"Gotta get home. Gotta get home. Gotta get home to my dad." This would become his chant, his mantra. It would follow him into war.Born in 1947, Richard grows up in Redlands, California in a poor, working-class barrio. Richard lives life optimistically, from his boyhood of adventure-seeking and mischief, to his teen years working in the citrus industry to help support his laborer parents, to his early adulthood when he is drafted into the army and endures the challenges of boot camp and the atrocities of combat in the Vietnam War. Glimpses of life on the other side of the tracks - the Northside - recreate the hardships of Mexican laborers and the families they worked to support while maintaining pride in their cultural heritage and resilience to life's difficulties. From Barrio to Battle and Back: The Story of Reechie Boy is a biography filled with the humorous, heartfelt and tragic events of Richard's life in the 1950s and 1960s that illustrate his zest for life, his commitment to his family, and his desire, in war, to stay alive to return to his hometown to reunite with his father.