This story takes place in the early sixties, during the time of the Vietnam war. The protagonist is the daughter of a military family; her father is a colonel in the army, an ordnance officer. He had been in WWII also, and had served general Patton. This is a true story.

The colonel and his family are sent to Saigon in 1960. They get to live in a French Villa, with servants, and high walls around their home, to keep out the poverty of Saigon. When the kids went out, the geeky blond white kids, were sticking out like sore thumbs.
"Women and children stuck their heads out of their tiny huts. They looked up from their boiling pots over open fires to view the curiosity that was passing. Blond Caucasian children, except for Bob, who had brown hair, in starched clothing and spotless Keds tennis shoes filed passed [sic] them seemingly without a care in the world. The small Vietnamese children with only shirts on their backs, standing naked from the waist down, pointed and giggled at the sight of us. Old ladies squatting in front of their Hut doorways sat grinning, showing off full sets of either red or black teeth, the result of years of chewing betel nut leaves."

"We children of military personnel are referred to as BRATs, a title we all wear with pride. The acronym BRAT was created a long time ago and stands for British Regiment Attached Transfer. It is the perfect way to describe our extended Gypsy family. We are the 'attached' dependents who go wherever the military transfers take the colonel.
'adaptive' would be the best word to describe us BRATS. In a way, we are a tribe unto ourselves. Making friends quickly, we depart our assigned posts without a goodbye or any chance of future encounters. We pick up languages and accents quickly. Material things just aren't important to us. We leave them behind us as we do our lives, our friends, our pets [ ( )