Any time Vietnam veterans get together--whether it's two or twenty of them--war stories follow. The tales they relate about the paddies, the jungles, the highlands, the waterways, and the airways provide the vets a greater understanding of the war they survived and gives nonparticipants a glimpse into the dangerous intensity of firefights, the often hilarious responses to inexplicable situations, and the strong bonds only they can share. These stories from soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have never been captured or compiled in a meaningful way--until now. These stories are the "real meat" of the Vietnam experience. In brief narratives, the veterans themselves relate the valor, hardship, fear, and humor of the war in Vietnam.

During World War II, some 10,000 American bombers and fighters were shot down over Europe. Of the crews aboard, 26,000 men were killed, while 30,000 survived being shot down only to be captured and made prisoners of war. Against the longest of odds, nearly 3,000 airmen made it to the ground alive, evaded capture, and escaped to safety. These men proudly called themselves the Blister Club. Drawing on tens of thousands of pages of mostly untapped documents in the National Archives, Michael Lee Lanning tells the story of these courageous airmen. They had received escape-and-evasion (E & E) training, and some were lucky enough to land with their E-&-E kits-but all bets were off once they hit the ground. They landed after an air catastrophe. The geography was usually unfamiliar. Civilians might or might not be trustworthy. German soldiers and Gestapo agents hunted down airmen as well as civilians who dared help them. If an airman abandoned his uniform for civilian garb, he forfeited Geneva Convention protections. Most faced the daunting task of escaping on foot across hundreds of miles. The fortunate connected with one of the established escape routes to Spain or Switzerland or across the English Channel, or they hooked up with the underground resistance or friendly civilians. Upon return to friendly lines, these men were often able to provide valuable intelligence about enemy troop dispositions and civilian morale. Many volunteered to fly again even though regulations prohibited it. The Blister Club is history with a punch. With a historian's eye, Lanning covers the hows and whys of escape-and-evasion and aerial combat in the European theater, but the book also vividly captures the stories of the airmen who did the escaping and evading, including that of a young pilot named Chuck Yeager, who, during his own escape, aided the French Resistance and helped another downed airman to safety-and then begged to fly again, eventually securing Eisenhower's approval to return to the air, where he achieved ace status. Stories of escape are popular, especially those set during World War II, as are stories of the war in the air. Combining both of these, The Blister Club should find an enthusiastic audience.

Any time Vietnam veterans get together--whether it's two or twenty of them--war stories follow. The tales they relate about the paddies, the jungles, the highlands, the waterways, and the airways provide the vets a greater understanding of the war they survived and gives nonparticipants a glimpse into the dangerous intensity of firefights, the often hilarious responses to inexplicable situations, and the strong bonds only they can share. These stories from soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have never been captured or compiled in a meaningful way--until now. These stories are the "real meat" of the Vietnam experience. In brief narratives, the veterans themselves relate the valor, hardship, fear, and humor of the war in Vietnam.

"An intimate, candid portrait of the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army...An absolute necessity for Vietnamese-studies collections."
During the war in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese communists had to place their trust in the oldest and most reliable tool of warfare: the individual soldier; America believed that firepower, lgoistics, and technology would be sufificent for victory. The North Vietnamese won. INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA, written by two veterans with six-and-a-half years combined experience, shows how.
A Dual Main Selection of the Military Book Club

When diagnosed with Stage IV kidney cancer, LTC (Ret) Michael Lee Lanning faced a new and fearsome enemy that the doctors said would kill him in 6-18 months. Instead of accepting this as his fate, Lanning, with the help of his wife Linda, pursued strategies--both conventional and alternative--to battle his disease and fight for his life. This book tracks the Lannings' war with cancer from diagnosis to survival, from exploring traditional treatments at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center to transitioning to a raw vegan lifestyle learned at Hippocrates Health Institute, from enduring the depths of despair to embracing the heights of hope. Their experiences and insights shared here is the information they sought for themselves when Lanning was first diagnosed.

In my year in Vietnam, I walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Delta, searching for the elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted my way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting the North Vietnamese Regulars...I sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. Somewhere in all my experiences, I overlapped the situations of nearly every infantryman and many others who served. Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field - the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran. Subsequent volumes in his ""Vietnam Trilogy"" will detail Lanning's tour as a company commander and his postwar investigation into the mind of the enemy. Through his eyes, readers see the reality of a war that did not always receive glory but was, in his words, ""the only war we had.

