Excerpt from They Marched Into Sunlight by David Maraniss, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Where's Delta Company? Are you Delta Company?" Welch asked the first beachmaster he encountered carrying a clipboard. These were not companies, they were packets, he was told. A navy officer finally pointed him toward a unit of men standing at attention in fatigues, "a beautiful formation, with this beautiful captain" -- officers in front, sergeants in back, duffel bags at their sides, the ship behind them in the glimmering sea. It was the unit led by Captain George.

"There's only one commander here, and it ain't you," Welch told George in his invariably direct manner after they were introduced. C Packet existed no more. These men were now part of Delta Company, the fourth and final company of a battalion that made up half a regiment known as the Black Lions. What a storied history these Black Lions had: formed in 1901, the first American unit committed to combat in World War I, twice awarded the croix de guerre with palm, France's highest military honor, named in the aftermath of their most famous battle there, when they became known as the Black Lions of Cantigny. Welch addressed the newest members of that proud lineage. He gave little thought to the fact that George was the superior officer, captain to lieutenant. He never was much on rank; he rarely even wore his rank on his battle uniform.

Welcome to Vietnam. He was Lieutenant Welch, commander of Delta Company. They were now Delta Company, Second Battalion, Twenty-eighth Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division. They would move from Vung Tau to the Big Red One base at Lai Khe by C-130 airplane. No time to waste. But first Welch needed a guidon bearer, someone to carry the blue Delta banner. No one stepped forward. "Okay, goddamit, you!" the lieutenant bellowed, pointing to the tallest soldier in the rear. "Wherever I go, you go. Hold that banner high!" And with that he marched ninety-three of his new men, plus several dozen others who were as yet unassigned, off the sand, into the sunlight, toward the airfield and the transport planes that carried them to their strange new home.

It was raining when they arrived at Lai Khe, but the division band was at the airstrip to greet them. Drum rolls and trumpets for the arriving heroes. Wow, this is special, Greg Landon thought. Then abruptly he found himself loaded into the back of an old deuce-and-a-half, a heavy supply truck, where he and the other Delta recruits slipped around on a truck bed as muddy as the hoof-slopped earth beneath a feeding trough for dairy cows in the aftermath of a midsummer thundershower. So much for feeling special. Captain George and the other new officers were taken another direction, to headquarters of the Big Red One's Third Brigade. A colonel was waiting for them. He seemed eager to give them an unsentimental lecture on the facts of life in the war zone. Enlisted men could not be trusted, he said. Enlisted men were nothing but sons of bitches.

Sons of bitches. Jim George was stunned. His "blood boiled" as he thought to himself, "Aren't those the guys pulling the triggers and doing the fighting and dying?"

Copyright © 2003 by David Maraniss