After a wild night at his neighbourhood pub in New York, "Chick" Donohue, an ex-marine and merchant seaman, resolves to carry out a fabled mission. He will go to Vietnam, find his war comrades there, and bring them a cool beer from back home. The best beer run ever will take place! He describes the amazing factual account of how he actually achieved it decades after the year 1968. Chick secures a flight to Vietnam with the help of Irish luck, arrives in Qui Nhon, and starts to find each of his serving pals one by one. But things quickly go wrong, and Chick sees a lot more of the conflict than he ever has as he talks his way through checkpoints and unintentionally into perilous situations. With indomitable spirit, Chick survives on his wits, but what he finds in Vietnam comes as a shock. By the end of his epic adventure, battered and exhausted, Chick finds himself questioning why his friends were ever led into the war in the first place.