The War You've Always Wanted

Pat Dolan’s father has a box. In it are Jimmy Dolan’s treasures from his service in World War II. His photos, his medals, his memories. But he never wants to see them, and ten year-old Pat can’t understand why. After all, the war was a grand adventure…wasn’t it?

Determined to serve in the Army like his father, Pat enlists ten years later. It is 1972 and Vietnamization is under way. Most at home are convinced the war is lost. American combat troops are steadily leaving, with the plan being to equip the South Vietnamese to continue fighting the communists to the north on their own. Becoming an Army combat correspondent, young Dolan quickly learns how bleak the prospects are for the South.

With freedom to travel widely and interview countless people, Vietnamese and American, military and civilian, he is forced to a brutal conclusion: the nation is doomed. Surrounded by people growing more desperate by the day, Pat is wounded in action. After narrowly escaping death, he wonders if he will survive long enough to fill a box of his own. He wonders if there are any treasures to be found in a country as fragile as this.