My Khe Beach

This guide to My Khe Beach in Da Nang opens in 1965, when the first wave of American combat troops waded ashore here, and follows how the same sand became a rest stop from the war within two years. It centers on a young Navy storekeeper named Larry Martin, who talked his commanding officer into letting him run a surf club using boards soldiers mailed themselves from home, shaped by California legends like Hobart Alter and Dale Velzy. Look out at the waves the same way those sailors, Marines, and airmen once did between missions.