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Books > Humanities > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
In the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers
and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work
through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule,
these workers were drawn to the opportunities the military offered
and became active participants of the U.S. empire, most centrally
during the U.S. war in Vietnam. Simeon Man uncovers the
little-known histories of Filipinos, South Koreans, and Asian
Americans who fought in Vietnam, revealing how U.S. empire was
sustained through overlapping projects of colonialism and race
making. Through their military deployments, Man argues, these
soldiers took part in the making of a new Pacific world-a
decolonizing Pacific-in which the imperatives of U.S. empire
collided with insurgent calls for decolonization, producing often
surprising political alliances, imperial tactics of suppression,
and new visions of radical democracy.
Vietnam, January, 1968. As the citizens of Hue are preparing to
celebrate Tet, the start of the Lunar New Year, Nha Ca arrives in
the city to attend her father's funeral. Without warning, war
erupts all around them, drastically changing or cutting short their
lives. After a month of fighting, their beautiful city lies in
ruins and thousands of people are dead. Mourning Headband for Hue
tells the story of what happened during the fierce North Vietnamese
offensive and is an unvarnished and riveting account of war as
experienced by ordinary people caught up in the violence.
Doug Dickey was an unlikely Marine hero. He was a gentle soul who
sang in the school's chorus and struggled to make it through boot
camp. However, in the terrible seconds that passed after a grenade
landed in the middle of his platoon's command element, Doug chose
to sacrifice his life to save his comrades. For this Final Valiant
Act, Doug received the Medal of Honor. Doug grew up on a farm in
Ohio and enlisted in the Marine Corps with four of his friends from
high school. Arriving in Vietnam, he was assigned to "Blackjack"
Westerman's 1st Battalion, 4th Marines - one of the few Marine
units to make amphibious assaults during the Vietnam War. As part
of 2nd Platoon, Company C, Doug took part in Operation Deckhouse
VI, to rout the Viet Cong from Quang Ngai; and Operation Beacon
Hill, which culminated in the desperate battle on March 26, 1967.
That afternoon, the platoon became engaged with a much larger NVA
unit just south of the DMZ. In the midst of that fierce battle,
with casualties mounting rapidly, an enemy grenade landed in the
middle of the platoon's command group. Doug dove on the grenade -
saving his friends and comrades. Second Platoon was ultimately
victorious, but at a high cost: more than 40 men had gone into
battle that day; only 12 walked out the next morning. Doug's
comrades in 2nd Platoon never forgot him. Easter Sunday 1967 was
seared into their memories. In 1997, they began holding yearly
reunions. They decided to honor Doug by holding their first reunion
in his hometown. Harold and Leona Dickey were finally able to meet
the men their son had saved 30 years earlier. A Final Valiant Act
is the result of over 14 years of research - drawing on Doug's
letters home, and more than 50 interviews. The personal stories are
woven into a meticulously researched battle history, sourced from
dozens of declassified combat reports - yielding the most detailed
account of Operation Beacon Hill yet written.
The M551 Sheridan is often referred to as a light tank, but in
actuality it was an armored reconnaissance/airborne assault
vehicle. The M551 was designed to be a lightweight, amphibious,
air-droppable vehicle armed with a massive 152 mm gun that doubled
as a rocket launcher. The gun launcher was designed to fire the
MGM-51 Shillelagh antitank missile, or 152 mm conventional rounds
with a combustible cartridge case. The vehicles saw extensive use
in Vietnam, Operation Just Cause in Panama (where they saw their
only combat air drop), and Operations Desert Shield and Desert
Storm. The Sheridan ended its service with the US Army masquerading
as Soviet Bloc vehicles at the National Training Center. Through
dozens of archival as well as detailed photographs of some of the
finest extant examples of these vehicles, the Sheridan is explored,
and its history explained. Part of the Legends of Warfare series.
Historian and collector Michael Green shows in this fascinating and
graphically illustrated book that the two wars that engulfed
Indochina and North and South Vietnam over 30 years were far more
armoured in nature than typically thought of. By skilful use of
imagery and descriptive text he describes the many variants
deployed and their contribution. The ill-fated French Expeditionary
Force was largely US equipped with WW2 M3 and M5 Stuart, M4 Sherman
and M24 light tanks as well as armoured cars and half-tracks. Most
of these eventually went to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam but
were outdated and ineffective due to lack of logistics and
training. The US Army and Marine Corps build-up in the 1960s saw
vast quantities of M48 Pattons, M113 APCs and many specialist
variants and improvised armoured vehicles arrive in theatre. The
Australians brought their British Centurion tanks. But it was the
Russians, Chinese and North Vietnamese who won the day and their
T-38-85 tanks, ZSU anti-aircraft platforms and BTR-40 and -50 swept
the Communists to victory. This fine book brings details and images
of all these diverse weaponry to the reader in one volume.
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