Gioacchino Giampapa

Cherish the Magic Gioacchino Giampapa

DENY THEM THE NIGHT Credo of a little known fighting force, half of which spent their combat career without pay, without complaint, and until now, with little if any praise. Cherish The Magic brings home those who were left behind in a gripping novel of men tasked with doing the right thing. In a war where high technology and military might dominated the daylight, pajama-clad peasants and pith-helmeted North Vietnamese regulars were masters of the darknessand in that darkness, the fate of downed American flyers lay. Gianni Giancarlo, a Fort Lauderdale teenager too scared to join the Army enlists instead in the Air Force, where only pilots see combat, or so he thought, and is thrust into the journey from youthful innocence to the hellish realities of manhood. From the sandy beaches of Florida to the jungles of Vietnam, partnered with a mule-eared German Shepherd named Shadrack, Gianni learns that survival can be worse than death and that doing the right thing is the true measure of a man. Cherish The Magic is more than a novel; it is how we all would like to live.