My Confessions from Vietnam

Mark Miller was fresh out of college when he was drafted for active duty in Vietnam. The thought of fleeing to Canada crossed his mind, but instead he wound up undergoing “shake ’n’ bake” training—the quick and mostly inefficient method of preparing new infantry sergeants for leadership.

Shake ’n’ bakers had a reputation for getting themselves—and sometimes their men—killed quickly, so the men of the Garbage Squad were understandably leery of their new sergeant. Fortunately, Miller and his squad saw eye to eye on a very important detail—they all wanted to get out of Nam alive, preferably without killing anyone in the process.

My Confessions from Vietnam tells a story not of heroic war, but of a small group of young men just trying to keep their minds and bodies intact under terrifying conditions. Sometimes that meant defying orders by military “lifers” more interested in promotions than safeguarding their troops. Sometimes that meant killing pigs and claiming them as part of the body count.

Intimate, raw, and at times funny and heartwarming, Mark Miller’s wartime confessions remind us of a side of Vietnam often forgotten in Hollywood’s romanticized glamorization of war and those who fight it.