The trajectory of the bullet that ripped into the young paratrooper’s chest knocked him on his backside, thus saving him the added indignity of laying face down in the mud of the monsoon-drenched jungle floor. With life rapidly escaping his body through the gaping wound, Johnny dreamed of being with Mai, a beautiful Eurasian girl he’d only recently met and fallen in love with on an in-country R&R at Vung Tau. To be back in the “world,” to play his guitar and to live out his life with Mai consumed his every thought.
Shortly after returning to his combat unit, Johnny Richards, a cocky Irish, blue-eyed, blues guitarist from the streets of Chicago, is gravely wounded on a combat air-assault into an enemy stronghold, after taking a bullet for a buddy.
Are Johnny and Mai allowed to live out their dreams? Does the bullet that penetrates him cut short his young adventurous life and their dreams? In 1983, at The Vietnam Memorial, better known as “The Wall,” Johnny’s hopes, dreams and survival come face-to-face with the emotional but spiritual realization that is his.
The Wall of Broken Dreams is certainly an adventure, as any Vietnam War story should be. More than that though, it is an inspirational story of the hopes and dreams of a young man serving his country with an elite army combat platoon in Vietnam.
