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Books > Humanities > History > American history > From 1900
On the evening of July 11, 1967, a Navy surveillance aircraft
spotted a suspicious trawler in international waters heading toward
the Quang Ngai coast of South Vietnam. While the ship tried to
appear innocuous on its deck, Saigon quickly identified it as an
enemy gunrunner, codenamed Skunk Alpha. A four-seaborne intercept
task force was established and formed a barrier inside South
Vietnam’s twelve-mile territorial boundary. As the enemy ship
ignored all orders to surrender and neared the Sa Ky River at the
tip of the Batangan Peninsula, Swift Boat PCF-79 was ordered to
take the trawler under fire. What followed was ship-to-ship combat
action not seen since World War II. Capturing Skunk Alpha relates
that breathtaking military encounter to readers for the first time.
But Capturing Skunk Alpha is also the tale of one sailor’s
journey to the deck of PCF-79. Two years earlier, Raúl Herrera was
growing up on the west side of San Antonio, Texas, when he answered
the call to duty and joined the US Navy. Raúl was assigned to PCF
Crew Training and joined a ragtag six-man Swift Boat crew with a
mission to prevent the infiltration of resupply ships from North
Vietnam. The brave sailors who steered into harm’s way in
war-torn Vietnam would keep more than ninety tons of ammunition and
supplies from the Viet Cong and NVA forces. The Viet Cong would
post a bounty on PCF-79; Premier Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and Chief of
State Nguyễn Văn Thiệu would congratulate and decorate them
for their heroism. Capturing Skunk Alpha provides an eyewitness
account of a pivotal moment in Navy operations while also
chronicling one sailor’s unlikely journey from barrio adolescence
to perilous combat action on the high seas.Â
Hal Moore, one of the most admired American combat leaders of the
last 50 years, has until now been best known to the public for
being portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie "We Were Soldiers." In
this first-ever, fully illustrated biography, we finally learn the
full story of one of America's true military heroes. A 1945
graduate of West Point, Moore's first combats occurred during the
Korean War, where he fought in the battles of Old Baldy, T-Bone,
and Pork Chop Hill. At the beginning of the Vietnam War, Moore
commanded the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry in the first
full-fledged battle between U.S. and North Vietnamese regulars.
Drastically outnumbered and nearly overrun, Moore led from the
front, and though losing 79 soldiers, accounted for 1,200 of the
enemy before the Communists withdrew. This Battle of Ia Drang
pioneered the use of "air mobile infantry" - delivering troops into
battle via helicopter - which became the staple of U.S. operations
for the remainder of the war. He later wrote of his experiences in
the best-selling book, We Were Soldiers Once...and Young. Following
his tour in Vietnam, he assumed command of the 7th Infantry
Division, forward-stationed in South Korea, and in 1971, he took
command of the Army Training Center at Fort Ord, California. In
this capacity, he oversaw the US Army's transition from a
conscript-based to an all-volunteer force. He retired as a
Lieutenant General in 1977. At this writing, Hal Moore is 90 years
old and living quietly in Auburn, Alabama. He graciously allowed
the author interviews and granted full access to his files and
collection of letters, documents, and never-before-published
photographs.
Initially stationed at the U.S. Army's counterintelligence
headquarters in Saigon, David Noble was sent north to launch the
army's first covert intelligence-gathering operation in Vietnam's
Central Highlands. Living in the region of the
Montagnards-Vietnam's indigenous tribal people, deemed critical to
winning the war-Noble documented strategic hamlets and Green Beret
training camps, where Special Forces teams taught the Montagnards
to use rifles rather than crossbows and spears. In this book, he
relates the formidable challenges he confronted in the course of
his work. Weaving together memoir, excerpts from letters written
home, and photographs, Noble's compelling narrative throws light on
a little-known corner of the Vietnam War in its early years-before
the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and the deployment of combat units-and
traces his transformation from a novice intelligence agent and
believer in the war to a political dissenter and active protester.
Get out! Run! We must leave this place! They are going to destroy this whole place! Go, children, run first! Go now!
These were the final shouts nine year-old Kim Phuc heard before her world dissolved into flames―before napalm bombs fell from the sky, burning away her clothing and searing deep into her skin. It’s a moment forever captured, an iconic image that has come to define the horror and violence of the Vietnam War. Kim was left for dead in a morgue; no one expected her to survive the attack. Napalm meant fire, and fire meant death.
