Unforgettable characters

Guy Lopaca, an Army-trained interpreter who can barely say “I can’t speak Vietnamese” in Vietnamese, but has no trouble chatting with stray dogs and water buffalo

“Virgin Mary” Crocker, a pragmatic Army nurse who earns a fortune spending nights with homesick soldiers, while yearning for the unavailable boy across the table

Paul Gianelli, a heroic builder of medical clinics who doesn’t want to be remembered badly after he leaves, so he never goes home

Tyler DeMudge, whose cure for every problem is a chilly martini, a patch of shade, and treating every terrible event in life as “good training” for enduring it again

Sgt Dong, who blames the French for mistresses and neckties, blames the Americans for drugs, and knows the secret ingredient in the best pork noodle soup

Capt. Billy Bloat, the medal-winning sole survivor of a deadly mission to deliver lobster tails to a battalion cookout

And then there’s Arthur Grissom, whose loneliness and heartache are  insurmountable, until… he looks into a pair of Martian eyes