Steven Grzesik's counter-culture experience in Greenwich Village ended with a bad acid trip followed by a draft notice. The Vietnam War, then at its height, seemed doomed to failure by cynical politicians and a skeptical public, a prediction he weighed against his sense of duty to himself and to his country. Through a variety of combat duties--with the infantry, the 36th Engineer Battalion, F Co. 75th Rangers and the 174th Assault Helicopter Co.--and several close calls with death, Grzesik's detailed memoir recounts his two tours in-country, where he hoped merely to survive with a semblance of heroism, yet ultimately redefined himself.

By the time of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military had transitioned to jet aircraft. Yet leaders soon learned prop-driven planes could still play a role in counterinsurgency warfare. World War II-era Douglas B-26 light bombers proved effective in close air support and interdiction, beginning with Operation Farm Gate in 1961. Forty B-26s were remanufactured as improved A-26 attack aircraft, which destroyed hundreds of North Vietnamese supply vehicles on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1966-1969. The personal recollections of 37 pilots, navigators, maintenance and armament personnel, and family members, tell the harrowing story of B-26 and A-26 Air Commando Wing combat operations in Vietnam and Laos.

The first comprehensive treatment of the air wars in Vietnam. Filling a substantial void in our understanding of the history of airpower in Vietnam, this book provides the first comprehensive treatment of the air wars in Vietnam. Brian Laslie traces the complete history of these air wars from the beginning of American involvement until final withdrawal. Detailing the competing roles and actions of the air elements of the United States Army, Navy, and Air Force, the author considers the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. He also looks at the air war from the perspective of the North Vietnamese Air Force. Most important for understanding the US defeat, Laslie illustrates the perils of a nation building a one-dimensional fighting force capable of supporting only one type of war.

A poignant, angry, articulate book Newsweek 'Mr Fall's book is a dramatic treatment of a historic event graphic impact New York Times Originally published in 1961, before the United States escalated its involvement in South Vietnam, Street Without Joy offered a clear warning about what American forces would face in the jungles of Southeast Asia; a costly and protracted revolutionary war fought without fronts against a mobile enemy. In harrowing detail, Fall describes the brutality and frustrations of the Indochina War, the savage eight-year conflict, ending in 1954 after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, in which French forces suffered a staggering defeat at the hands of Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists. Street Without Joy was required reading for policymakers in Washington and GIs in the field and is now considered a classic.

This book assesses the emergence and transformation of global protest movements during the Vietnam War era. It explores the relationship between protest focused on the war and other emancipatory and revolutionary struggles, moving beyond existing scholarship to examine the myriad interlinked protest issues and mobilisations around the globe during the Indochina Wars. Bringing together scholars working from a range of geographical, historiographical and methodological perspectives, the volume offers a new framework for understanding the history of wartime protest. The chapters are organised around the social movements from the three main geopolitical regions of the world during the 1960s and early 1970s: the core capitalist countries of the so-called first world, the socialist bloc and the Global South. The final section of the book then focuses on international organisations that explicitly sought to bridge and unite solidarity and protest around the world. In an era of persistent military conflict, the book provides timely contributions to the question of what war does to protest movements and what protest movements do to war.

The untold story of how America's secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA's Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public-and most of Congress-Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. With "revelatory reporting" and "lucid prose" (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA's clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since-all the way to today's war on terrorism.

This second volume of accounts by nurses who served with U.S. forces in Vietnam presents recollections of 17 women who cared for American casualties during a controversial war. They faced overwhelming trauma, conflicting emotions and isolation while caring for wounded at frontline hospitals, aboard ships and in medical centers. Representing the army and navy, their experiences of struggle, friendship and love formed their professional and personal lives.

Historians have suggested many reasons for America's defeat in Vietnam. The premise of this book is that disunity on the home front was the most significant and influential factor leading to our downfall in Vietnam. The disunity in America was incited and fueled by the antiwar movement. This movement, collectively consisting of the antiwar factions, the media, academia and congressional doves, gave rise to the "second front" which became a major weapon in Hanoi's arsenal. This second front was ever present in the minds of North Vietnam's leaders. It played a major role in Hanoi's strategy and was valued as the equivalent of several army divisions. The disunity fostered by the antiwar movement gave our enemies confidence and encouraged them to hold out in the face of battlefield defeats. Divided We Fall reveals the full impact of the second front, how it influenced the conduct of the war and most importantly, its effect on the outcome of the war. It is a testament on how the most powerful nation in the world can go down in defeat when its people are divided. The most important lesson of the Vietnam War is that disunity on the home front leads to defeat abroad. The divisions we have seen over the war in Iraq are a strong indication that we have not yet learned this lesson. The thesis of this book was recently validated by a well known American statesman, Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, National Security Adviser to presidents Nixon and Ford and US negotiator at the Paris peace talks to end the war in Vietnam. During the Lou Dobbs Tonight show on August 25, 2005, he made this statement of historical significance: "In Vietnam we defeated ourselves with domestic divisions."

