David Donovan had a privileged position in the Vietnam War. A lieutenant fresh out of training, he was assigned as a military adviser deep in the Mekong Delta, a backwater without roads, electricity, even soap. With just 4 other Americans and two platoons of haphazardly equipped local militia, Donovan didn't have much, but he was the Co Van, the senior American in the district, and for better or worse a Warrior King. He could call down fire from the sky, dole out miraculous American medicine, order people imprisoned or killed with a word. Donovan admits that at times he may have gone slightly mad, but some sort of fundamental decency kept him on track in his year-long tour. He couldn't win the war, but he held his sector together.

The anecdotes make this book, ranging from tense ambushes and slogging patrols to the indignities of being at the end of the American supply system and learning to make do with grilled rat and rice dipping nuoc mam. Three incidents in particular speak out: trying to maintain conservative Vietnamese sexual mores and American military standards with young ladies literally throwing themselves at the team (Donovan claims he respectfully declined), a local Catholic priest who hated Americans and plotted against them to the extent that Donovan strongly considered having the Phoenix Program assassinate the man (and declined because he didn't want to kill a man of the cloth, no matter how annoying), and when 'loose-cannon' Captain Jackson fired his M16 to intimidate some prisoners and wound up causing a fire in the base that set off 400 rounds of mortar ammunition and leveled everything (which would be hilarious, except that 4 people died).