As the Vietnam War was beginning to turn towards its bitter end, Le Quan fought under beloved general Tran Ba Di in the army of South Vietnam. An unlikely encounter thrust the two men together, and they developed a mutual respect in their home country during wartime. Forty years later, the two men reconnected in a wholly unlikely setting: a family road trip to Key West. Soldier On is written by Le Quan's daughter, who artfully crafts the road trip as a frame through which the stories of both men come to life. Le Quan and Tran Ba Di provide two different views of life in the South Vietnamese army, and they embody two different realities of the aftermath of defeat. Le Quan was able to smuggle his family out of Saigon among the so-called boat people, eventually receiving asylum in America and resettling in Texas. General Tran Ba Di, on the other hand, experienced political consequences: he spent seventeen years in a re-education camp before he was released to family in Florida. A proud daughter's perspective brings this intergenerational and intercontinental story to life, as Tran herself plumbs her remembrances to expand the legacy of the many Vietnamese who weathered conflict to forge new futures in America.

More than half a million copies of "Chickenhawk" have been sold since it was first published in 1983. Now with a new afterword by the author and photographs taken by him during the conflict, this straight-from-the-shoulder account tells the electrifying truth about the helicopter war in Vietnam. This is Robert Masonas astounding personal story of men at war. A veteran of more than one thousand combat missions, Mason gives staggering descriptions that cut to the heart of the combat experience: the fear and belligerence, the quiet insights and raging madness, the lasting friendships and sudden deathathe extreme emotions of a achickenhawka in constant danger.

Charged with monitoring the huge civilian press corps that descended on Hue during the Vietnam War's Tet offensive, US Army Captain George W. Smith witnessed firsthand a vicious twenty-five day battle. Smith recounts in harrowing detail the separate, poorly coordinated wars that were fought in the retaking of the Hue. Notably, he documents the little-known contributions of the South Vietnamese forces, who prevented the Citadel portion of the city from being overrun, and who then assisted the US Marine Corps in evicting the North Vietnamese Army. He also tells of the social and political upheaval in the city, reporting the execution of nearly 3,000 civilians by the NVA and the Vietcong. The tenacity of the NVA forces in Hue earned the respect of the troops on the field and triggered a sequence of attitudinal changes in the United States. It was those changes, Smith suggests, that eventually led to the US abandonment of the war.

After the failed April 1972 invasion of South Vietnam and the heavy US tactical bombing raids in the Hanoi area, the North Vietnamese agreed to return to the Paris peace talks, yet very quickly these negotiations stalled.

In an attempt to end the war quickly and 'persuade' the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table, President Nixon ordered the Air Force to send the US' ultimate conventional weapon, the B-52 bomber, against their capital, Hanoi. Bristling with the latest Soviet air defence missiles, it was the most heavily defended target in Vietnam. Taking place in late December, this campaign was soon dubbed the 'Christmas Bombings'.

Using specially commissioned artwork and maps, ex-USAF fighter colonel Marshall Michel describes Linebacker II, the climax of the air war over Vietnam, and history's only example of how America's best Cold War bombers performed against contemporary Soviet air defences.

With words and photographs, Rain in Our Hearts takes readers into Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th LIB, Americal Division in 1969-1970. Jim Logue, a professional photographer, was drafted and served as an infantryman; he also carried a camera. "In order to take my mind off the war," he would say, "I took pictures." Logue's photos showcase the daily lives of infantrymen: setting up a night laager, chatting with local children, making supply drops, and "humping" rucksacks miles each day in search of the enemy. His camera records the individual experiences and daily lives of the men who fought the war. Accompanying Logue's over 100 photographs is the narrative written by Gary D. Ford. Wanting to reconstruct the story of Alpha Company during the time in which Logue served, Ford and Logue trekked across America to meet with and interview every surviving member whom they could locate and contact. Each chapter of Rain in Our Hearts focuses on the viewpoint and life of one member of Alpha Company, including aspects of life before and after Vietnam. The story of the Company's movements and missions over the year unfold as readers are introduced to one soldier at a time. Taken together, Rain in Our Hearts offers readers a window into the words and sights of Alpha Company's Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War is an outstanding collection of primary documents related to America s conflict in Vietnam which includes a balance of original American and Vietnamese perspectives, providing a uniquely varied range of insights into both American and Vietnamese experiences. * Includes substantial non-American content, including many original English translations of Vietnamese-authored texts which showcase the diversity and complexity of Vietnamese experiences during the war * Contains original American documents germane to the continuing debates about the causes, consequences and morality of the US intervention * Incorporates personal histories of individual Americans and Vietnamese * Introductory headnotes place each document in context * Features a range of non-textual documents, including iconic photographs and political cartoons

