This book examines the world confronted by the men of an American combat division during the Vietnam War. It covers several subjects, including the physical surroundings, weaponry, battles big and small, the medical effort, relations with the Vietnamese, and morale.

This highly illustrated title traces the development of mercenary soldiering from individuals and small units in the African wars of the 1960s-90s to today's state-employed corporate military contractors. The phenomenon of mercenary soldiering has constantly recurred in the news since the 1960s and has always attracted lively interest. The concept of 'mercenaries' began in the former Belgian Congo during the 1960s when men such as Mike Hoare and Bob Denard assembled hundreds of military veterans to 'do the fighting' for a particular leader or faction. This idea soon evolved into small teams of individuals training and leading local forces with varying success; wars in Rhodesia and on South Africa's borders attracted foreign volunteers into national armed forces, and veterans of these conflicts later sought employment elsewhere as mercenaries. The wars in the former Yugoslavia also attracted foreign fighters inspired as much by political and religious motives as by pay. This picture then evolved again, as former officers with recent experience set up sophisticated commercial companies to identify and fill the needs of governments whose own militaries were inadequate. Most recently, the aftermath of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen such contractors taking on some of the burden of long-term security off major national armies, while the subsequent rise of ISIS/Daesh has added a parallel strain of ideological volunteers. The author is well placed to describe how the face of mercenary soldiering has evolved and changed over 60 years. Using first-hand accounts, photos and detailed illustrations, this book presents a compelling snapshot of the life, campaigns and kit used by mercenary operatives engaged in fighting within both larger and more specific conflicts around the world.

With its fleet of large transport aircraft, the United States military can put personnel and equipment anywhere on the globe within hours. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in particular, virtually every soldier, every bullet, every pint of blood, and every bite of food have arrived in the war zone by airlift. Transport aircrews have accompanied the troops from the beginning, flying them in, supplying them, bringing them out for medical treatment or rotations home, and in the most heart-breaking missions, carrying them on their final journey back to grieving relatives.This book tells the story of one Air National Guard airlift wing as related by its members. The 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard consisted of a squadron of 12 C-130 cargo planes, their crews, and all the supporting sections - in all, more than 1,200 people. The author, a former Associated Press reporter turned aviator, flew as an active member of that unit and interviewed nearly 70 servicemen and women for this book. Their stories include C-130 aircrews who dodged heat-seeking missiles, mechanics who made combat repairs, flight nurses who treated and transported the wounded, even two motor pool truck drivers struck by a roadside bomb. The interviewees vividly describe their day-to-day work in the war zone, revealing the inner workings of a part of the military not usually well covered by the news media.

The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for three years, eight months and twenty days. After overthrowing Lon Nol in April 1975 and establishing a so-called Democratic Kampuchea, the Communist-sponsored government was responsible for the deaths of as many as two million people, almost one-third of the country's population. Here, Chileng Pa vividly recalls life under the Cambodian Communists.Attempting to conceal his identity as a soldier for the previous government, Chileng changed his name and moved his family to the village of Prayap, near the Vietnamese border. In April of 1977, after two years of starvation and cruelty at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Chileng was forced to watch as Communist guerillas brutally murdered his wife and two-year-old son. With nothing left for him in Prayap Chileng fled to Vietnam, but eventually returned to Cambodia as part of a Vietnamese invasion force that would end the bloody reign of the Khmer regime. In 1980, Chileng and his new family found their way to America. His ""simple strand of remembrance"" serves to honor all those who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Music was one of the first casualties of the Iranian Revolution. It was banned in 1979, but it quickly crept back into Iranian culture and politics. The state made use of music for its propaganda during the Iran-Iraq war. Over time music provided an important political space where artists and audiences could engage in social and political debate. Now, more than thirty-five years on, both the children of the revolution and their music have come of age. Soundtrack of the Revolution offers a striking account of Iranian culture, politics, and social change to provide an alternative history of the Islamic Republic. Drawing on over five years of research in Iran, including during the 2009 protests, Nahid Siamdoust introduces a full cast of characters, from musicians and audience members to state officials, and takes readers into concert halls and underground performances, as well as the state licensing and censorship offices. She closely follows the work of four musicians-a giant of Persian classical music, a government-supported pop star, a rebel rock-and-roller, and an underground rapper-each with markedly different political views and relations with the Iranian government. Taken together, these examinations of musicians and their music shed light on issues at the heart of debates in Iran-about its future and identity, changing notions of religious belief, and the quest for political freedom. Siamdoust shows that even as state authorities resolve, for now, to allow greater freedoms to Iran's majority young population, they retain control and can punish those who stray too far. But music will continue to offer an opening for debate and defiance. As the 2009 Green Uprising and the 1979 Revolution before it have proven, the invocation of a potent melody or musical verse can unite strangers into a powerful public.

