In late 1969, 20-year-old Robert Sweatmon received a letter informing him that he had 10 days to report to the United States Army. Like thousands of others, he had been drafted. Assigned as a rifleman with a mechanized unit, the author began a year-long odyssey in the Southeast Asian wilderness that would change his and his fellow soldiers’ lives forever.

Coming of age in the maelstrom of civil rights and the free love culture, the author and his fellow soldiers saw their idealism quickly vaporize in the face of the grim realities of war. Kept in the field for almost the entire time of his tour, the author was in a unit selected to conduct a clandestine reconnaissance in Cambodia and then lead the 1970 invasion, where he was wounded. Following his convalescence, he was sent to Nui Ba Den, the fabled ghost mountain haunted by the spirit of a Vietnamese princess, until he received his papers that he had completed his combat service. At that moment, his year-long mental wall between soldier and civilian fell away as he counted the last terrifying hours before he was safely out of Vietnam. A tour-de-force of military memoir, written in an objective and often literary prose, Five Four Whiskey perfectly captures how ordinary civilian-soldiers survived an ordeal set in one of the most turbulent times in American history.

The book is published by Westholme Publishing. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"Without realizing it...I was hooked. By the end I was stunned by the impact." (John M. Del Vecchio, author of The 13th Valley)

“A remarkable portrait...a beautiful act of recollection that should take its place on the small shelf of necessary books on the Vietnam War.” (Joseph G. Peterson, author of Gideon’s Confession)