|
Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the
2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a
distinguished work of nonfiction. The first battle book from Mark
Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue
1968, "an instantly recognizable classic of military history"
(Christian Science Monitor), was published to massive critical
acclaim and became a New York Times bestseller. In the early hours
of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred
attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet
Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam's
intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation
Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the
city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands
save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused
to believe the size and scope of the Front's presence, ordering
small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy
troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel
Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the
city in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II.
With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam
and inter-views with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates
each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints.
Played out over twenty-four days and ultimately costing 10,000
lives, the Battle of Hue was the bloodiest of the entire war. When
it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only
about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of
this pivotal moment.
The slang, the unique vocabulary of the soldiers and Marines
serving in Vietnam was a mishmash of words and phrases reaching
back to the Korean War, World War II, and even earlier. At the same
time it used words and phrases reflecting the country's changing
protest culture at home, ideological and poetical doctrine, ethical
and cultural conflicts, and racialism and the drug culture. The
slanguage in Vietnam was made even more complex by the Pidgin
Vietnamese-English used by Americans and Vietnamese alike. American
culture and society were changing rapidly and drastically at home
and this bled into Vietnam. In the jungles, swamps, and hills of
Vietnam soldier and marine slang also followed the traditional path
of what was important to their daily lives: their leaders, the
harsh environment, food, uniforms, weapons, equipment, and how they
fought and lived in the country.
|
Vietnam
(Paperback)
Nigel Cawthorne
|
R245
R191
Discovery Miles 1 910
Save R54 (22%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
|
The men of the U.S. Navy's brown-water force played a vital but
often overlooked role in the Vietnam War. Known for their black
berets and limitless courage, they maneuvered their aging,
makeshift craft along shallow coastal waters and twisting inland
waterways to search out the enemy. In this moving tribute to their
contributions and sacrifices, Tom Cutler records their dramatic
story as only a participant could. His own Vietnam experience
enables him to add a striking human dimension to the account. The
terror of firefights along the jungle-lined rivers, the rigors of
camp life, and the sudden perils of guerrilla warfare are conveyed
with authenticity. At the same time, the author's training as a
historian allows him to objectively describe the scope of the
navy's operations and evaluate their effectiveness.
Winner of the Navy League's Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary
Achievement in 1988 when the book was first published, Cutler is
credited with having written the definitive history of the
brown-water sailors, an effort that has helped readers better
understand the nature of U.S. involvement in the war.
The combatants in the three Vietnam wars from 1945 to 1975 employed
widely contrasting supply methods. This fascinating book reveals
that basic traditional techniques proved superior to expensive
state of the art systems. During the Indochina or French' war,
France's initial use of wheeled transport and finally air supply
proved vulnerable given the terrain, climate and communist
adaptability . The colonial power gave up the unequal struggle
after the catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu. To stem the advance
of Communism throughout the region, the Americans stepped in to
support the pro-Western South Vietnam regime and threw vast
quantities of manpower and money at the problem. The cost became
increasingly unpopular at home. General Giap's and Ho Chi Minh's
ruthless use of coolies most famously on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
proved resistant to carpet-bombing and Agent Orange defoliation.
The outcome of the final war between the Communist North Vietnam
and the corrupt Southern leadership, now with minimal US support,
was almost a forgone conclusion. The Author is superbly qualified
to examine these three wars from the logistic perspective. His
conclusions make for compelling reading and will be instructive to
acting practitioners and enquiring minds.
The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960-1968, for the first time
fully explores the most sustained, intensive use of psychological
operations (PSYOP) in American history. In PSYOP, US military
personnel use a variety of tactics-mostly audio and visual
messages-to influence individuals and groups to behave in ways that
favor US objectives. Informed by the author's firsthand experience
of such operations elsewhere, this account of the battle for
"hearts and minds" in Vietnam offers rare insight into the art and
science of propaganda as a military tool in the twentieth century.
