He led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1969, when he was 21 years old. It was the most exciting and dangerous experience of his life and the stories from that year are his best. When he left the Marine Corps in 1971, he returned to the University of Missouri to finish his degree in business administration and then began a 40 year career in financial services. He retired in 2013, and began writing the Vietnam stories that had haunted him for 46 years.