Chris Taylor (born 1946) was a US Army Private First Class during the Vietnam War.
Biography[]
Chris Taylor was born in 1946, and he came from a strict family which sought for him to live a respectable life with his own house and family. His grandfather fought in World War I, while his father fought in World War II. Instead of following his parents' wishes, he dropped out of college and enlisted in the US Army during the Vietnam War, and he kept correspondence with his maternal grandmother, occasionally showing regret for his enlistment, as he felt that Vietnam was like hell from the first week. He was assigned to Bravo Company of the US 25th Infantry Division, taking part in patrols along the Cambodian border.
Not long after his arrival in September 1967, his fellow greenhorn Bob Gardner was killed, but Sergeant Elias Gordon took him under his wing and showed faith in him. He was wounded during an NVA ambush, but, when he recovered, he was invited to join Gordon's group of marijuana smokers and befriended them. Taylor and Gordon became rivals of Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes, preventing some of Barnes' men from gang-raping two Vietnamese girls. Barnes grew concerned when his captain warned him that he would court-martial any man found guilty of illegal killings, so, during another ambush, Barnes shot Gordon while out of sight and blamed his death on the NVA.
However, as the platoon left the battlefield on a helicopter, Taylor saw Gordon running towards the helicopter with the NVA shooting at him before collapsing dead; Taylor knew that Barnes had been responsible for Gordon's death. Taylor failed to convince the platoon to frag Barnes, who mocked the group after walking in on them, and the intoxicated Barnes cut Taylor's eye with a push knife when Taylor attempted to attack him. The platoon was later ambushed during the New Year's Day Battle of 1968, and an insane Barnes attempted to kill Taylor before both of them were knocked out by an airstrike. The next morning, the two of them woke up, and Taylor refused to call a medic for Barnes, who convinced Taylor to kill him. Having been twice wounded, Taylor was allowed to return home, although he continued to think about the war for the rest of his life.
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