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About Sông Bé: A Legacy of Vietnam (Unabridged)

Sông Bé, a fact-based narrative told in flashback from a present-day evening concert at the New Orleans Orpheum Theater, features a fit, world-renowned architect, Richard Foxworth, a West Point graduate who reacts to what his wife finds in his old Army footlocker. It triggers long-buried memories of 1) his role as a 2nd Lt in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive Battle of Sông Bé in 1968, 2) the physical wounds he sustained in combat, 3) his treatment at Rollingwood Sanitarium for post-traumatic stress, 4) a dream that haunted him nightly after the battle, and 5) the loss of a West Point classmate. Threaded through the story is a history of the American civil rights movement since the 1950s. The factual bases for Adams' fourth historical narrative are derived from the author's research and experiences as the son of a career Army officer, the first of three brothers to graduate from West Point, a Vietnam War veteran (1967-68), an Army aviator, a student of American history, a civil/environmental engineer and founder of an international consulting company, and his service as an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University and the United States Military Academy. Born in 1945, a month after V-J Day, Adams has always seen himself as part of a generation that grew up in a time of great change, optimism, and anticipation of a more equal world. Relevant to the authenticity of military life, the Vietnam War, the battle elements of the story, American history, and the Battle of Sông Bé specifically, five months after graduating from West Point in June 1967, Adams was one of the first in his class to serve in the war and fought in the Battle of Sông Bé. Before deployment to Vietnam, he shared a room for Airborne training with Clyde Oates, a sharp African-American lieutenant. At the end of the first week of training, Oates responded to him as Redman does in Sông Bé when queried by Foxworth if he wanted to go into Columbus, Georgia, to celebrate—it wasn’t going to happen.