Over two and a half million Americans served in the Vietnam War. Of those who served, 58,148 gave their lives. Tyler Taylor is a complex and angry young man who drops out of college after he is kicked off the USC football team. His life is falling apart, his parents are separated, and he is in pain and has lost interest in nearly everything. Almost immediately, though, he is drafted into the army. Once in the army, he begins to see his life in a new light, particularly after experiencing the horrors of combat in the Vietnam War. Tyler and his two friends, John Raab and Mike Petrov, go from basic training to medical studies and into the airborne. Each of them comes from a different background, but they form a friendship that is united by their shared experience of war. They quickly learn how to be soldiers and in the process discover their own identities. His transformation from a troubled, angry youth continues when he meets Maggie in Australia while on R&R. Now all he has to do survive the jungles of the Vietnam War, so that he can return to the love that he has been missing in his life.