John LeMoyne was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida. He enlisted in the Army Reserves with a Special Forces unit, then attended ROTC at the University of Florida and received his commission in 1968. After infantry officer's basic course at Fort Benning (“terrible”), and Ranger School (“saving grace”), he deployed to Vietnam in 1969 as an adviser with MACV. Not content to wait to be called, he found the local parachutists at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base officer’s club and got himself assigned to the Vietnamese Airborne as an assistant battalion adviser. Six months later he took command of Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division in Tay Ninh. He remembers grinding coffee beans in a canteen cup and the distinct sound of a mortar barrage, laagers near Cambodia and Vietnamese rations—including dehydrated rice that was grown and processed in Louisiana. He recalls hammocks, and foxholes, and dirt; speaking Vietnamese with a North Vietnamese accent (“Tonkinese”), and protecting an old Vietnamese couple who were looking for crickets and worms in the dark. LeMoyne discusses his extraordinary Vietnamese counterparts, the danger of confusion and panic in a firefight, and a bugle blowing charge. He notes that “there is real value to having standards and enforcing those standards, no matter how convenient it is not to, because it'll save your life.”