King Ranch Connection
An intimate character analysis of Richard and Henrietta King and how they came together to build a lifegiving legacy that saved the lives of my Dogface battalion over a hundred years later.
What this book is
Wayne Wade went to Vietnam in 1967 as a nineteen-year-old draftee in the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry — the Dogface Battalion — of the 1st Infantry Division. He expected to write about one misfit grunt. Seven years of research, after-action reports, and veteran interviews turned the book into something larger: how a Christian legacy begun by Henrietta Chamberlain King on the King Ranch reached a combat battalion more than a century later through its commander, Lt. Col. Richard E. Cavazos.
Under Cavazos, who had grown up on that ranch and later retired as a four-star general, the battalion fought nine major engagements with the North Vietnamese Army. Wade spent more than 240 days in a combat environment and writes the tactics of those fights, including Ong Thanh, Loc Ninh, and Thunder Road, as he saw them.
The opening line of the story is the search phrase this page is built around: “I would have died as a nineteen-year-old grunt in 1967 Vietnam had it not been for my connection to the Old West Legacy of the King Ranch.”
Read excerpts
A Portal to Hell
Wayne's first deadly experience in combat and his first encounter with the voice of the Holy Spirit, Who's warning saved him and his buddies from instant death.
Alexander Haig
Thoughtful insight into the mind of a great American leader, as his Blue Spaders fought along side our Dogface battalion, in operation Junction City.
Little Man, Big Man
My definition of, and reasons why, Little Man Syndrome is so detrimental to any organization, but especially the military.
The Voice of God
A powerful testimony that shows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the importance of listening to and obeying the Holy Spirit.
Ong Thanh Creek, a Perfect Storm
A thoughtful explanation, taken from the facts, and Wayne's combat experience, for why this diaster happened to the Black Lions and not my Dogface Battalion.
Mac's Return from Heaven to Hell
One grunt's feelings while returning to his combat unit after a heavenly getaway in Australia.
Vo Minh Triet
Insights into the mind of one communist commander as never before revealed.
Chapters in the book
- Preface — a misfit in a 1st Infantry Division battalion, and the legacy he later saw
- Chapter 1: King Ranch Connection
- Chapter 2: Prelude to My War — Hampton, Virginia, November 1966
- Chapter 3: Entering the Darkness
- Chapter 4: A Portal to Hell
- Chapter 5: The Boy Dies
- Chapter 6: Hopelessness Reigns
- Chapter 7: Changes
- Chapter 8: Some Whys for “Stupid”
- Chapter 9: Finding a Path Amidst Chaos
- Chapter 10: Getting to Know Dick
- Chapter 11: Haig
- Chapter 12: Tree of Life
- Chapter 13: The Interlude
- Chapter 14: Little Man, Big Man
- Chapter 15: The Voice of God
- Chapter 16: A Growing Legacy Amongst the Weeds
- Chapter 17: Shenandoah II: Leadership and Survival
- Chapter 18: Freedom, Danger, and Donuts
- Chapter 19: The Tragedy at Ong Thanh
- Chapter 20: Up That Hill with Dick
- Chapter 21: Lộc Ninh and the Shadow War
- Chapter 22: Chasing Red Flags at Lộc Ninh
- Chapter 23: Thunder Road and an Abrupt Goodbye
Who the book is for
This book is for readers searching for a truthful understanding of why we lost the Vietnam War. That reason is not hard to know. As a nation, we have stopped trusting God. Any nation that stops trusting God quickly becomes blind to the truth. My book explains the core elements of God's truth and how a not-so-God-fearing man applied the truths he learned growing up on the King Ranch to bring victory after victory to our Dogface battalion. However, one battalion alone cannot win wars. Without God's truth, a nation loses all perspective. The Vietnamese people were not our enemy. The godless communist ideology was our enemy in Vietnam, and it is still our enemy today. Since the end of the Second World War, the real enemy of our free way of life is not a nation, but the communist ideology and its second cousin, Islam.