From its inception, graduates of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A&M University, have marched off to fight in every conflict in which the United States has been involved. Th e Vietnam War was no different. Th e Corps of Cadets produced more officers for the conflict in Southeast Asia than any institution other than the US service academies. Michael Lee Lanning, Texas A&M University class of 1968, has now gathered over three dozen recollections from those who served. As Lanning points out, "anytime Aggie Vietnam veterans get together-whether it is two or two hundred of them-war stories begin." Th e tales they relate about the paddies, the jungles, the highlands, the waterways, and the airways provide these veterans with an even greater understanding of the war they survived. They also allow glimpses into the frequent dangers of fi refights, the camaraderie of patrol, and oft en humorous responses to inexplicable situations. These revelations provide insight not only into the realities of war but also speak to the character of the graduates of Texas A&M University. As Lanning concludes, "these war stories are as much a part of service as is that old green duffle bag, a few rows of colorful ribbons, and a pride that does not diminish. In reality, there is only one story about the Vietnam War. We all just tell it differently."

Eleven years before Rosa Parks resisted going to the back of the bus, a young black second lieutenant, hungry to fight Nazis in Europe, refused to move to the back of a U.S. Army bus in Texas and found himself court-martialed. The defiant soldier was Jack Roosevelt Robinson, already in 1944 a celebrated athlete in track and football and in a few years the man who would break Major League Baseball's color barrier. This was the pivotal moment in Jackie Robinson's pre-MLB career. Had he been found guilty, he would not have been the man who broke baseball's color barrier. Had the incident never happened, he would've gone overseas with the Black Panther tank battalion-and who knows what after that. Having survived this crucible of unjust prosecution as an American soldier, Robinson-already a talented multisport athlete-became the ideal player to integrate baseball. This is a dramatic story, deeply engaging and enraging. It's a Jackie Robinson story and a baseball story, but it is also an army story as well as an American story.

"The American sniper could be regarded as the greatest all-around rifleman the world has ever known. . . ."

At the start of the war in Vietnam, the United States had no snipers; by the end of the war, Marine and army precision marksmen had killed more than 10,000 NVA and VC soldiers--the equivalent of an entire division--at the cost of under 20,000 bullets, proving that long-range shooters still had a place in the battlefield. Now noted military historian Michael Lee Lanning shows how U.S. snipers in Vietnam--combining modern technology in weapons, ammunition, and telescopes--used the experience and traditions of centuries of expert shooters to perfect their craft.

To provide insight into the use of American snipers in Vietnam, Lanning interviewed men with combat trigger time, as well as their instructors, the founders of the Marine and U.S. Army sniper programs, and the generals to whom they reported. Backed by hard information and firsthand accounts, the author demonstrates how the skills these one-shot killers honed in the jungles of Vietnam provided an indelible legacy that helped save American lives in Grenada, the Gulf War, and Somalia and continues to this day with American troops in Bosnia.

'Impeccably researched, unbiased, and revealing.' -Kirkus *One of the finest chronicles of the mysterious LRRP units of the Vietnam war *Explains how they were staffed and trained *Discusses their missions and tactics Vietnam was a different kind of war, calling for a different kind of soldier. When the first major combat units were deployed there in 1965 the Army found itself in a predicament. This was a war unlike any that it had trained and equipped itself for; the jungle terrain was nothing like Eastern Europe, and the enemy's preferred guerrilla tactics, as opposed to stand up and fight set-piece battles, meant that an effective means of locating him was required. The LRRPs- Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols - were that new breed of fighting man. They operated in six-man teams deep within enemy territory, and were the eyes and ears of the units they served. This is their story of perseverence under extreme hardship and uncommon bravery, and how they carried out the war's most hazardous missions. Michael Lee Lanning retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel after more than twenty years' service. During his assignment to Vietnam, he served as both an infantry platoon leader and a company commander in the 199th Infantry Brigade (Light). He is the author of fourteen books including Mercenaries, Inside Force Recon, and Inside the Crosshairs.