At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace

Claude Thomas was seventeen when he volunteered for active duty in Vietnam, where he became a crew chief on assault helicopters. By his eighteenth birthday he had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. When he returned home, like so many Vietnam veterans, he was haunted by his wartime experiences and also felt abandoned and rejected by civilian society. For many years he struggled with post-traumatic stress, drug and alcohol addiction, isolation, homelessness, and debilitati...