Search And Destroy by Dean Hughes

 This book shows what it was like for soldiers serving in Vietnam during the 1960s, a war that many believe should have never been fought. Countless lives were lost for a war that should have never been fought. A lot of the soldiers who came back from this war were not the same men who left. They had cancer just waiting to arise from the Agent Orange that was dropped. Most if not all of them came back with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or in this case "Vietnam Syndrome". Some even committed suicide because the nightmares were becoming too much

Summary

-Rick Ward is a high school graduate in 1969. His girlfriend Judy has more or less up and left him to follow the path of the anti-war protesting hippie. His friend Renny and all his other friends still act like they're in high school, playing volleyball at the beach or racing fast cars. Rick lives with his mother, father and sister Roxie. Rick desperately wants to be a writer, but he has no idea how to start writing. 

-With his father having an uncontrollable temper and wanting to take it out on his son, Rick decides to join the military, thinking that having life experiences will give him something to write about. He enlists in the Army and wants to join the Special Forces or Green Berets. He endures the training and fights the with his fellow team members. As time goes on, he witnesses his fellow soldiers getting killed in gruesome ways and sees how his fellow soldiers take trophies from their kills, such as ears and fingers of the Vietcong they kill and seeming to enjoy the killing.

-When Rick is injured, he is medevacked to a hospital and sent home with an honorable discharge. After a while, his family starts to notice a change in him. What they don't realize is he is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the smallest things trigger it. What makes them finally realize he's suffering from PTSD is when his father is watching something on TV and it has gunfire, Rick falls to the ground in a fetal position, thinking he's back in the jungles of Khe Sanh or somewhere else in Vietnam and his sister Roxie finds him, sweating and screaming