When the Viet Nam War ended, with the United States of America defeated, many wondered how a military powerhouse lost to a “raggedy-ass, little fourth-rate country,” as President Lyndon Johnson...
A Naval Hospital Corpsman with the Marines in Vietnam, 1965
by Richard W. Schaefer
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 9781682830024
Pub Date: May 2016
Having just turned eighteen and graduated from high school, and living insmall-town Nebraska with nothing much to do, young Dick Schaefer joinedthe Navy on impulse, hoping that by choosing his branch of the military hewould have some measure of control over his future. Not fully aware of the increasing military action in Vietnam, Schaefer found himself on a train bound for boot camp in San Diego in late summer, 1962. Schaefer's account of his time at boot camp is wry and rollicking. Upon graduation, he requested and received orders to report to the U.S. Naval Hospital Corps School in San Diego--and found that his choice of study suited him very well. After completing his studies, again on impulse Schaefer requested assignment to Hawai'i, assuming there must be a large naval hospital at Pearl Harbor. In fact, there was no such hospital--and Schaefer was assigned to the Fleet Marine Force. And...
During the four years General Creighton W. Abrams was commander in Vietnam, he and his staff made more than 455 tape recordings of briefings and meetings. In 1994, with government approval, Lewis Sorley...
It just didn’t sit right. The American Embassy had reported the accidental death of Jerry “Hog” Daniels by carbon monoxide poisoning. Three decades later, his family, friends, and coworkers remain...
An insightful memoir of a high-ranking Vietnamese military official, who changed sides in the war from the Vietminh to South Vietnam--and became friends with John Paul Vann and Daniel Ellsberg.
The combat history of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines--or “One Five” (1/5)--is long and illustrious, but there are many periods of their combat operations during the Vietnam War about which there...
They were little more than boys in the turbulent 1960s when Lee Roy Herron and his high school buddy, David Nelson, signed up for Marine Corps officer training. Decisions during college took the pair in different directions—Lee Roy to the infantry, language school, and the cauldron of Vietnam, David to law school, the JAG office, and eventually to Okinawa. When Lt. Lee Roy Herron was killed on the front lines in February 1969, only two months into his tour of duty, Nelson mourned the tragic loss. Haunted for years afterward, he questioned his own choices, his relative safety, and his backstage role in the conflict while his friend paid the ultimate price. A chance encounter with a retired officer in 1997 spurred Nelson to delve more deeply into Lee Roy’s death. What really happened that day on the hillside above A Shau Valley on the Laotian border? A quest to...
Why U.S. Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam
by George Lepre
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 9780896727151
Pub Date: January 2011
During its long withdrawal from South Vietnam, the U.S. military experienced a serious crisis in morale. Chronic indiscipline, illegal drug use, and racial militancy all contributed to trouble within the ranks. But most chilling of all was the advent of a new phenomenon: large numbers of young enlisted men turning their weapons on their superiors. The practice was known as “fragging,” a reference to the fragmentation hand grenades often used in these assaults. Between 1968 and 1973, dozens of Americans and Vietnamese were murdered in fragging incidents, but only a handful of their killers were ever brought to justice. Drawing upon more than 500 cases from official records in addition to interviews with both perpetrators and victims, George Lepre examines these episodes in close detail. In the first in-depth study of this vexing trend, Lepre drills down to the core of the soldier’s mindset, bringing to light a little understood...
On May 12, 1975, just days after the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, the American merchant cargo ship SS Mayaguez was seized by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge in international waters. President Gerald Ford found himself in the midst of an intense four-day international crisis with significant historical ramifications. The Mayaguez incident was the first test of the president’s role as commander-in-chief since the enactment of the 1973 War Powers Act, which was intended to limit presidential power. While the Ford administration’s swift and violent reaction achieved its stated goals of enhancing U.S. prestige and rescuing the ship and crew, Robert J. Mahoney’s analysis of the events demonstrates that the end result was largely a matter of extreme good fortune. With access to recently declassified primary sources, Mahoney shows how this short but intense crisis helped spur the most radical restructuring of the Department of Defense since its inception in...
Soon after the end of the Vietnam War, memories of loss still fresh, top military leaders of defeated South Vietnam recorded their observations in a series of publications sponsored by the U.S. Army Center of Military History. Insightful and poignant, unaltered and unedited by the CMH, their distinctive stories are little known and long out of print. Veteran historian Lewis Sorley has gathered, edited, and arranged these seventeen monographs for ease of reference and access, providing valuable biographies of the generals (some including photographs), plus maps and index. Augmented with Sorley’s introduction and epilogue, The Vietnam War brings the South Vietnamese military experience into sharper perspective, at last 04 Activeable for wider use and appreciation.
