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Books > Humanities > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 > Vietnam War
During his first tour in Vietnam - 1967-68 - Dick Taylor was a
well-trained and highly motivated amateur assigned to advise a
hard-bitten ARVN infantry battalion working in the mud and streams
of IV Corps. He became savvy in a hurry and found that he was both
brave and resourceful. He barely survived Tet 1968, then served on
an advisory team staff. For the next two years, Taylor earned a
Ranger tab, served on a division staff, and schooled on. He met a
woman, and married her days before he returned to Vietnam. Taylor's
second tour- 1970-71 - was altogether different. He immediately
assumed command of Bravo Company, 1/7 Cav, and excelled as a
commander and a leader. He was aggressive in the field, confident
in his command, and assertive with his superiors. He fought a good
war, a successful war, and when he was forced to take a staff job
it was as his battalion's intelligence officer. But the war was
winding down, its purpose lost. Taylor's spirit's flagged, but not
his fidelity. This well-written combat memoir is heartfelt,
earnest, honest, and just a little melancholy. About the Author
Colonel Richard Taylor was an original member of the first modern
Ranger battalion. He also commanded an infantry training battalion,
served with the 82nd Airborne, directed an academic department at
the Army's staff college and provided military advice to NATO
during the break up of the Warsaw Pact.
A great white angel spreading her wings across the Moreno Valley:
this is how one visitor described the memorial standing atop a
windswept prominence in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos,
New Mexico. A de-facto national Vietnam veterans memorial, built by
one family more than a decade before the Wall in Washington, DC,
and without aid or recognition from the US government, the chapel
at Angel Fire is a testament to one young American's sacrifice -
but also to the profound determination of his family to find
meaning in their loss. In The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel
Fire, Steven Trout tells the story of Marine Lieutenant David
Westphall, who was killed near Con Thien on May 22, 1968, and of
the Westphall family's subsequent struggle to create and maintain a
one-of-a-kind memorial chapel dedicated to the memory of all
Americans lost in the Vietnam War and to the cause of world peace.
Focused primarily on a life lost amid our nation's most
controversial conflict and on the Westphalls' desperate battle to
keep their chapel open between 1971 and 1982, the book's brisk and
moving narrative traces the memorial's evolution from a personal
act of family remembrance to its emergence as an iconic pilgrimage
destination for thousands of Vietnam veterans. Documenting the
chapel's shifting messages over time, which include a momentary
(and controversial) recognition of the dead on both sides of the
war, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire spotlights one
American soldier's tragic story and the monument to hope and peace
that it inspired.
Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam? What led US policy
makers to become convinced that Vietnam posed a threat to American
interests? In The Road to Vietnam, Pablo de Orellana traces the
origins of the US-Vietnam War back to 1945-1948 and the diplomatic
relations fostered in this period between the US, France and
Vietnam, during the First Vietnam War that pitted imperial France
against the anti-colonial Vietminh rebel alliance. With specific
focus on the representation of the parties involved through the
processes of diplomatic production, the book examines how the
groundwork was laid for the US-Vietnam War of the 60's and 70's.
Examining the France-Vietminh conflict through poststructuralist
and postcolonial lenses, de Orellana reveals the processes by which
the US and France built up the perception of Vietnam as a communist
threat. Drawing on archival diplomatic texts, the representation of
political identity between diplomatic actors is examined as a cause
leading up to American involvement in the First Vietnam War, and
will be sure to interest scholars in the fields of fields of
diplomatic studies, international relations, diplomatic history and
Cold War history.
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