Born on the first of July | Canadians in the Vietnam War

Rob Purvis was 20 years old when he, Butch, Larry and Billy—school buddies from Winnipeg—crossed the border and joined the United States Army in Fargo, N.D. It was 1968, they needed work and they yearned for adventure. They got work, all right, and more adventure than they had bargained for. They all wanted to go to Vietnam, and they all did.

Larry Collins, 22, would die there. Purvis and the others would eventually return home changed men to an indifferent Canadian public that, for the most part, didn’t know and didn’t care where they had been or what they had done...