"Company Grade: Memoir of an Angry Skipper" — Henry "Rocky" Colavita
Henry "Rocky" Colavita's memoir, "Company Grade: Memoir of an Angry Skipper" (Hellgate Press, first published 1 Nov 2015, 278 pages), is described by its publisher and retailers as an "engaging, often funny" example of the "I was there" genre of war memoirs. Per the book's own jacket copy: "From an early age Henry 'Rocky' Colavita dreamed of becoming an Army officer. And a policeman. He eventually did both." It covers his 20-year Army career — wounded on his first Vietnam tour as an advisor to the ARVN Airborne Brigade under MAAG (1965-66), and returning for a second tour as an Infantry captain in command of Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, callsign "Angry Skipper" (1968-69) — and his subsequent 17-year second career with the Fairfax County (VA) Sheriff's Office. He "returned home, age 28" from his Vietnam service, per the jacket bio, which anchors the end of his D Co command to approximately 1969.
Two reader reviews on Goodreads add detail not found in the jacket copy or obituary. One, from a self-identified high-school classmate of Colavita's ("BobInBaltimore," June 2016), quotes the book's account of Colavita's first-tour wounding:
"You read of Henry Colavita's severe wounding during his first tour, when his best friend, John Milender, knelt beside him to offer words of encouragement just before he was hauled off to a waiting helicopter, only to see that friend die from a sniper shot. He writes, 'He no sooner said these words than his eyes got big and round, his mouth formed a perfect "O" and his left arm, still holding his rifle, shot straight up in the air, and under his armpit I saw the exit wound of the round that killed him.'"
The same review says Colavita "could not bring himself to write to John Milender's parents due to his belief that Milender's death was his fault," and that he "finally contacted Milender's grandson" only decades later, in his sixties.
On his second tour, in command of D Company, the review describes him living in the jungle with his company for weeks at a time, leading roughly 100 men, and developing "innovative techniques for conducting night ambushes" — techniques he reportedly "kept ... from his superiors, because they were not by the book." The review adds: "Some of his charges were killed. Many probably lived because of his techniques."
A second review, from a longtime friend (Walt Pilcher, Feb 2016), calls the book "excellent... devoid of cliches, interesting to read, fast-paced, and full of Henry's incomparable wit, pragmatic wisdom, insight, compassion, and no-nonsense outlook on the missions he was given."
Neither Milender's unit nor the exact dates/places of Colavita's D Co tour are given in these secondary sources — a direct read of the book itself would likely surface far more (see open questions above).
PFC Michael Cromie's death, 18 Nov 1968 (2026-07-17 update): per Michael, Colavita's memoir describes an engagement on 18 November 1968 — direct contact with the enemy, not a standoff shelling — in which PFC Michael Cromie was killed by RPG fragments. Colavita commanded D Company at the time. This predates the Ahern account below by eight days and is a reasonable (though not confirmed) candidate for the earlier, unnamed casualty Colavita's book references when it calls Ahern "Delta's next casualty under my command" — implying a previous one. See soldiers/cromie-michael.
Colavita's memoir also includes a candid, self-deprecating admission from this period: still fairly new to command, he did not yet know many of his soldiers well. He recounts, with evident embarrassment, asking a platoon leader where Cromie was — he hadn't seen him in a while and wondered if he was on R&R — only to be told that Cromie had been dead for a few weeks. This is a small, human window into the scale and churn of company command in Vietnam, not a criticism of Colavita; see soldiers/colavita-henry.
SP4 Raymond Ahern's death, 26 Nov 1968 (2026-07-17 update): Colavita's memoir describes SP4 Raymond Ahern as "Delta's next casualty" under his own command, killed on LZ Rita on 26 November 1968 when his bunker took a direct hit from a rocket. Colavita identifies Ahern as the Radio Telephone Operator for the artillery Forward Observer attached to D Company, noting both Ahern and the FO (who survived) were members of the 19th Artillery Regiment. This account, independently corroborated by a Virtual Wall tribute from fellow D Co soldier Larry Hackett, resolved a long-standing question on this archive about whether Ahern's "D Co, 2/8 Cav" roster line was accurate (it was) or a clerical artifact (it wasn't) — see soldiers/ahern-raymond and events/operation-sheridan-sabre-1968-11-26. Colavita's book also reproduces, with attribution, a tribute to Ahern that Hackett had posted on the Virtual Wall in 2005 — that tribute is built as its own document, attributed to Hackett, at documents/hackett-larry/hackett-larry-tribute-ahern-raymond, rather than reproduced here, since it is Hackett's own words, not Colavita's. Colavita's book closes the passage by noting Hackett himself later died of cancer, and wonders whether the group's Agent Orange exposure means "Larry Hackett's name shouldn't also be on the Wall" — his own speculation, not a documented finding; see soldiers/hackett-larry.
D Company command chain (2026-07-17 update): per Michael, the book itself names CPT Audis Garner (see soldiers/garner-audis) as having commanded D Company between CPT Rodney Grannemann and Colavita — Grannemann -> Garner -> Colavita, not a direct Grannemann-to-Colavita handoff as this archive had previously inferred from timing alone. This has been corrected across soldiers/grannemann-rodney, soldiers/colavita-henry, and soldiers/garner-audis. This detail comes from Michael's own reading of the book, not from the reviews or jacket copy quoted above.
The December 4, 1968 "Chicken Valley" ambush (2026-07-17 update): Michael has now excerpted direct text from his own copy of the book — the first verbatim passages from "Company Grade" obtained by this archive, rather than secondhand reviews or jacket copy. The excerpt covers D Company's link-up with Charlie Company at a captured enemy cache (the march during which the men nicknamed the area "Chicken Valley"), the ambush that followed when a group of NVA that Charlie Company believed wanted to surrender (Chieu Hoi) instead killed three of Colavita's men — SP4 Willie Jones, SP4 Donald Stoltz, and SSG William Williams — and Colavita's own reflection on the losses, which includes the first personal detail this archive has on any of the three men: Williams as a squad leader who'd asked about a rear assignment, married with a son and a college degree. Built as its own document, colavita-henry-verbal-account-dec4-1968, and cross-linked into events/operation-sheridan-sabre-1968-12-04 and the three soldiers' profiles. Page numbers not yet cited — see oq-01.
