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second son of a proud, hardworking family in a Boston multiethnic neighborhood. His father was a foreman, his mother, a health professional.
    He joined the U.S. Army in December 1965, out of high school after learning that an older, admired friend in the ------ Airborne had been killed in Vietnam. Bear’s father, a Silver Star honoree tank sergeant in Europe in World War II, opposed his enlistment, but acquiesced. His father was later to tell the Department of Defense official who [erroneously, as it turned out] notified him of Bear’s death: “Go to hell! You got the wrong Mercer.”
    Bear served one combat tour in Vietnam as a “grunt” forward observer sergeant. He was honorably discharged in December 1968. He never missed time, was never subject to disciplinary action, and was eligible to reenlist. He was honored with the Combat Infantry Badge, the Air Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal for Valor with Oak Leaf Cluster, which denotes a second separate act of bravery.
    After his first month as the radioman for the 81mm mortar at the center of the perimeter, Bear felt like he was simply a helpless target forenemy rockets and mortars that fell in the perimeter. He knew that in theory he was safer in the center than outside it patrolling and waiting in ambush, but he had come to fight, not to cower under bombardment. So he volunteered to serve as a forward observer, to patrol with the grunts and call in mortar, artillery, and air strikes in their support. He takes pride in the fact that he was never responsible for an artillery error that caused American casualties.
    Sergeant Mercer did, however, see the results of the fires he called in on the enemy. His patrol found a Viet Cong, dying after his legs had been blown off by a strike Bear had called in. Over the radio, the CO refused to call a MedEvac for the enemy and ordered Bear to kill the wounded enemy soldier. Unwilling to order anyone in his squad to do it, he performed this mercy himself, and believes that the dying Vietnamese assented to it by gestures. Now in nightmares and flashbacks the color of his blood, changing from bright red to almost black after Bear cut his throat, comes back again and again, as does the evil grin of a man in his squad who crushed the dead man’s chest with a boulder, drenching Bear with blood that squirted out of the severed neck arteries. Bear felt the enemy had “paid his dues” and is enraged at the disrespect shown by the other American soldier.
    Four days later in the same patrol a friend named Kennedy, known for his joking and cheerful disposition, volunteered to throw the smoke grenade in a clearing to guide in a helicopter. He stepped out of the concealment of the jungle and Bear heard an “Uh!” sound and saw Kennedy fall back on a bush. “I ran over and took him off the bush. His front tooth was gone. I put my hand behind his head to lift him off the bush, and felt this warm sensation. I had part of his brain on my hand. I looked back and saw blood pouring down off the bush.” This scene, too, repeats endlessly in Bears nightmares. He knows there was nothing he could have done to save Kennedy.
    Bear is also haunted by the death of a new forward observer, whom he had been breaking in for three months by going out on patrols with him. One night when Bear was “just so frigging tired” that he stayed behind, the new FO went out with a patrol on a night ambush. The ambushers were ambushed, and the men inside the perimeter could hear the wounded (including Bear’s best friend) screaming all night. The next morning they found two dead with the wounded survivors, but two were missing. A distance away they found the headless bodies of the missing two. Following a blood trail, they came to a clearing where the two heads were set up on stakes, with their eyelids pinned back with vine thorns. One of these headswas that of the new FO. “I see the head just staring at us. If