Against all odds, Kim lived―but her journey toward healing was only beginning. When the napalm bombs dropped, everything Kim knew and relied on exploded along with them: her home, her country’s freedom, her childhood innocence and happiness. The coming years would be marked by excruciating treatments for her burns and unrelenting physical pain throughout her body, which were constant reminders of that terrible day. Kim survived the pain of her body ablaze, but how could she possibly survive the pain of her devastated soul?
Fire Road is the true story of how she found the answer in a God who suffered Himself; a Savior who truly understood and cared about the depths of her pain. Fire Road is a story of horror and hope, a harrowing tale of a life changed in an instant―and the power and resilience that can only be found in the power of God’s mercy and love.
Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the
U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the
Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of
defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front
guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs
also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with
projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems
for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines
how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the
Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they
worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed
their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by
factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict
between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy
for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the
Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical
ability of the North Vietnamese Army. War in the Villages helps to
explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered.
Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult
circumstances. Most of these Marines believed they were helping the
people of South Vietnam, and they served superbly. The failure to
end the war more favorably was no fault of theirs.
Despite French President Charles de Gaulle's persistent efforts to
constructively share French experience and use his resources to
help engineer an American exit from Vietnam, the Kennedy
administration responded to de Gaulle's peace initiatives with
bitter silence and inaction. The administration's response ignited
a series of events that dealt a massive blow to American prestige
across the globe, resulting in the deaths of over fifty-eight
thousand American soldiers and turning hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese citizens into refugees. This history of Franco-American
relations during the Kennedy presidency explores how and why France
and the US disagreed over the proper western strategy for the
Vietnam War. France clearly had more direct political experience in
Vietnam, but France's postwar decolonization cemented Kennedy's
perception that the French were characterized by a toxic mixture of
short-sightedness, stubbornness, and indifference to the collective
interests of the West. At no point did the Kennedy administration
give serious consideration to de Gaulle's proposals or entertain
the notion of using his services as an honest broker in order to
disengage from a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of
control. Kennedy's Francophobia, the roots of which appear in a
selection of private writings from Kennedy's undergraduate years at
Harvard, biased his decision-making. The course of action Kennedy
chose in 1963, a rejection of the French peace program, all but
handcuffed Lyndon Johnson into formally entering a war he knew the
United States had little chance of winning.
The conflict in Vietnam has been rewritten and reframed into many
corners of American life and has long shadowed contemporary
political science and foreign policy. The war and its aftermath
have engendered award-winning films and books. It has held up a
mirror to the twentieth century and to the wars of the
twenty-first. Set in wartime Vietnam and contemporary Vietnam, in
wartime America and in America today, the stories that comprise
Memorial Days were written from 1973 to the present. As our
continuing reappraisals of the war's shadow have unspooled over the
last half-decade, so too has Wayne Karlin returned to the subject
in his fiction, collected and published together here for the first
time. A girl in Maryland runs away from Civil War reenactors she
imagines to be American soldiers in Vietnam, while a woman in
Vietnam hides in the jungle from an American helicopter and another
tries to bury the relics of the war. A man mourns a friend lost in
Iraq while a helicopter crewman in Quang Tri loads the broken and
dead into his aircraft. Extras playing soldiers in a war film in
present-day Vietnam model themselves after other war films while a
Marine in a war sees himself as a movie character. A snake coiled
around the collective control of a helicopter in Vietnam uncoils in
a soldier come home from Iraq. The chronology is the chronology of
dreams or nightmares or triggered flashbacks: images and incidents
triggering other images and incidents in a sequence that seems to
make no sense-which is exactly the sense it makes. Some stories
burn with the fresh experiences of a Marine witnessing war
firsthand. Some stories radiate a long-abiding grief. All the
stories reflect and reconfigure the Vietnam War as it echoes into
the present century, under the light of retrospection.
Vietnam is an ancient and beautiful land, with a deep history of
occupational conflict that remains an enigma in Americans'
collective memory. It is still easy to forget that Vietnam is a
country and not a war, even as America's role in Vietnam inflamed
and divided the American citizenry in ways that are still evident
today. It is as if Vietnam's civil war resurrected our own. And if
you are a Vietnam War veteran or a family member of a vet, it's
worse, because, even after a half-century, many of the wounds won't
heal. What do you do when you have given up on forgetting? Chuck
Forsman is one of a sizable number of aging Vietnam vets who have
found deep satisfaction in revisiting Vietnam, supporting
charities, orphanages, and clinics, doing volunteer work and
more-anything to redeem what the U.S. military did there. He is
also a renowned painter and photographer who depicts places and
environments in ways that become unforgettable visual experiences
for the contemporary viewer. Lost in Vietnam chronicles a journey,
not a country. They were taken on visits averaging two months each
and two-year intervals over a decade. Forsman traveled largely by
motorbike throughout the country-south, central, and north-sharing
his experiences through amazing photographs of Vietnam's lands and
people. His visual journey of one such veteran's twofold quest: the
one for redemption and understanding, and the other to make art.
