King Ranch Connection
Henrietta Chamberlain on the steamboat Whiteville at Brownsville in 1850, Richard King, and the ranch legacy that later stood in a Vietnam battalion.
What this book is
Wayne Wade went to Vietnam in 1967 as a nineteen-year-old draftee in the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry — the Dogface Battalion — of the 1st Infantry Division. He expected to write about one misfit grunt. Seven years of research, after-action reports, and veteran interviews turned the book into something larger: how a Christian legacy begun by Henrietta Chamberlain King on the King Ranch reached a combat battalion more than a century later through its commander, Lt. Col. Richard E. Cavazos.
Under Cavazos, who had grown up on that ranch and later retired as a four-star general, the battalion fought nine major engagements with the North Vietnamese Army. Wade spent more than 240 days in a combat environment and writes the tactics of those fights, including Ong Thanh, Loc Ninh, and Thunder Road, as he saw them.
The opening line of the story is the search phrase this page is built around: “I would have died as a nineteen-year-old grunt in 1967 Vietnam had it not been for my connection to the Old West Legacy of the King Ranch.”
Read excerpts
A Portal to Hell
The passage from stateside training into the war Wade thought would end him.
Alexander Haig
Command and the 1st Infantry Division as a nineteen-year-old infantryman saw them.
Little Man, Big Man
Men in the same fight, and what size had to do with courage.
The Voice of God
The spiritual thread Wade says he only understood years after the tour.
Ong Thanh Creek, a Perfect Storm
The October 17, 1967 ambush, told from inside the Dogface Battalion.
Mac’s Return from Heaven to Hell
A soldier’s return, and the cost of coming back to the line.
Vo Minh Triet
A name from the other side of the same war.
Chapters in the book
- Preface — a misfit in a 1st Infantry Division battalion, and the legacy he later saw
- Chapter 1: King Ranch Connection
- Chapter 2: Prelude to My War — Hampton, Virginia, November 1966
- Chapter 3: Entering the Darkness
- Chapter 4: A Portal to Hell
- Chapter 5: The Boy Dies
- Chapter 6: Hopelessness Reigns
- Chapter 7: Changes
- Chapter 8: Some Whys for “Stupid”
- Chapter 9: Finding a Path Amidst Chaos
- Chapter 10: Getting to Know Dick
- Chapter 11: Haig
- Chapter 12: Tree of Life
- Chapter 13: The Interlude
- Chapter 14: Little Man, Big Man
- Chapter 15: The Voice of God
- Chapter 16: A Growing Legacy Amongst the Weeds
- Chapter 17: Shenandoah II: Leadership and Survival
- Chapter 18: Freedom, Danger, and Donuts
- Chapter 19: The Tragedy at Ong Thanh
- Chapter 20: Up That Hill with Dick
- Chapter 21: Lộc Ninh and the Shadow War
- Chapter 22: Chasing Red Flags at Lộc Ninh
- Chapter 23: Thunder Road and an Abrupt Goodbye
Who the book is for
Readers looking for a first-person 1967 Vietnam infantry account, King Ranch history that is not only cattle and acreage, or the early command of Richard E. Cavazos will find the through-line here. It is also a Christian book: Wade argues that Henrietta King’s faith, not Richard King’s drive, is what kept the legacy alive until it reached his battalion.
Biblical studies from the same author are on The Great I Am.