In the summer of 1969, young American men were called upon to go to Vietnam and to fight and die in a war that no one cared about any more. I was a first-hand witness to this. I had a wide range of experience in that conflict, and I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. My service included duty as an engineer with the paratroopers, a company commander with a construction battalion, a liaison officer for a Playboy Bunny, and a reconnaissance officer on the Cambodian border. The heart of my narrative is a road construction project in Viet Cong territory, but my service carried me all across South Vietnam and out to sea with the Navy on Yankee Station. What I saw was the demoralization of an army and the end of an era. What I experienced was my Rite of Passage.