McDonald tells his story "in the voice of memory; as a writer looking back". He wanted to capture the immediacy of war moment by moment -- the tastes, the textures, the colors, smells, and emotions that have stayed with him forever. In a series of interlocking episodes he describes the daily grind of military life and the terror and brutality of active combat. He talks about the men who were his comrades and friends, and nights spent in the impenetrable darkness of steaming jungles beneath a triple canopy of green in the central highlands of Vietnam.

An indelible portrait of a soldier and of the physical and emotional destruction that is the legacy of all wars, Into the Green is a haunting chronicle of a place and a time that will never fade from memory.