#1 New Release in Military & Wars Follow the Coming of Age Adventures of a U.S. Military Brat During the Early Vietnam War Years in Saigon.The early Vietnam war years through the eyes of a U.S. military brat: In May of 1962, Naval Chief Petty Officer Bryant Arbuckle flew to Saigon to establish a new Armed Forces radio station. Next to follow were his wife and three boys, Leslie among them. Saigon Kids is the candid, recondite slice of fourteen-year-old military brat Les Arbuckle's experience at the American Community School (ACS) during the critical months of the Vietnam War when events would, quite literally, ignite in downtown Saigon. In 1963, Saigon was beautiful, violent, and dirty and the most exciting place a fourteen-year-old American boy could live. Saigon offered a rich array of activities, and much to the consternation of their parents and teachers, Les and his fellow military brats explored the dangers with reckless abandon running from machine gun fire, watching a Buddhist monk burn to death, visiting brothels late at night or, trading currency on the black market. Coming of age in the streets of Vietnam War torn Saigon: When Les first arrives in Vietnam, he is a stranger in a strange land, expecting boredom in a country he doesn't know. But the American social scene is more vibrant than he expected. The American Community School is a blend of kids from all over the globe who arrived in Saigon as the fuse on Saigon was about to ignite. As the ACS students continue their American lifestyle behind barbed wire, Saigon unravels in chaos and destruction. In spite of this ugliness an ever-present feature of everyday life Les tells his story of teenage angst with humor and precocity. Coming of age tale with a twist: The events leading up to the Vietnam War provide an unusual backdrop for this coming-of-age tale with a twist. Saigon Kids will also make a perfect companion to the documentary film (sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts) currently in production. The film chronicles the lives of "military brats" living in Saigon in the volatile years from 1958 to 1964.

Half-Hispanic, half-Yaqui Indian, and an orphan, Roy Benavidez fought his way out of poverty and bigotry to serve with the U.S. Army s elite the Airborne and the Special Forces. Seriously wounded in Vietnam, he was told he would never walk again. Benavidez not only conquered his disability but demanded to return to combat.On his second tour, when twelve of his comrades on a secret CIA mission in Cambodia were surrounded by hundreds of North Vietnamese regulars, Benavidez volunteered to rescue them. Despite severe injuries suffered in hand-to-hand combat, Benavidez personally saved eight men. His actions ensured his everlasting place as one of the great heroes of the war. In February 1981, President Reagan awarded him the Medal of Honor.

By tracing the evolving worldview of Vietnamese communists over 80 years as they led Vietnam through wars, social revolution, and peaceful development, this book shows the depth and resilience of their commitment to the communist utopia in their foreign policy. Unearthing new material from Vietnamese archives and publications, this book challenges the conventional scholarship and the popular image of the Vietnamese revolution and the Vietnam War as being driven solely by patriotic inspirations. The revolution not only saw successes in defeating foreign intervention, but also failures in bringing peace and development to Vietnam. This was, and is, the real tragedy of Vietnam. Spanning the entire history of the Vietnamese revolution and its aftermath, this book examines its leaders' early rise to power, the tumult of three decades of war with France, the US, and China, and the stubborn legacies left behind which remain in Vietnam today.

Get out! Run! We must leave this place! They are going to destroy this whole place! Go, children, run first! Go now!

These were the final shouts nine year-old Kim Phuc heard before her world dissolved into flames―before napalm bombs fell from the sky, burning away her clothing and searing deep into her skin. It’s a moment forever captured, an iconic image that has come to define the horror and violence of the Vietnam War. Kim was left for dead in a morgue; no one expected her to survive the attack. Napalm meant fire, and fire meant death.

Against all odds, Kim lived―but her journey toward healing was only beginning. When the napalm bombs dropped, everything Kim knew and relied on exploded along with them: her home, her country’s freedom, her childhood innocence and happiness. The coming years would be marked by excruciating treatments for her burns and unrelenting physical pain throughout her body, which were constant reminders of that terrible day. Kim survived the pain of her body ablaze, but how could she possibly survive the pain of her devastated soul?