The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960-1968, focuses on the
creation, capabilities, and performance of the forces that
conducted PSYOP in Vietnam, including the Joint US Public Affairs
Office and the 4th PSYOP Group. In his comprehensive account,
Mervyn Edwin Roberts III covers psychological operations across the
entire theater, by all involved US agencies. His book reveals the
complex interplay of these activities within the wider context of
Vietnam and the Cold War propaganda battle being fought by the
United States at the same time. Because PSYOP never occurs in a
vacuum, Roberts considers the shifting influence of alternative
sources of information-especially from the governments of North and
South Vietnam, but also from Australia, Korea, and the Philippines.
The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960-1968, also addresses the
development of PSYOP doctrine and training in the period prior to
the introduction of ground combat forces in 1965 and, finally,
shows how the course of the war itself forced changes to this
doctrine. The scope of the book allows for a unique measurement of
the effectiveness of psychological operations over time.
Winner of the 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
Nearly 1,600 Americans are still unaccounted for and presumed dead
from the Vietnam War. These are the stories of those who mourn and
continue to search for them. For many families the Vietnam War
remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans-and more than 300,000
Vietnamese-involved in the conflict are still unaccounted for. In
What Remains, Sarah E. Wagner tells the stories of America's
missing service members and the families and communities that
continue to search for them. From the scientists who work to
identify the dead using bits of bone unearthed in Vietnamese
jungles to the relatives who press government officials to find the
remains of their loved ones, Wagner introduces us to the men and
women who seek to bring the missing back home. Through their
experiences she examines the ongoing toll of America's most fraught
war. Every generation has known the uncertainties of war.
Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington
National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never
return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic
science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the
remains of the missing, often from the merest trace-a tooth or
other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts
to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost
service members. So promising are these scientific developments
that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping
to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such
homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories,
as with the weight of their loved ones' sacrifices, and to
reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the
nation.
It wasn't rockets or artillery that came through the skies one week
during the war. It was the horrific force of nature that suddenly
put both sides in awe. As an unofficial truce began, questions and
emotions battled inside every air crewman's mind as they faced
masses of Vietnamese civilians outside their protective base
perimeters for the first time. Could we trust them not to shoot?
Could they trust us not to drop them off in a detention camp?
Truces never last, but life changes a bit for all the people
involved while they are happening. Sometimes wars are suspended and
fighting stops for a while. A holiday that both sides recognize
might do it, as happened in the Christmas truce during World War I.
Weather might do it, too, as it did in Vietnam in October 1970. The
"typhoon truce" was just as real, and the war stopped for three
days in northern I Corps--that area bordering the demilitarized
zone separating South Vietnam from the North. The unofficial
"typhoon truce" came because first, Super Typhoon Joan arrived,
devastating all the coastal lowlands in I Corps and further up into
North Vietnam. Then, less than a week later came Super Typhoon
Kate. Kate hit the same area with renewed fury, leaving the entire
countryside under water and the people there faced with both war
and natural disaster at the same time. No one but the Americans,
the foreign warriors fighting throughout the country, had the
resources to help the people who lived in the lowlands, and so they
did. For the men who took their helicopters out into the unending
rain it really made little difference. Perhaps no one would shoot
at them for a while, but the everyday dangers they faced remained,
magnified by the low clouds and poor visibility. The crews got just
as tired, maybe more so, than on normal missions. None of that
really mattered. The aircrews of the 101st Airborne went out to
help anyway, because rescuing people was now their mission. In this
book we see how for a brief period during an otherwise vicious war,
saving life took precedence over bloody conflict.
While the past half-century has seen no diminution in the valor and
fighting skill of the U.S. military and its allies, the fact
remains that our wars have become more protracted, with decisive
results more elusive. With only two exceptions-Panama and the Gulf
War under the first President Bush-our campaigns have taken on the
character of endless slogs without positive results. This
fascinating book takes a ground-up look at the problem in order to
assess how our strategic objectives have recently become divorced
from our true capability, or imperatives. The book presents a
unique examination of the nature of insurgencies and the three
major guerrilla wars the United States has fought in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Vietnam. It is both a theoretical work and one that
applies the hard experience of the last five decades to address the
issues of today. As such, it also provides a timely and meaningful
discussion of America's current geopolitical position. It starts
with the previously close-held casualty estimate for Iraq that The
Dupuy Institute compiled in 2004 for the U.S. Department of
Defense. Going from the practical to the theoretical, it then
discusses a construct for understanding insurgencies and the
contexts in which they can be fought. It applies these principles
to Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam, assessing where the projection of
U.S. power can enhance our position and where it merely weakens it.