There is an important debate raging about whether Iraq is becoming another Vietnam. Those who deny the similarities most vociferously are often those who know (or remember) the least about Vietnam. Kenneth Campbell knows Vietnam from his thirteen months of fighting there (he received a Purple Heart), and years of political organizing to get the United States out of the war. Here, Campbell lays out the political process of getting into, sinking deeper, hitting bottom, and finally pulling out of the Vietnam quagmire. He traces the chief lessons of Vietnam, which helped the United States successfully avoid quagmires for thirty years, and explains how neoconservatives within the Bush administration cynically used the tragedy of 9/11 to override the "Vietnam syndrome" and drag the nation into a new quagmire in Iraq. In view of where the United States finds itself today-unable to stay but unable to leave-Campbell recommends that the country rededicate itself to the essential lessons of Vietnam: the danger of imperial arrogance, the limits of military force, the importance of international and constitutional law, and the power of morality.

There is an important debate raging about whether Iraq is becoming another Vietnam. Those who deny the similarities most vociferously are often those who know (or remember) the least about Vietnam. Kenneth Campbell knows Vietnam from his thirteen months of fighting there (he received a Purple Heart), and years of political organizing to get the United States out of the war. Here, Campbell lays out the political process of getting into, sinking deeper, hitting bottom, and finally pulling out of the Vietnam quagmire. He traces the chief lessons of Vietnam, which helped the United States successfully avoid quagmires for thirty years, and explains how neoconservatives within the Bush administration cynically used the tragedy of 9/11 to override the "Vietnam syndrome" and drag the nation into a new quagmire in Iraq. In view of where the United States finds itself today-unable to stay but unable to leave-Campbell recommends that the country rededicate itself to the essential lessons of Vietnam: the danger of imperial arrogance, the limits of military force, the importance of international and constitutional law, and the power of morality.

A monumental work of research and analysis, this is a history of the Vietnam War in a single province of the Mekong Delta over the period 1930-1975. More precisely, it is a study of the Vietnamese dimension of the "Vietnam War, " focusing on the revolutionary movement that became popularly known as the "Viet Cong." There are several distinctive features to this study: (1) it provides an explanation for the paradox of why the revolutionary movement was so successful during the war, but unable to meet the challenges of postwar developments; (2) it challenges the dominant theme of contemporary political analysis which assumes that people are "rational" actors responding to events with careful calculations of self-interest; (3) it closely examines province-level documentation that casts light on a number of important historical controversies about the war. No other history of the Vietnam War has drawn on such a depth of documentation, especially firsthand accounts that allow the Vietnamese participants to spea directly to us.

A retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran makes full use of recently declassified U.S. documents in this first comprehensive study of fighter combat over North Vietnam. His balanced, exhaustive coverage describes and analyzes both Air Force and Navy engagements with North Vietnamese MiGs while simultaneously discussing the SAM threat and U.S. countermeasures, laser-guided bombs, and U.S. attempts to counter the MiG threat with a variety of technologies. Accessible yet professional, Clashes is filled with valuable lessons that are as valid today as they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Some sixty-five photographs, tables, pie charts, maps, and diagrams of American and North Vietnamese formations and tactics are included. Beginning with the first air-to-air engagements of Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965, Marshall Michel describes the initial American successes against the MiGs and the stunning turn of events in late 1967 when the North Vietnamese began shooting down more U.S. aircraft than they lost. He explains how in 1968, at the end of Rolling Thunder, the U.S. Air Force ignored problems with their tactics, formations, and missiles, while the U.S. Navy undertook a complete reassessment of its air-to-air operations and formed its famous Topgun course. The second part of the book, covering Operation Linebacker in 1972, examines the results of these two approaches and how the Navy scored heavily against the MiGs while the Air Force continued to suffer losses to MiG-21s. Michel offers extraordinary insights into events that led to this situation and the Air Force's efforts to reverse the trend. This combination of descriptions of actual dogfights with authoritative analysis of the tactics, pilot skills, high-level decision making, and shortcomings - more than 57 percent of U.S. air-to-air missiles malfunctioned and less than 13 percent scored a kill - will prove indispensable to everyone with an interest in an combat, the war in Vietnam, and Navy and Air Force aviation in general.

