David Celley

Woodruff's Firebase David Celley

The boy next door gets a bad grade in college, drops out, gets drafted, and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. He's any other ordinary kid of age 19 when he begins this adventure, but he's altogether a different person when it's over -- irreparably changed by this strange and different war. An aging Lieutenant Colonel tries to make his last tour of command count for him towards a promotion before he retires. Instead he sees that his own blundering and lack of leadership ability is his worst enemy. A "cowboy" Captain cannot get the respect he deserves for all the good efforts and right moves he makes to deal with some of the worst problems facing the battalion and at the same time mop up after the useless battalion commander. A handful of Special Forces experts turn a backward group of mountain people into a fighting force to combat the NVA. Only one of them returns home to tell about it. All these stories and many more combine together to make up the saga of Firebase Seminole. This is a story of a new and different kind of war. The covert recruitment and training of counterinsurgency forces; the involvement of the CIA; American troops forced to steal from their own supply houses; "Rural Pacification"; the danger of ambush at every turn; and the final, death-defying battle to save Woodruff's Firebase.