It presents an extensive analysis of insurgencies based upon a
unique database of 83 post-WWII cases. The book explores what is
important to combat and what is not important to resist in
insurgencies. As such, it builds a body of knowledge based upon a
half-century's worth of real-world data, with analysis, not
opinion. In these pages, Christopher A. Lawrence, the President of
The Dupuy Institute, provides an invaluable guide to how the U.S.
can best project its vital power, while avoiding the missteps of
the recent past.
American military special operations forces-Rangers, SEALs, and
others-have become a well-recognised and highly respected part of
our popular culture. But whom do these elite warriors look to in
their times of greatest need: when wounded on the battlefield, cut
off deep behind enemy lines, or adrift in the expanse of the
world's oceans? They look skyward, hoping to catch a glimpse of
their own personal guardian angel: a U.S. Air Force pararescue
jumper (PJ) who lives, and sometimes dies, by the motto that others
may live. Taking Fire provides an up-close look into the heroism
and mystique of this little known segment of the Air Force Special
Tactics community by focusing on one of the most dramatic rescues
of the Vietnam War. It was June 1972 and Capt. Lynn Aikman is
returning from a bombing mission over North Vietnam when his F-4
Phantom is jumped by an enemy MiG and shot down. He and his
backseater Tom Hanton eject from their crippled aircraft, but
Hanton lands near a village and is quickly captured by local
militia. Badly injured during the ejection, Aikman lands some
distance from the village, and there is a chance that he can be
recovered if American rescuers can reach him before the enemy does.
Now on the ground and drifting in and out of consciousness, Captain
Aikman looks up and suddenly sees his guardian angel in the form of
USAF Pararescue Jumper Chuck McGrath. As Sergeant McGrath is
preparing to hook the downed pilot to a hoist line, he sees it fall
to the ground. Hostile fire on the hovering Jolly Green Giant
rescue helicopter has damaged the hoist mechanism causing the
operator to cut the line. While circling A-1 Skyraiders strafe the
militia to keep them away from Aikman and McGrath, the helicopter
crew races to come up with a plan. It's getting dark, and they'll
only have one chance. Taking Fire is an exciting, highly dramatic
story of life and death over North Vietnam. Much more than a
chronicle the events of 27 June 1972, the book gives the reader an
up-close look at the little known world of the U.S. Air Force's
elite aerial rescue force.
The M113 is the most widely used and versatile armoured vehicle in
the world. Fielded in 1960 as a simple 'battlefield taxi', over
80,000 M113s would see service with 50 nations around the world and
55 years later, many thousands are still in use. In addition to its
original role of transporting troops across the battlefield,
specialized versions perform a multitude of other functions
including command and control, fire support, anti-tank and
anti-aircraft defence, and casualty evacuation. This new fully
illustrated study examines the service record of the M113 from its
initial fielding through to the end of the Vietnam War. It will
also describe the many US, South Vietnamese, and Australian
variants of the M113 used in the Vietnam War as well as information
on tactics, unit tables of organization and equipment, and a
selection of engagements in which the M113 played a decisive role.
Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of
the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long
Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the
accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national
reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a
decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United
States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese
materials as well as French, British, Canadian, and American
documents, Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war.
Specifically, he examines the internal debates and other elements
that shaped Hanoi's revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding
US military intervention, and resulting domestic and foreign
programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent
of hostilities in 1965, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War
demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United
States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible
for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most
tragic conflict of the Cold War era.
During Hank Zeybel's first tour in Vietnam he flew 772 C130 sorties
as a navigator. He volunteered for a second tour, requesting
assignment to B26s so he could "shoot back." When B26s were removed
from the inventory, he accepted a Spectre gunship crew slot, flying
truck-busting missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He describes the
terror of flying through heavy AA fire over the trail, and the
heroics of the pilots in bringing their crews through. Away from
the war he recalls leave back in the US, his elderly father
bewildered by his war-hardened attitude and black sense of humor.