When American forces arrived in Vietnam, they found themselves embedded in historical village and frontier spaces already shaped by past conflicts. American bases and bombing targets followed spatial and political logics influenced by the footprints of previous wars in central Vietnam, and these militarized landscapes continue to shape postwar land-use politics. Footprints of War traces the long history of conflict-produced spaces in Vietnam, beginning with early modern wars and the French colonial invasion in 1885 and continuing through the collapse of the Saigon government in 1975. Drawing on extensive archival research and years of interviews and fieldwork in the hills and villages around the city of Hue, David Biggs integrates historical geographic information system (GIS) data and uses aerial, high-altitude, and satellite imagery to render otherwise inscrutable sites as living, multidimensional spaces. This personal and multilayered approach yields an innovative history of the lasting traces of war in Vietnam and a model for understanding other militarized landscapes.

'Gripping ... A terrific action narrative' Max Hastings 'Reads like a Tom Clancy thriller, yet every word is true ... This is modern warfare close-up and raw' Andrew Roberts Bestselling and Orwell Prize-winning author Toby Harnden tells the gripping and incredible story of the six-day battle that began the War in Afghanistan and how it set the scene for twenty years of conflict. The West is in shock. Al-Qaeda has struck the US on 9/11 and thousands are dead. Within weeks, UK Special Forces enter the fray in Afghanistan alongside the CIA's Team Alpha and US troops. Victory is swift, but fragile. Hundreds of jihadists surrender and two operatives from Team Alpha enter Qala-i Jangi - the 'Fort of War' - to interrogate them. The prisoners revolt, one CIA man falls, and the other is trapped inside the fort. Seven members of the SBS - elite British Special Forces - volunteer for the rescue force and race into danger and the unknown. The six-day battle that follows proves to be one of the bloodiest of the Afghanistan war as the SBS and their American comrades face an enemy determined to die in the mud citadel. Superbly researched, First Casualty is based on unprecedented access to the CIA, SBS, and US Special Forces. Orwell Prize-winning author Toby Harnden recounts the gripping story of that first battle in Afghanistan and how the haunting foretelling it contained - unreliable allies, ethnic rivalries, suicide attacks, and errant bombs - was ignored, fueling the twenty-year conflict to come.

Contents:
1. An introduction to Golf Course Wars
2. Construction of Canadian Myths of Identity
3. Displacing the Native in Canadian Histories
4. Cultural Displays: Inside the Canadian Museum of Civilisation
5. At the Barricades
6. Interventions
Conclusion: Myths of Disappearance and Alternative Remembrance

"

A Companion to the Vietnam War "contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.
Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

"

A Companion to the Vietnam War "contains twenty-four definitive essays on America's longest and most divisive foreign conflict. It represents the best current scholarship on this controversial and influential episode in modern American history.
Highlights issues of nationalism, culture, gender, and race.
Covers the breadth of Vietnam War history, including American war policies, the Vietnamese perspective, the antiwar movement, and the American home front.
Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic.
Includes a select bibliography to guide further research.

A vividly detailed account of life aboard U.S. submarines in the Pacific during World War II.

T his BOOK EXAMINES the world confronted by the men of an American combat division during the Vietnam War. Although the unit in question is the 25th Infantry Division, this is not a unit history or standard military chronology. Instead, I try to view all of the major parts of the soldiers' world-including subjects as diverse as climate, living conditions, deadly combat, and morale. The world inhabited by the soldiers of the 25th Division was not theirs alone; the men and women who served with other frontline units in Vietnam will immediately recognize the major landmarks. Using the 25th Division as a focal point, I hope to help the people of today better understand what the Vietnam War was like in fact, not fiction. This work is based on a variety of sources. The documentary foundations come from a great number of 25th Division records generated during the war; the most important of which are the large quarterly Division reports. They, in turn, are complemented by the quarterly reports that came from II Field Force, Vietnam, the Army headquarters for the units operating in the provinces near Saigon. The Center of Military History, Department of the Army, provided these documents to me while I was doing research on the village war in a Vietnamese province. I used this research to write The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Westview Press, 1991), which deals with the political and military struggle waged by both sides in an important part of the 25th Division's area of operations.

Existing studies of the Vietnam War have been written mostly from an American perspective, using western sources, and viewing the conflict through western eyes. This book, based on extensive original research, including Vietnamese, Chinese and former Soviet sources, presents a history of the war from the perspective of the Vietnamese communists. It charts relations with Moscow and Beijing, showing how the involvement of the two major communist powers changed over time, and how the Vietnamese, despite their huge dependence on the Chinese and the Soviets, were most definitely in charge of their own decision making. Overall, it provides an important corrective to the many one-sided studies of the war, and presents a very interesting new perspective.

