The adage that the poor make more resolute and compliable soldiers is verified when applied to Chicanos. As the personal accounts in Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam attest, Chicanos were often the easiest and most malleable resource the U.S. had for achieving its quota for combat soldiers. And to those ends, they were used generously. The personal accounts of these veterans, many of whom experienced the war viscerally and whose private reasons were myriad and expressed in this book with a severe authenticity, can be of service to all. They fought for reasons that were ill-defined, often confusing, but for the most part devoid of any cogent understanding of the political and economic forces at play which took them from labor fields in Corcoran, California, to rice paddies in Indochina. From their odyssey a great house of knowledge can be gained, a knowledge that was, unfortunately, purchased with blood.
