|
Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
This is the eighth volume in a planned 10-volume operational and
chronological series covering the Marine Corps' participation in
the Vietnam War. A separate topical series will complement the
operational histories. This particular volume details the gradual
withdrawl in 1970-1971 of Marine combat forces from South Vietnam's
northernmost corps area, I Corps, as part of an overall American
strategy of turning the ground was against the North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong over to the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam.
This is the eighth volume of a projected nine-volume history of
Marine Corps operations in the Vietnam War. A separate functional
series complements the operational histories. This volume details
the activities of Marine Corps units after the departure from
Vietnam in 1971 of III Marine Amphibious Force, through to the 1973
ceasefire, and includes the return of Marine prisoners of war from
North Vietnam. Written from diverse views and sources, the common
thread in this narrative is the continued resistance of the South
Vietnames Armed Forces, in particular the Vietnamese Marine Corps,
to Communist aggression. This book is written from the perspective
of the American Marines who assisted them in their efforts. Someday
the former South Vietnamese Marines will be able to tell their own
story.
For the conscripts of who experienced the Vietnam 'police action',
the way the world was seen, shaped, and understood was
irretrievably changed by war. In his gentle, humorous and moving
memoir, Ted George gives voice to the experience that changed the
course of his life - and the lives of so many men - forever.
In 1985 Thomas C. Thayer's War Without Fronts offered a wealth of
data and analysis on U.S. military operations in the Vietnam War
and provided a fresh and provocative take on the infamous conflict.
When first published, reviewers agreed it was an invaluable text;
Vietnam War historians still cite Thayer in modern studies. Long
out-of-print, this new edition should facilitate the ongoing
conversation about how the American war in Vietnam continues to
serve as a comparison for more recent U.S. overseas military
campaigns. Thomas Thayer worked as a systems analyst for the Office
of the Secretary of Defense during the late 1960s and early 1970s,
compiling data to better understand the war and find trends that
might help improve U.S. civil and military operations. His work
thus offers an insider's view of American military strategy during
the Vietnam War and of how military operations affected the
Vietnamese people.
Fire from the Sky is the first complete history of the most
decorated Navy squadron of the Vietnam War. Richard C. Knott tells
the dramatic history of the HAL-3 Seawolves, the U.S. Navy's first
and only helicopter gunship squadron of the Vietnam War. The
squadron was established "in country" to support the fast,
pugnacious river patrol boats of the brown water navy. Flying
combat-worn Hueys borrowed from the Army, the mission of the
Seawolves quickly expanded to include rapid response air support to
any friendly force in the Delta needing immediate assistance. The
Seawolves inserted SEALs deep into enemy territory, and extracted
them, often despite savage enemy opposition. They rescued friendly
combatants from almost certain capture or death, and evacuated the
wounded when Medevac helicopters were not available.
Sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons. The
author admits that to be the "story of his life" and openly shares
much of it in this book. Although the book is largely an
historically based auto-biography, it is part fact and part
fiction. In cases where identities needed to be protected, the
"facts" necessary to that end are changed but without altering the
accuracy of the description of the event or its historical
significance. It is a personal story. It is a cowboy-warrior's
story told in a cowboy-warrior's language. It is the story of one
man's journey from bondage to freedom and from slavery to liberty.
It is the gritty story of this man's life-long education in the
school of hard knocks as his journey took him from a sharecropper's
shack, through the rodeo arena and the boxing ring, across the
football field and the drilling rig floor, into the Marines and two
wars and ultimately culminating in the university laboratory and
classroom (the most dangerous of all the aforementioned places).
Although woven around the experiences and adventures of one man, it
is also the story of the people who lived during the period of time
in American history that an entire generation was betrayed It is
the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal
odyssey took place. It is the story of the betrayal of an entire
generation of Americans and particularly the 40% (of the military
aged males) of that generation that fought the Vietnam war. The
story is told mostly in the form vignettes-short scenes of a
particular moment or event. Some are significant. Many are trivial.
Some are humorous. Others are heart breaking--even nightmarish. But
when sequenced, they tell a story that has a theme. They chronicle
an odyssey-an intellectual journey that begins with the author's
self-contradictory and delusional rationalizations for some of the
horrible things that he did in the name of "mother, God and
country" and ends with the realization that they were, indeed,
horrible. The conclusions are not mere "visions in the night." They
are a result of a very difficult process of shaking a lifetime of
authoritarian indoctrination. Some segments of the book will likely
be interpreted as "whining" or "self-pity" and they probably are.
But it is also a story of love, hate, happiness, sadness, anger,
complacency, adventure, excitement, boredom, bravery, fear, duty,
tyranny, incompetence, empire building, honor, cowardice, heroism
and yes, betrayal. The book is the product of a lifetime of
experience and reflection with a little research and a healthy
portion of labored discipline added. It was written with the white
heat of passion that occurs during the moment when the world comes
into focus for the first time. It will bring your world into better
focus.
This is the second volume in a series of a nine chronological
histories being prepared by Marine Corps History about the U.S.
marines operations in Vietnam.
|
|