Fire Road is the true story of how she found the answer in a God who suffered Himself; a Savior who truly understood and cared about the depths of her pain. Fire Road is a story of horror and hope, a harrowing tale of a life changed in an instant―and the power and resilience that can only be found in the power of God’s mercy and love.

By tracing the evolving worldview of Vietnamese communists over 80 years as they led Vietnam through wars, social revolution, and peaceful development, this book shows the depth and resilience of their commitment to the communist utopia in their foreign policy. Unearthing new material from Vietnamese archives and publications, this book challenges the conventional scholarship and the popular image of the Vietnamese revolution and the Vietnam War as being driven solely by patriotic inspirations. The revolution not only saw successes in defeating foreign intervention, but also failures in bringing peace and development to Vietnam. This was, and is, the real tragedy of Vietnam. Spanning the entire history of the Vietnamese revolution and its aftermath, this book examines its leaders' early rise to power, the tumult of three decades of war with France, the US, and China, and the stubborn legacies left behind which remain in Vietnam today.

Cold War Friendships explores the plight of the Asian ally of the American wars in Korea and Vietnam. Enlisted into proxy warfare, this figure is not a friend but a "friendly," a wartime convenience enlisted to serve a superpower. It is through this deeply unequal relation, however, that the Cold War friendly secures her own integrity and insists upon her place in the neocolonial imperium. This study reads a set of highly enterprising wartime subjects who make their way to the US via difficult attachments. American forces ventured into newly postcolonial Korea and Vietnam, both plunged into civil wars, to draw the dividing line of the Cold War. The strange success of containment and militarization in Korea unraveled in Vietnam, but the friendly marks the significant continuity between these hot wars. In both cases, the friendly justified the fight: she was also a political necessity who redeployed cold war alliances, and, remarkably, made her way to America. As subjects in process-and indeed, proto-Americans-these figures are prime literary subjects, whose processes of becoming are on full display in Asian American novels and testimonies of these wars. Literary writings on both of these conflicts are presently burgeoning, and Cold War Friendships performs close analyses of key texts whose stylistic constraints and contradictions-shot through with political and historical nuance-present complex gestures of alliance.

This memoir of the Vietnam War is structured as a series of short stories that convey the emotional and physical landscape of the Vietnam War. It is a window into the war from the perspective of the author, who served in a rapid response assault force, as 'the Marine'. The reader shares the Marine's experience through a year of combat that tested his character and shaped his destiny. Small joined the Marine Corps in 1969 at 19 years old, coming from a small Vermont farming community. After boot camp and speciality training he landed in Da Nang as a private first class. With three battlefield promotions in 8 months, he soon became a platoon sergeant. Small did not talk of his experiences in Vietnam over the next forty years, but has now written this book, for veterans' families, including his own, to understand what their loved ones experienced. It is a unique and powerful text that is that it is written in such a way it brings you inside the marine; you see what he sees, feel what he feels. You know him; his back story; what he is thinking; why he made the decisions he needed to make. No names are mentioned throughout the book. Memories Unleashed is an assemblage of memories, consisting of stories that stand alone to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It addresses the warrior, the lives of innocent people caught up in the war, and the American and Vietnamese families impacted by those who fought.

A "better war." Over the last two decades, this term has become synonymous with US strategy during the Vietnam War's final years. The narrative is enticingly simple, appealing to many audiences. After the disastrous results of the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Hanoi's forces demonstrated the failures of American strategy, popular history tells of a new American military commander who emerged in South Vietnam and with inspired leadership and a new approach turned around a long stalemated conflict. In fact, so successful was General Creighton Abrams in commanding US forces that, according to the "better war" myth, the United States had actually achieved victory by mid-1970. A new general with a new strategy had delivered, only to see his victory abandoned by weak-kneed politicians in Washington, DC who turned their backs on the US armed forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a bold new interpretation of America's final years in Vietnam, acclaimed historian Gregory A. Daddis disproves these longstanding myths. Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' long Vietnamese civil war. In a riveting sequel to his celebrated Westmoreland's War, Daddis demonstrates he is one of the nation's leading scholars on the Vietnam War. Withdrawal will be a standard work for years to come.

Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed President Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned secret U.S.-North Vietnamese encounter in Poland. Yet, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted that Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate. This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that, in fact, Poland was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi as he utterly disregarded the pleas of both the Polish and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Marigold might have ended the war years earlier, saving thousands of lives, and dramatically changed U.S. political history.

Elite units carried out many dangerous operations during the Vietnam War, the most secret and hazardous of which were conducted by the Studies and Observations Group, formed in 1964. In the years since the Vietnam War, the elite unit known as SOG has spawned many myths, legends and war stories. Special Forces medic Joe Parnar served with SOG during 1968 in FOB2/CCC near the tri-border area that gave them access to the forbidden areas of Laos and Cambodia. Parnar recounts his time with the recon men of this highly classified unit, as his job involved a unique combination of soldiering and lifesaving. His stories capture the extraordinary commitment made by all the men of SOG and reveal the special dedication of the medics, who put their own lives at risk to save the lives of their teammates. Parnar also discusses his medical training with the Special Forces. During his tour with SOG, Parnar served as a dispensary medic, chase medic, Hatchet Force medic and as a recon team member. This variety of roles gave him experience not only in combat but in dealing with and treating the civilians and indigenous peoples of that area. There is a graphic account of a Laotian operation involving America's most decorated soldier, Robert Howard, during which Parnar had to treat a man with a blown-off foot alongside nearly fifty other casualties. It is a reminder of the enormous responsibility and burden that a medic carried. This new edition of SOG Medic makes this highly-praised and sought-after book available again once more, with additional photos and maps.

This book is a fascinating study of the Vietnamese experience and memory of the Vietnam War through the lens of popular imaginings about the wandering souls of the war dead. These ghosts of war play an important part in postwar Vietnamese historical narrative and imagination, and Heonik Kwon explores the intimate ritual ties with these unsettled identities which still survive in Vietnam today as well as the actions of those who hope to liberate these hidden but vital historical presences from their uprooted social existence. Taking a unique approach to the cultural history of war, he introduces gripping stories about spirits claiming social justice and about his own efforts to wrestle with the physical and spiritual presence of ghosts. Although these actions are fantastical, this book shows how examining their stories can illuminate critical issues of war and collective memory in Vietnam and the modern world more generally.

Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly was a renowned soldier and one of the most influential figures in Australia's military history. As Chief of the General Staff during the Vietnam War, he oversaw a significant re-organisation of the Army as he fought a war under political and resource restrictions. In this unique biography, Jeffrey Grey shows how Daly prepared himself for the challenges of command in a time of great political upheaval. A Soldier's Soldier examines Daly's career from his entry to Duntroon in the early 1930s until his retirement forty years later, covering the key issues in the development of the Australian Army along the way. Drawing on extensive interview transcripts, the book provides a compelling portrait of Sir Thomas Daly and his distinguished career.

Initially stationed at the U.S. Army's counterintelligence headquarters in Saigon, David Noble was sent north to launch the army's first covert intelligence-gathering operation in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Living in the region of the Montagnards-Vietnam's indigenous tribal people, deemed critical to winning the war-Noble documented strategic hamlets and Green Beret training camps, where Special Forces teams taught the Montagnards to use rifles rather than crossbows and spears. In this book, he relates the formidable challenges he confronted in the course of his work. Weaving together memoir, excerpts from letters written home, and photographs, Noble's compelling narrative throws light on a little-known corner of the Vietnam War in its early years-before the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and the deployment of combat units-and traces his transformation from a novice intelligence agent and believer in the war to a political dissenter and active protester.

Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Like its predecessor, this book overturns the conventional wisdom using a treasure trove of new sources, many of them from the North Vietnamese side. Rejecting the standard depiction of U.S. military intervention as a hopeless folly, it shows America's war to have been a strategic necessity that could have ended victoriously had President Lyndon Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. In light of Johnson's refusal to use American ground forces beyond South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland employed the best military strategy available. Once the White House loosened the restraints on Operation Rolling Thunder, American bombing inflicted far greater damage on the North Vietnamese supply system than has been previously understood, and it nearly compelled North Vietnam to capitulate. The book demonstrates that American military operations enabled the South Vietnamese government to recover from the massive instability that followed the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. American culture sustained public support for the war through the end of 1968, giving South Vietnam realistic hopes for long-term survival. America's defense of South Vietnam averted the imminent fall of key Asian nations to Communism and sowed strife inside the Communist camp, to the long-term detriment of America's great-power rivals, China and the Soviet Union.