<p>Enlisting to avoid the draft, John Rixey Moore survives his combat assignments by the thinnest measure of improbabilities...</p><p>A profound odyssey of a young college graduate who enlist in the military to avoid being drafted, becomes a Green Beret Airborne Ranger, and is sent to Vietnam where he is plunged into high - risk, deep - penetration operations under contract to the CIA - work for which he was neither specifically trained nor psychologically prepared, yet for which he is ultimately highly decorated.</p> <p>From being wounded when his base camp is overrun with devastating losses his very first night there, to his on - going efforts to learn from the Chinese he is supposed to be leading, Moore's existence becomes one of relentless hazards, enlighted disillusionment, and desperate fortune. His book is a sigular journey through both the physical and emotional landscapes of ''suicide'' operations into places where the jungle has grown with fierce determination ever since the last geologic epoch - and the enemy knows it best.</p> <p>Highly classified, long - range interdiction and assassination missions (of which very little is known to this day), leave Moore in profound isolation, sometimes in a country where he is officially not supposed to be, far from timely rescue and knowing that the information he's risking to retrieve is at best redundant; that each time his team is sent out, carrying no identification and wearing clothing made in China, their lives are considered anonymous and officially expendable.</p> <p>His life in the cloying embrace of the jungle, where even the prettiest flowers are poisonous, becomes a paradoxically labyrinth: the hard - learned language of the jungle's sounds speaks equally to both sides, the verdant canopy acts both as cover and a hazard enabling the enemy to work in close; the missions are given as important, yet the war is pointless. Moore survives his combat assignments ty the thinnest measure of improbabilities. But survives he does.</p> <p>Upon his return, he seeks santuary in a Scottish monastery and then works as a rock drill operator in a large industrial gold mine in Canada, and ultimately a career in television and film.</p>