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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900
At the height of the Vietnam conflict, a complex system of secret
underground tunnels sprawled from Cu Chi Province to the edge of
Saigon. In these burrows, the Viet Cong cached their weapons,
tended their wounded, and prepared to strike. They had only one
enemy: U.S. soldiers small and wiry enough to maneuver through the
guerrillas' narrow domain.
The brave souls who descended into these hellholes were known as
"tunnel rats." Armed with only pistols and K-bar knives, these men
inched their way through the steamy darkness where any number of
horrors could be awaiting them-bullets, booby traps, a tossed
grenade. Using firsthand accounts from men and women on both sides
who fought and killed in these underground battles, authors Tom
Mangold and John Penycate provide a gripping inside look at this
fearsome combat. The Tunnels of Cu Chi" "is a war classic of
unbearable tension and unforgettable heroes.
The inside story of today's Dambusters, 617 Squadron RAF, at war in
Afghanistan. In May 1943, 617 Squadron RAF executed one of the most
daring operations in military history as bombers mounted a raid
against hydro-electric dams in Germany. 617 Squadron became a
Second World War legend. Nearly 70 years later, in April 2011, a
new generation of elite flyers, now flying supersonic Tornado GR4
bombers, was deployed to Afghanistan - their mission: to provide
close air support to troops on the ground. Tim Bouquet was given
unprecedented access to 617's pre-deployment training and
blistering tour in Afghanistan. From dramatic air strikes to the
life-and-death search for IEDs and low-flying shows of force
designed to drive insurgents from civilian cover, he tracked every
mission - and the skill, resilience, banter and exceptional
airmanship that saw 617 through.
As suggested by the title, this collection of essays focuses
upon American involvement in the Vietnamese War. These essays were
originally written for a symposium in 1988 in which (for the first
time since 1975) scholars from both the U.S. and Vietnam met to
discuss and debate the war and its impact on their respective
nations. Thus, these works (by American authors) though alternately
probing and guarded, are always thought-provoking. They display the
mind at work in its search for answers, explanations, and meaning.
Questions of politics and history (diplomacy, the Tet offensive,
Chinese involvement, U.S. war veterans) are considered and
reconsidered by such authors as Allen Whiting, Jayne Werner, Nyo
Vinh Long, and Paul Comacho.
Developed specifically for the Vietnam War (and made famous by the
2004 presidential campaign), Swift Boats were versatile craft "big
enough to outrun anything they couldn't outfight" but too small to
handle even a moderate ocean chop, too loud to sneak up on anyone,
and too flimsy to withstand the mildest of rocket attacks. This
made more difficult an already tough mission: navigating coastal
waters for ships and sampans smuggling contraband to the Viet Cong,
disrupting enemy supply lines on the rivers and canals of the
Mekong Delta, and inserting SEALs behind enemy lines. The stories
in this book cover the Swift Boats' early years, which saw
search-and-inspect operations in Vietnam's coastal waters, and
their later years, when the Swift Boats' mission shifted to the
Mekong Delta's labyrinth of 3,000 miles of rivers, streams, and
canals. This is an intimate, exciting oral history of Swift Boats
at war in Vietnam.
The Taliban are synonymous with the war in Afghanistan. Doughty,
uncompromising fighters, they plant IEDs, deploy suicide bombers
and wage guerrilla warfare. While much has been written about their
military tactics, media strategy and harsh treatment of women, the
cultural and sometimes less overtly political representation of
their identity, the Taliban's other face, is often overlooked. Most
Taliban fighters are Pashtuns, a people who cherish their vibrant
poetic tradition, closely associated with that of song. The poems
in this collection are meant to be recited and sung; and this is
the manner in which they are enjoyed by the wider Pashtun public
today. From audiotapes traded in secret in the bazaars of Kandahar,
to mp3s exchanged via bluetooth in Kabul, to video files downloaded
in Dubai and London, Taliban poetry has an appeal that transcends
the insurgency. For the Taliban today, these poems, or ghazals,
have a resonance back to the 1980s war against the Soviets, when
similar rhetorical styles, poetic formulae and tricks with metre
inspired mujahideen combatants and non-combatants alike. The poetry
presented here includes 'classics' of the genre from the 1980s and
1990s as well as a selection from the odes and ghazals of today's
conflict . Veering from nationalist paeans to dirges replete with
religious symbolism, the poems are organised under four headings -
- War, Pastoral, Religious and Love - - and cover many themes and
styles. The political is intertwined with the aesthetic, the
celebratory cry is never far from the funeral dirge and praise of
martyrs lost. Two prefatory essays introduce the cultural and
historical context of the poetry. The editors discuss its
importance to the Pashtuns and highlight how poetic themes
correspond to the past thirty years of war in Afghanistan. Faisal
Devji comments on what the poetry reveals of the Taliban's
emotional and ethical hinterland.
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