only 10-percent of us were infantry ... Every job was indispensable and dangerous. Every human ... was heroic."

"People who study war know weapons are carried ... In Nam we carry loneliness, homesickness, fear, guilt, fatigue, doubt, dreams, memories, worry, anxiety and hope."

"This is a hard statement to make: we lost. We left. Vietnam is communist today."

"Mosquitoes in Nam make helicopters look small ... we swallow a small pill daily ... What's in the pill? Who knows?"

"I was born in McComb, Mississippi. I grew up in Vietnam."

After the war, O'Brien kicked for the Mississippi College football team and filled myriad academic and religious roles. He wrote nine books, including this one (available at Amazon), which I love and is inspirational. I believe you'll agree.