Reflections Revisited

As described by Reverend J. Lowell Harrup, pastor of Northland Cathedral, Kansas City, Missouri: "This book focuses on army rangers, in particular the Fourth Infantry Division's LRRPs or the rangers of the Seventy-Fifth Regiment, the official as well as the spiritual successor to the fabled Merrill's Marauders, the long-range, deep-penetration units of World War II. Their stories need to be told, not for individual aggrandizement, though they certainly earned that, but so their history will be more than a political polemic. The Vietnam conflict was terrible, but our troops carried on the tradition of our military from the beginning of this nation. I have come to know many of them, including a number of highly decorated heroes of that conflict. Among those I put in that category is Reuben Siverling, a close friend and Christian brother, whose story is in this book. These stories are not enhanced; they need no enhancement. They are, in fact, the attempt to reduce in words the experiences that were lived in units of time distorted by the surreality of war, extreme environments, separation from families, and constant death and dying all around. The complete story of each cannot be told; books are not big enough. But these are told so that history will stand unrevised."