Reverberations of the Vietnam War can still be felt in American culture. The post-9/11 United States forays into the Middle East, the invasion and occupation of Iraq especially, have evoked comparisons to the nearly two decades of American presence in Viet Nam (1954-1973). That evocation has renewed interest in the Vietnam War, resulting in the re-printing of older War narratives and the publication of new ones. This volume tracks those echoes as they appear in American, Vietnamese American, and Vietnamese war literature, much of which has joined the American literary canon. Using a wide range of theoretical approaches, these essays analyze works by Michael Herr, Bao Ninh, Duong Thu Huong, Bobbie Ann Mason, le thi diem thuy, Tim O'Brien, Larry Heinemann, and newcomers Denis Johnson, Karl Marlantes, and Tatjana Solis. Including an historical timeline of the conflict and annotated guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for students and readers of contemporary American fiction

Reuel Long's experiences as an MD in the emergency rooms of Flint, Michigan prepared him for only some of what he would see in a mobile army surgical hospital. Antiwar sentiment among the doctors in basic training at Fort Sam Houston set the tone for his tour as a general medical officer. In March 1971, the 27th MASH played a critical role treating survivors of the deadliest attack on any firebase during the Vietnam War. Long's vivid memoir recalls the casualties he cared for during the war, including one he crossed paths with 44 years later-who in his own words describes his rehabilitation from the loss of his legs and his protesting the war from a wheelchair. An addendum gives an insider's account of the U.S. military's initial failure to remedy a fatal design flaw in the M16 rifle, which caused an unknown number of American casualties.

In the summer of 1969, as the Vietnam War was being turned over to the South Vietnamese, Lieutenant John Raschke arrived in Chuong Thien Province deep in the Mekong Delta, eager to have a positive impact. Recounting his assignment to a provincial advisory team of military and civilian personnel, this memoir depicts the ordinary and the extraordinary of life both inside and outside the wire--mortar attacks, firefights and snipers, hot showers, good meals and comradery, the life and death struggles of the Vietnamese people and the bonds he formed with them.

Vietnam's Prodigal Heroes examines the critical role of desertion in the international Vietnam War debate. Paul Benedikt Glatz traces American deserters' odyssey of exile and activism in Europe, Japan, and North America to demonstrate how their speaking out and unprecedented levels of desertion in the US military changed the traditional image of the deserter.

On his second tour in Vietnam, U.S. Army Captain John Haseman served 18 months as a combat advisor in the Mekong Delta's Kien Hoa Province. His detailed memoir gives one of the few accounts of a district-level advisor's experiences at the "point of the spear." Often the only American going into combat with his South Vietnamese counterparts, Haseman highlights the importance of trust and confidence between advisors and their units and the courage of the men he fought with during the 1972 North Vietnamese summer offensive. Among the last advisors to leave the field, Haseman describes the challenges of supporting his counterparts with fewer and fewer resources, and the emotional conclusion of an advisory mission near the end of the Vietnam War.

The conventional narrative of the Vietnam War often glosses over the decade leading up to it. Covering the years 1954-1963, this book presents a thought-provoking reexamination of the war's long prelude--from the aftermath of French defeat at Dien Bien Phu--through Hanoi's decision to begin reunification by force--to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Established narratives of key events are given critical reappraisal and new light is shed on neglected factors. The strategic importance of Laos is revealed as central to understanding how the war in the South developed.

In 1968, Theodore Hammett stepped forward for a war he believed was wrong, pressured by his father's threat to disown him if he withdrew from a Marine Corps officer candidate program. He hated the Vietnam War and soon grew to hate Vietnam and its people. As a supply officer at a field hospital uncomfortably near the DMZ, he employed thievery, bargaining and lies to secure supplies for his unit and retained his sanity with the help of alcohol, music and the promise of going home. In 2008, he returned to Vietnam for a five-year "second tour" to assist in improving HIV/AIDS policies and prevention programs in Hanoi. His memoir recounts his service at the height of the war, and how the country he detested became his second home.

In 1966, Dr. Richard Carlson was just two years out of medical school and in his mid-20s. He was about to embark on a year-long tour in Vietnam to treat the many forgotten victims of the war: the civilians. During medical school he was introduced to the Los Angeles County General Hospital, the huge institution that provided medical care for LA's socially and medically deprived. Dedicated to the underserved, when drafted he applied to work in a Vietnamese civilian hospital. His tenure at the LA county hospital was the best training for what he'd experience in Vietnam. His arrival coincided with a bloody escalation of the conflict. But like many Americans, he believed South Vietnam desired a democratic future and that the U.S. was helping to achieve that goal. Armed with both his medical bag and a typewriter, Dr. Carlson diligently chronicled his efforts to save lives in the Mekong delta province of Bac Lieu. The result is a vivid recollection, detailing the inspiring stories of the AMA volunteer doctors, USAID nurses and corpsmen that he worked alongside to treat the local citizens, many of whom were Viet Cong. He gives a glimpse of the emerging understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder and his team's development of a pioneering family planning clinic. Featuring more than 80 photographs, this book relates the fighting of both exotic and common diseases and the competition among civilians for medical services. The medical facilities and equipment were primitive, and the doctors' efforts were often hampered by folk remedies and superstition.