Operation Allen Brook. The patrol is receiving automatic weapons fire from the tree line in the background.

Men watching the results of the bombing of an enemy position in the far tree line. Operation Allen Brook.

Oakes resting after going from Camp Doung Son to a platoon patrol base in August 1968. Oakes had collapsed from heat exhaustion due to the intense heat.

The mountains of Laos are in the background and Oakes and a Forward Observer (FO) are directing artillery fire at suspected enemy concentration points along the Laotian border. This location is as far north and as far west as someone could go in…

Locals going through garbage discarded by the mess hall for 1/27 Marine regiment. They are pouring leftover milk out of the containers.

Mountains West of Camp Doung Son perimeter. March / April 1968.

Oakes preparing to go on a night patrol in March / April 1968 from Camp Dong Son.

Vietnamese women working in a field as VC lookouts. After the picture was taken, a VC ambush attacked the patrol from the tree line in the background.

Weapons captured in the DMZ area. Clockwise from the bottom left: Oakes' M-16, 82 mm mortar, SKS, AK-47, M-79, 60 mm mortar, and a Russian Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle, manufactured in 1947 (This weapon was brought home as a war prize with Oakes).

A CH-53 Sea Stallion resupplying LZ Neville in Spring 1969.

Ambush of Oakes' patrol as they advanced to the tree line in the background.

Oakes aboard the hospital ship U.S.S. Repose in November 1968 after he contracted dysentery in the Khe Sanh Valley.

Oakes and three other soldiers acting as an escort for a Chinese couple in Chinatown, San Francisco.

Dorms at the Defense Language Institute West Coast in Monterrey, California.

Prior to troops advancing through the tree line, the flame tanks burnt out all the bobby-traps.

Flooding in Camp Dong Son after a typhoon in September 1968.

Lt. O'Rourke (center of picture) deploying troops during a firefight south of Hue.

Medevacing a soldier wounded in the leg during an firefight.

Camp Pendleton in September 1967 during Oakes' infantry training. The men slept in tents elevated on plywood floors because there was not enough housing for all the soldiers.

Rear area in Dong Ha for the 4th Marine Regiment. New mess hall under construction.

40 ft. Connex containers at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Q-West that housing four people each. These were what the men first moved into in December 2004.

Commercial airliner that carried Oakes and the other men to Kuwait.

Inside the living quarters at Camp Virginia, Kuwait, December 2004.

AH-64 Apache hovering at an Apache refueling point at FOB Diamondback. (Mosul)