http://www.oralhistory.ws/tpl/norton_audio.php?file=75b372c6670ed4a8c06b32d6685bcc477e303274.mp3

Johnny, who grew up on an island in the Mississippi River near Tennessee, was drafted soon after he graduated from high school and served as an infantryman in South Vietnam from June 1966 to June 1967. Long, dangerous days in the bush in Vietnam were difficult and deadly, but for a young man who grew up in a cotton field that he plowed with a mule, they may not have been any more physically demanding. Johnny, his siblings, and his dad worked 10-hour days in the sun, especially when chopping and picking cotton.