Military Vietnam

Can Saigon survive the communist onslaught? Helicopters swarm as sporadic explosions and gunfire reverberate throughout the capital. Panic engulfs the streets filled with civilians. A desperate dash to flee before the fall. The South Vietnamese military hanging on by a thread, buying time for the people. Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops wash over the city in unstoppable waves. Communist soldiers advance toward the presidential palace, their faces canvases of the hardships and sacrifices they endured for a war they fought so long. Their final goal within reach – the unification of ...

Struggling to reassert control over their Indochinese colonies after World War II, the French established a huge air-land base in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. But when the opposing Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) began massing its forces against the base in late 1953, French commanders seized the opportunity to draw their elusive enemy into a decisive set-piece battle. Defending a series of fortified positions which were reliant upon a single airstrip for reinforcement and resupply, the French troops quickly discovered that they had underestimated their enemy.

A dedicated U. S. Army assault helicopter pilot in Vietnam just wants to do his job and return home to his wife and family. But to do so, he has to survive harrowing combat missions, bad weather, mechanical problems, human error, and a commander who is more interested in personal glory and promotion than his men’s well-being. Along the way, he participated in the last major American combat operation of the war—Lam Son 719, a major incursion into Laos, which lasted sixty days and was the costliest period of the war for helicopter pilots and crew members.

In 1967, at age 19, John Stillman - refusing to wait for the draft - voluntarily enlisted in the Army to aid his fellow countrymen in one of the most opposed involvements in our nation’s history: the Vietnam War. Written with John’s daughter, Lori Stillman, Jumping from Helicopters is a vivid and moving memoir that unearths 50 years of repressed memories with stunning accuracy and raw details.

While the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968 remains one of the most highly publicized clashes of the Vietnam War, scant attention has been paid to the first battle of Khe Sanh, also known as "the Hill Fights". Although this harrowing combat in the spring of 1967 provided a grisly preview of the carnage to come at Khe Sanh, few are aware of the significance of the battles, or even their existence.

Noam Chomsky dismisses efforts to resurrect Camelot - an attractive American myth portraying JFK as a shining knight promising peace, foiled only by assassins bent on stopping this lone hero from withdrawing from Vietnam. Chomsky argues that US institutions an political culture, not individual presidents, are the key to understanding US behavior during the Vietnam War.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone.

Craig McNamara came of age in the political tumult and upheaval of the late '60s. While Craig McNamara would grow up to take part in anti-war demonstrations, his father, Robert McNamara, served as John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and the architect of the Vietnam War. This searching and revealing memoir offers an intimate picture of one father and son at pivotal periods in American history. Because Our Fathers Lied is more than a family story—it is a story about America.

In 1969, Navy sailor Nick Kilmer's life was saved by an Army soldier, Sam Jackson, during an intense battle in Vietnam. Fifty years later Nick travels by motorcycle with his dog Deacon to visit Sam in Idaho. Both men struggle with service connected disabilities, but Nick carries the burden of never having the opportunity to repay Sam for saving his life. A young woman of Vietnamese descent shows up who is running for safety from cartel members. The situation becomes further complicated when Nick believes that the young woman might be Sam's granddaughter. While Sam creates a diversion, Nick,...

In this intimate memoir, Perry A. Ulander chronicles with powerful clarity the bewildering predicament he confronted and the fellowship and guidance that transformed him during the year he served as an American GI in the jungles of Vietnam. Conveying with unadorned precision the harrowing experiences that shattered his core beliefs, Ulander also captures the camaraderie and humor of his platoon, the hostility between "lifers" and draftees, the physical hardships of reconnaissance missions, and the unrelenting apprehension underlying everyday life.

Corporal Rick Heller is near the end of his tour and looking forward to going home to pick up the threads of his life. To be reunited with his fiancée and get married. To get his life back on course, but somehow, Vietnam casts a dark shadow over the lives of those who served. Heller is fated to be no exception. Ditched by his girl, he suddenly realized he has nothing left. His life, his plans, and his ambitions are in tatters. MACV is desperate to retain good men, experienced jungle fighters. Offers promotion and the chance to join a new unit, the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. Known as...

In 1991, Chuck Mawhinney was reluctantly dragged out of anonymity when it was revealed that he held the record among United States Marine Corps snipers with over 103 confirmed kills.

The narrative of the Korean War in the West, and particularly in the United States, tells the tale of a conflict between two global superpowers and competing ideologies in a far-flung corner of the globe. The reality is that the wheels of motion that drove the country to war in 1950 began turning long before American boots set foot on Korean soil. The heart of the conflict was a civil war between a population arbitrarily divided by colonization and the global geopolitics at the end of the Second World War.

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse takes listeners on a poignant tour of disappeared refugee camps, abandoned family homes, and the lives that could have been. As the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, this powerful memoir is timelier and more important than ever, illuminating the stories, real and imagined, that become buried in the rubble of war.

Author John J. Culbertson, a former Fifth Marine sniper himself, presents the riveting true stories of young Americans who fought with bolt rifles and bounties on their heads during the fiercest combat of the war, from 1967 through the desperate Tet battle for Hue in early '68.

In The Air Force Way of War, Brian D. Laslie examines the revolution in pilot instruction that Red Flag brought about after Vietnam. The program's new instruction methods were dubbed "realistic" because they prepared pilots for real-life situations better than the simple cockpit simulations of the past. In addition to discussing the program's methods, Laslie analyzes the way its graduates actually functioned in combat during the 1980s and '90s in places such as Grenada, Panama, Libya, and Iraq.

On October 19, 1965, American Special Forces in Vietnam came under attack at their camp at Plei Me. This marked the first major confrontation between the North Vietnamese and US armies during the war. Throughout six days of constant hostile fire, Captain Lanny Hunter sorted the seriously wounded from the dead and saved those comrades-in-arms he could. For his actions, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In Exit Wounds, Hunter recalls his tour in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1965/66 at the bloody interface of medicine and combat.

In 1972 a North Vietnamese offensive of more than 30,000 men and one hundred tanks smashed into South Vietnam and raced to capture Saigon. All that stood in their way was a small band of 6,800 South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers and militiamen, and a handful of American advisors with U.S. air support, guarding An Loc, a town sixty miles north of Saigon and on the main highway to it.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

Major Adams flew low over the treetops in his Huey, expertly dodging enemy ground fire until his helicopter was shot down. On Firebase 6, First Lieutenant Brian Thacker fought desperately to provide the besieged men the time they needed to retreat. They had to get into the helicopters before they were overrun by the North Vietnamese.