The renowned Le Ly Hayslip introduces the book and sets the table
for Forsman's incredible sojourn.
In 2002, Governor General Michael Jeffrey stated that 'we
Australians had everything under control in Phuoc Tuy Province'.
This referred not only to military control, but to the policy of
'pacification' employed by the Republic of Vietnam and external
'Free World' allies such as the US and Australia. In the hopes of
stemming the tide of Communism, pacification aimed to win the
allegiance of the populace through political, economic and social
reform. In this new work, Thomas Richardson explores the 1st
Australian Task Force's (1ATF) implementation of this policy in
Phuoc Tuy between 1966 and 1972. Using material from US and
Australian archives, as well as newly translated Vietnamese
histories, Destroy and Build: Pacification in Phuoc Tuy, 1966-1972
challenges the accepted historiography of the Western forces' fight
against insurgency in Vietnam.
Elite units carried out many dangerous operations during the
Vietnam War, the most secret and hazardous of which were conducted
by the Studies and Observations Group, formed in 1964. In the years
since the Vietnam War, the elite unit known as SOG has spawned many
myths, legends and war stories. Special Forces medic Joe Parnar
served with SOG during 1968 in FOB2/CCC near the tri-border area
that gave them access to the forbidden areas of Laos and Cambodia.
Parnar recounts his time with the recon men of this highly
classified unit, as his job involved a unique combination of
soldiering and lifesaving. His stories capture the extraordinary
commitment made by all the men of SOG and reveal the special
dedication of the medics, who put their own lives at risk to save
the lives of their teammates. Parnar also discusses his medical
training with the Special Forces. During his tour with SOG, Parnar
served as a dispensary medic, chase medic, Hatchet Force medic and
as a recon team member. This variety of roles gave him experience
not only in combat but in dealing with and treating the civilians
and indigenous peoples of that area. There is a graphic account of
a Laotian operation involving America's most decorated soldier,
Robert Howard, during which Parnar had to treat a man with a
blown-off foot alongside nearly fifty other casualties. It is a
reminder of the enormous responsibility and burden that a medic
carried. This new edition of SOG Medic makes this highly-praised
and sought-after book available again once more, with additional
photos and maps.
This book narrates the history of the different peoples who have
lived in the three major regions of Viet Nam over the past 3,000
years. It brings to life their relationships with these regions'
landscapes, water resources, and climatic conditions, their
changing cultures and religious traditions, and their interactions
with their neighbors in China and Southeast Asia. Key themes
include the dramatic impact of changing weather patterns from
ancient to medieval and modern times, the central importance of
riverine and maritime communications, ecological and economic
transformations, and linguistic and literary changes. The country's
long experience of regional diversity, multi-ethnic populations,
and a multi-religious heritage that ranges from local spirit cults
to the influences of Buddhism, Confucianism and Catholicism, makes
for a vividly pluralistic narrative. The arcs of Vietnamese history
include the rise and fall of different political formations, from
chiefdoms to Chinese provinces, from independent kingdoms to
divided regions, civil wars, French colonies, and modern republics.
In the twentieth century anticolonial nationalism, the worldwide
depression, Japanese occupation, a French attempt at reconquest,
the traumatic American-Vietnamese war, and the 1975 communist
victory all set the scene for the making of contemporary Viet Nam.
Rapid economic growth in recent decades has transformed this
one-party state into a global trading nation. Yet its rich history
still casts a long shadow. Along with other members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Viet Nam is now involved in
a tense territorial standoff in the South China Sea, as a rival of
China and a "partner" of the United States. If its independence and
future geographical unity seem assured, Viet Nam's regional
security and prospects for democracy remain clouded.
In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam.
Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and
operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a
strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was
grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential
advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat.
Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a
Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as
the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his
belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his
concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of
the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation.
Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a
historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the
attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe
Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes
and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts
from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an
annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key
people, places, and events.
An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam
War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide
that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point
in America's longest war.
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