Other recruit trainee characters include a hardened drug dealer, Tyrone Washington, from Chicago, Illinois; a naive and unassuming Billy Ray Pike from Galveston, Texas; a streetwise ladies' man, Vinnie Fazio, from Brooklyn, New York, and a mild-mannered aspiring writer Alvin Foster from Emporia, Kansas, who begins writing a journal detailing his experiences.

To these characters, Vietnam is a bewildering chaos of bureaucratic incompetence, callous officers concerned only with monthly body counts, and the constant threat of death.

The officers in Company C are mostly incompetents who endanger the lives of their men through blind adherence to rules or timetables; their nervous Marines open fire on anyone and anything at the slightest provocation.

In January 1968, Company C is ordered by its commanding officer to throw (lose) a soccer game against a team of South Vietnamese to bolster the morale of their ally.

It is revealed that Washington was killed in action and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, while Fazio was seriously wounded and as a result of his injuries, was permanently confined to the VA hospital in Los Angeles.

Pike deserted from the hospital in Da Nang and returned to the U.S., eventually moving to Canada, where he now lives with his wife and son.

This film has been issued numerous times on video since its theatrical release, first in-house via Columbia Pictures, and later through other companies as certain ancillary rights changed hands (it ended up becoming part of the library of ITC Entertainment).