Newman 1266.

Only 6 copies of this edition in Worldcat.

After high school, Lecomte worked as a clerk for New York Life Insurance Company on Madison Avenue. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965-69 as a medic with a helicopter rescue unit, based out of Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Ala. He went to Craig when he traded places with a black Air Force buddy who didn't want to go to the Deep South in the 1960s.

Out of his Air Force experience came a volume of Vietnam War poetry, "Crimson Rice," published by Librado Press in 1990. Though he never went to Vietnam, his poems were so realistic that he's often assumed to have been there. A Vietnam veterans group even gave him a service badge. He saw enough tragedy responding to air crashes, and knew a lot of Vietnam veterans, including a brother who wrote to him while overseas.