Scope and Contents

Book titled By Dead Reckoning: From the Great Depression to the First Vietnam War by William B. McIver describes McIver's life from the time he was raised on a sharecropper cotton farm in West Texas during the Great Depression to his service in the United States Navy during the Korean War and the French Indochina War in the 1950s. The book also gives McIver's family background dating back to their arrival from Scotland to Colonial North Carolina.

Biographical / Historical

William B. McIver was born in 1933 and was raised on a sharecropper dry-land cotton farm near Spur, Texas. He joined the United States Navy after dropping out of high school and served during the Korean War and the French Indochina War. His involvement in the French Indochina War included service aboard a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin protecting aircraft carriers that waited for orders that never came to assist the French during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. He retired from the Navy after 21 years of service and then began working in California's wine industry. In 2000, he retired as the owner and operator of Matanzas Creek Winery in Sonoma County, California. He now spends his time writing about his life and the history of the times in which he has lived.