James Davidson

Highway One: a Vietnam War Story James Davidson

When the light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam was getting pretty dim in 1968, the Pentagon decided to "Vietnamize" the war. The United States' strategy was to turn the fighting over to the South Vietnamese, supplying them with weapons, material, and advisors. However, the problem with this new policy was not so much the persistence of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, but the American advisors and their advice. These Americans weren't necessarily incompetent, it was just that they were sent to Vietnam for only a one-year tour of duty and always felt like they had to do something. So when a young Army lieutenant who only wants out of the Army is sent to a small village to build a rifle range for the local self-defense force during his last fourteen days in-country, he becomes caught between the Army's gung ho philosophy and the villagers' traditional Aisian concept of the relationship between time and war. To further complicate things, he is drawn to a beautiful woman in the village who is mysteriously close to the local Viet Cong.