Contextualising his time with Spectre gunships, he compares his
experiences with those of other airmen, like Phil Combies and Robin
Olds, and his broader Air Force career - he joined upon graduating
university in 1955 and his first operational assignment was as a
B47 Stratojet navigator-bomber at Strategic Air Command - trained
to drop thermonuclear bombs with precision. From 1957 to 1963, he
logged over two thousand hours as a radar-bombardier in B47
Stratojets and B52 C-models. In this memoir of Vietnam, his Air
Force career and his second career as a journalist and writer,
Zeybel's admiration of the skill and bravery of pilots - many of
whom who he depended on for his very survival - shines through his
desciptions of combat missions and being "along for the ride."
This is the definitive story of one of the longest and most
controversial conflicts in US history. Created in association with
the Smithsonian Institution, this authoritative history of the
Vietnam War examines the key figures and events of the conflict,
and its lasting effects on the world. This history book for adults
combines compelling text with maps and archive photography, A Short
History of the Vietnam War is an all-encompassing showcase of every
aspect of the fighting and the wider political landscape, from the
struggle for civil rights to the treatment of prisoners. Inside the
pages of this retelling of America's bloodiest conflict, you'll
discover: - Vivid, moving, and informative details of the Vietnam
war, including eyewitness accounts and iconic photographs - A clear
and compelling account of the conflict, in short, self-contained
events from the Battle of Ia Drang to the Tet Offensive and The
Khmer Rouge - Biography spreads highlighting major military and
political figures - Features on everyday life in the war offering
additional context - Stunning image spreads displaying weapons, spy
gear, and other equipment that defined the war - Maps and feature
boxes provide additional information on major events during the
conflict Detailed descriptions of events, from Operation Passage to
Freedom to the evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon, are brought
to life with eyewitness accounts and iconic photographs. Gallery
pages present collections of infantry weapons, artillery, aircraft,
and armoured vehicles, while diagrams and maps show exactly how
battles and decisive moments unfolded, and biographical entries
provide essential insight into the roles of significant individuals
from Henry Kissinger to General Thieu. The perfect read for the
military history enthusiast, A Short History of the Vietnam War is
a stirring visual record of the suffering, sacrifice, and heroism
that occurred in America's bloodiest ever conflicts.
In 1967-68, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) was on the front
line of the defence of South Vietnam's Quang Tri province, which
was at the very heart of the Vietnam conflict. Facing them were the
soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), men whose organization
and equipment made them a very different opponent from the famous,
irregular Viet Cong forces. From the 'Hill Battles' in April 1967
to the struggle for the city of Hue (January-March 1968) this
bloody campaign forced the two sides into a gruelling trial of
strength. The USMC held a general technological and logistical
advantage - including close air support and airborne transport,
technology, and supplies - but could not always utilize these
resources effectively in mountainous, jungle, or urban environments
better known by their Vietnamese opponents. In this arresting
account of small-unit combat, David R. Higgins steps into the
tropical terrain of Vietnam to assess the performance and
experience of USMC and NVA forces in three savage battles that
stretched both sides to the limit.
The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The
women's movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily
reviled as "libbers." Inette Miller is one year out of college-a
reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and
is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days
together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to
accompany him to war. There are obstacles. All wives of US military
are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper's editor,
Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter.
Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After
thirty days, she is on her own. As one of the rare woman war
correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army
soldier, Miller's experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don't shines a
light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious woman of
that era and illustrates the schizophrenic struggle between the
forces of powerful feminist ideology and the contrarian forces of
the world as it was. Girls Don't is the story of what happens when
a twenty-three-year-old feminist makes her way into the land of
machismo. This is a war story, a love story, and an open-hearted
confessional within the burgeoning women's movement, chronicling
its demands and its rewards.
|
You may like...
Our Vietnam
Langguth
Paperback
R698
R611
Discovery Miles 6 110
|