Originally published in 1998 by the U.S. Army Center of Military History "Combat Operations: Taking the Offensive" chronicles the onset of offensive operations by the U.S. Army after eighteen months of building up a credible force on the ground in South Vietnam and taking the first steps toward bringing the war to the enemy. The compelling story by George L. MacGarrigle begins in October 1966, when General William C. Westmoreland believed that he had the arms and men to take the initiative from the enemy and that significant progress would be made on all fronts over the next twelve months. Aware of American intentions, North Vietnam undertook a prolonged war of attrition and stepped up the infiltration of its own troops into the South. While the insurgency in the South remained the cornerstone of Communist strategy, it was increasingly overshadowed by main-force military operations. These circumstances, according to MacGarrigle, set the stage for intensified combat. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong units retained the advantage, fighting only when it suited their purposes and retreating with impunity into inviolate sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. With Westmoreland feeling hamstrung by political constraints on his ability to wage war in the vast hostile areas along the border, 1967 ended with a growing uncertainty in the struggle to secure the countryside. Relying on official American and enemy primary sources, MacGarrigle has crafted a well-balanced account of this year of intense combat. His volume is a tribute to those who sacrificed so much in a long and irresolute conflict, and soldiers engaged in military operations that place great demands on their initiative, skill, and devotion will find its thought-provoking lessons worthy of reflection.

This volume offers a dispassionate strategic examination of the Vietnam conflict that challenges the conventional wisdom that South Vietnam could not survive as an independent non-communist entity over the long term regardless of how the United States conducted its military-political effort in Indochina. In reality, the Vietnam War was far from an "unwinnable" war for the United States: the latter possessed enormous military, financial, and other advantages over its foes. However, US officials made a multitude of predictable, avoidable strategic mistakes over a long period of time and certain key figures displayed an inability even to understand the significance of their errors and learn from them. The book considers US strategic decision-making at a number of levels and shows how American errors created the military and political conditions that made North Vietnamese victory possible. If the United States had conducted its political-military effort in a fashion that did not negate its advantages - indeed, ifit had avoided only a small number of many strategic errors - the outcome of the Indochina conflict would likely have been very different.

This unique volume comprising writings and memoirs covering the half century since the end of the Pacific War, offers the reader a fascinating and remarkable collection of personal experiences of Japan across a wide spectrum.

This book is a unique source of information about U.S. troop involvement in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1972. It stresses that Vietnam was a war without fronts or battle lines-a war different from any that the United States had previously fought.

This six-volume collection of essential articles on the American involvement in the Vietnam Wa encompasses the political, social, and military aspects of the war.

This six-volume collection of essential articles on the American involvement in the Vietnam Wa encompasses the political, social, and military aspects of the war.

Contents:
1. Haines, Harry W Disputing the Wreckage: Ideological Struggle at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Vietnam Generation 1 [1989]
2. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin and Barry Schwartz The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating A Difficult Past, American Journal of Sociology 97 [1991]
3. Sturken, Marita The Wall, the Screen, and the Image: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Representations 35 [1991]
4. Jeffords, Susan Women, Gender and the War, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 [1989]
5. Smith, Lorrie Back Against the Wall: Anti-Feminist Backlist in Vietnam War Literature, Vietnam Generation 1 [1989]
6. Mithers, Carol Lynn Missing in Action: Women Warriors in Vietnam, Cultural Critique 3 [1986]
7. Marling, Carol Ann The Statute Near the Wall, Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1 [1987]
8. Bellhouse, Mary L and Lawrence Litchfield Vietnam and Loss of Innocence: An Analysis of the Political Implications of the Popular Literature of the Vietnam War, Journal of Popular Culture 16 [1982]
9. Uchmanowicz, Pauline Vanishing Vietnam: Whiteness and the Technology of Memory, Literature and Psychology 41 [1995]
10. Charlot, John Vietnamese Cinema: First Views, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 22 [1991]
11. Katzman, Jason From Outcast to Cliche: How Film Shaped, Warped and Developed the Image of the Vietnam Veteran, 1967-1990, Journal of American Culture 16 [1993]
12. Clark, Michael Remembering Vietnam, Cultural Critique 3 [1986]
13. Berg, Rick Losing Vietnam: Covering the War in an Age of Technology, Cultural Critique 3 [1986]
14. Rowe, John Carlos From Documentary to Docudrama: Vietnam on Television in the 1980s, Genre 21 [1988]
15. Auster, Albert Reflections of the Way Life Used to Be: Tour of Duty, China Beach, and the memory of the Sixties, Television Quarterly 24 [1990]
16. Ballard-Reisch, Deborah China Beach and Tour of Duty: American Television and Revisionist History of The Vietnam War, Journal of Popular Culture 25 [1991]
17. Jason, Philip K The Noise is Always in My Head: Auditory Images in the Literature of the Vietnam War, Midwest Quarterly 37 [1996]