Absent Without Official Leave in Saigon

As a high school dropout who wanted to better his life by joining the army, Robert L. Rice got a rude awakening when he was shipped off to Vietnam, a place and war he admits he knew little about before arriving there. He was wounded in combat and nearly died but was encouraged by an angel he saw on the battlefield. Going AWOL several times, doing time in the stockade, getting a Dear John letter—Rice’s tour of duty was like a laundry list of nearly everything bad that could happen to a man in a war zone. Even after he got back on his feet in the States, the mental turmoil the war had stirred up persisted. He became a minister and worked with convicts, one of whom was the son of a man Rice met in the stockade in Vietnam.