His memoir describes seeing U.S. troops engaging in atrocities, killing women and children and burning villagers' huts in Quảng Trị Province.

Even though he participated in some of these actions with his unit, he believed that some of the North Vietnamese combatants intentionally spared his life, instead shooting the White troops he was with.

He was transferred to the U.S. military hospital at Cam Ranh Bay where he described being wrapped in bandages from head to foot "like an Egyptian mummy".

No Sir!, about the GI resistance to the Vietnam War, he described seeing news coverage of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the subsequent riots in numerous cities in the U.S.

He talked about seeing tanks and dogs in the streets of Memphis – armed men "wearing the same kind of uniform that I got", occupying his hometown neighborhood where he had a baby daughter.

With the help of Taki and the Japanese anti-war group Beheiren, he instead traveled across the Soviet Union to Sweden, where he sought asylum.

There is some historical debate and controversy about Whitmore's account of the massacre he described as taking place in Quảng Trị Province in late 1967.

Elements of his story, and the approximate timing, match the military records of an investigation, courts martial and murder charges directed at several marines who were eventually acquitted by the military, but no clear evidence has surfaced to confirm (or disprove) his full story or the larger massacre he described.

In addition, the general area was subjected to intense aerial bombardment and artillery fire, and much of the "ville" itself had been burned by U.S. troops just a few days prior to the reported killings.

One historian has called Whitmore a liar while acknowledging that the Marine hearing officer during the military investigation stated “The evidence reveals that some horrible acts were committed".

Nick Turse, who wrote the award winning Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam[12][13] based on secret Pentagon archives and interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, quoted two separate Marines as saying their orders were to leave nothing alive, "kill everyone in the ville and burn it down.

[7][14] In 1977, after President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order granting amnesty to draft evaders of the Vietnam War era, Whitmore returned to the US to meet his daughter for the first time, who was being raised by his mother.