Personal memoir of a Vietnam veteran returns to the battlefields five decades later, examining memory, survivor’s guilt and the responsibility of preserving a generation’s history.
Warren, Oregon - Sept 11, 2026: As fewer Vietnam veterans remain to recount their experiences firsthand, Gregrey Bassine’s forthcoming memoir, Sidewinder 3 Zero: Can You Ever Go Back?, considers a question with implications far beyond one war: Can a person ever truly return from a place that changed who they became?
Gregrey Bassine approaches that question from personal experience. Drafted during the Vietnam War era, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after receiving his military draft number in high school, only to find himself serving in Vietnam on the front lines. His military career included covert operations and two combat tours, experiences that remained with him long after his honorable discharge.
Fifty years later, he returned to Vietnam with his friend Reggie, revisiting former bases, villages and locations associated with his service. The journey became an encounter with both a changed country and an unchanged memory. At the site of his former hootch, little remained beyond remnants of the old structure, forcing him to confront the distance between the young airman he had been and the veteran he had become.
The memoir also examines survivor’s guilt, a burden he says he has carried for five decades. After surviving his first tour while others were killed or wounded, he volunteered for a second tour because he believed another young recruit should not have to die in his place. The Air Force declined his request for a third consecutive combat tour.
Gregrey Bassine’s return also brings encounters with the dead, the living and veterans from another generation. In one account, he meets a younger combat veteran struggling after service and offers guidance based on what he learned during years of seeking help himself. The meeting gives the memoir an important generational dimension. Experience becomes responsibility when one generation can help another avoid suffering alone.
Sidewinder 3 Zero offers readers a firsthand account of Vietnam, military life and the long afterlife of combat. More importantly, it preserves the memories of a generation whose experiences increasingly risk becoming distant history rather than lived memory.
About The Author
Gregrey Bassine grew up in a small Oregon town and enlisted in the Air Force after receiving his military draft number during his senior year of high school. Following his military service, he earned three degrees and eventually founded a direct-response advertising agency that he operated for more than 25 years. He is now retired and lives in his hometown.