AUTHOR BIO

Alan Neil came home from Viet Nam as a fully trained soldier but with an attitude because the Army had spent hundreds of thousand dollars making him to into a Special Operations soldier but the seemed unwilling to spend one dollar to train him to be a civilian. He really didn’t care for politics of any kind because he had seen politicians get his friends killed and his priorities in serving in the Army was God, Family, and Country. When he read the history of Viet Nam and its history of struggles for freedom he cried. He hid from society and became buried himself in education and work. When he had the opportunity, he started working overseas and for 27 years, his friends were the places where he worked. The jungles, deserts and wastelands were his friends. He always came home four times a year and to the National forest in East Texas where he grew up and found solace in the woods and the animals. He traveled around the earth 4 times a year for 27 years and was just as comfortable in Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Paris or Vienna as he was in Houston but his favorite place to sleep was on the ground in the National forest that he grew up in. In his travels to Asia, Africa, Europe, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East he made friends everywhere he went. The people he worked with became his family and he loved them like family. Somehow, he always knew that this work family would cry when he left them but they would remember what he said and what he did. Their smiles would always guide him on down the road of life. His love of all people was his greatest possession but in the National forest, the animals were his guardians and he trusted them with his life. Whenever his battery got drained, he recharged it in the National forest.