I THINK I'M GOING TO HATE THIS MOVIE

 Jerry Gustav Hasford in Vietnam, circa 1968.   "You're reading all of this in the papers about all these things going on in the world, and it just seems so exciting, and you just want to go somewhere," Hasford recalls.  "Where do you go if you're an Alabama kid with no money and you don't know anybody outside of Alabama?" 

You join the Marines, and in 1967, you go to Vietnam...

"It was exciting," Hasford continues.  "It was a foreign country, even if you didn't exactly know where it was.  I didn't have the slightest clue of where Vietnam was.  People say, 'Weren't you afraid you'd get killed?'  Nah. When you're 18, you don't have any fear that you're going to get killed.  You think you're immortal." 

--from the Birmingham News, 1987