Military Vietnam

Fifty years after America's involvement in the Korean War began, Richard E. Mack's memories of his time spent on the front lines are still strong and clear. A career soldier, Mack served in the U.S. Army until 1976, when he retired as a colonel. In Memoir of a Cold War Soldier, he recalls his service in front-line combat infantry units in Korea and Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader, adviser, and battalion commander. His accounts, perceptions, and observations of the military culture are incisive and candid.

Karl Marlantes left University at 22 to serve in the Vietnam War. Matterhorn was the bestselling novel based on his experiences. Now Marlantes takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions ‘What is it like to face death?' and 'What is it like to kill someone?'

In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. Almost all of the American forces had already withdrawn from Vietnam except for a small group of American advisers to the South Vietnamese armed forces. The 23rd ARVN Infantry Division and its American advisers were sent to defend the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands.

Simmering racial tensions inflamed by discriminatory punitive measures sparked a violent confrontation aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while it was engaged in air strikes off the coast of North Vietnam. The US Navy charged Black sailors with rioting and assaults on White sailors in an incident referred to as a race riot, while totally ignoring violent unprovoked assaults committed by White sailors and Marines.

Award Winning Novel - Third Place - The BookFest Awards Fall 2023 - War and Military. Cathy Alexander’s journey began with a dream of becoming a doctor, but when she joined the Army and was sent to Vietnam, her dream quickly becomes a nightmare. As a nurse at the 95th Evac Hospital, she witnesses the brutal realities of war. She perseveres and graduates from medical school. Despite her achievements, the Vietnam War left a lasting mark on her psyche. She must confront the memories she’s been trying to forget. Will she overcome her past and find a way to move forward? "Angel’s book is a...

In this searing, inspiring memoir, Black recounts how he devoted himself, body and soul, to his proud service as an elite US Army Ranger in Korea and Vietnam - and what those years have taught him about himself, his country, and our future. Written with extraordinary candor and passion, A Ranger Born is the memoir of a man who dedicated the best of his life to everything that is great and enduring about America.

The rubella epidemic of 1964-65. The Vietnam War. Both converge on twelve-year-old Debbie when her sister is born with disabilities and her father may be flying into danger. Labeled as a “rubella baby,” Debbie’s sister Krista is born blind in one eye and with a hole in her heart. Although she survives risky open-heart surgery, months pass, and she doesn’t babble or crawl like most babies do. Doctors decide Krista is cognitively challenged—she’ll never be able to learn—and they advise her parents to put her in an institution. Just forget about her and raise their three “...

How can an Air Force kid survive junior high when her dad’s at war, her little sister is deaf, and friends have abandoned her? It’s 1967 and Debbie Hansen hates her life. She has to leave all of her New York friends, move to California’s Mojave Desert, then back to New York, all because her dad will be sent to Vietnam for a year. And three out of five pilots never come home. Debbie could be fatherless before she starts high school. Her only comfort? She’d have her old friends to lean on if the worst happened. Wrong. When Debbie returns to her hometown, she finds the group moved on ...

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.

I was in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. 1968. The Viet Cong had successfully ambushed every other US and South Vietnamese military unit. We were next. I had been to Ranger School and had learned all about ambushes (that is what Rangers do!). My men and I set up convoy procedures to protect ourselves. It worked, and the enemy grew so frustrated at their inability to ambush my daily convoy that they placed a bounty on my head. I was the only US Army officer within 50 miles to have this dubious distinction. But it served as a great reminder that our defense against ambushes was working. And we ...

A collection of short stories of people and events about my time in the service, and the year serving my country in Vietnam.

In the late summer of 1968, several intelligence sources stated that numerous American POW's were being held in bamboo cages for transport by vehicle up the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the North Vietnamese Army stronghold the Plei Trap Valley. Special Forces CPT Joe Dietrich and 1LT Don Bendell volunteered to lead a helicopter assault into the Plei Trap Valley with 100 Montagnard mercenaries as the point element of a joint task force of soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division.

A small boy speaking an unknown language is abandoned by his father at an international airport, with only the clothes on his back and a handful of money jammed in the pocket of his coat. In order to understand this heartbreaking and indefensible decision, the story must return to the moment, decades earlier, when Vollie Frade, almost on a whim, enlists in the US Marine Corps to fight in Vietnam. Breaking definitively from his rural Iowan parents, Vollie puts in motion an unimaginable chain of events that sees him go to work for insidious people with intentions he cannot yet grasp.

Realm of the Golden Dragon is a sea story. On 17 August 1967, after many years of being home ported in Hawaii, the 180-foot Coast Guard Cutter Basswood set sail for her new home port on Guam in the Marianas Islands. During her travels, she would unleash sixty fun-loving, frolicking, fornicating, fighting, young Coasties on forty-seven Pacific Islands and five Asian Nations. This epic voyage would take them to the hooker bars and short-time hotels of Olongapo in the Philippines, the Vietcong infested bays and rivers of Vietnam, and the vaunted Namenoue Red Light District in Naha, Okinawa. ...

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.

Truth cuts to the bone. It cannot be altered or spun to be something else. Truth speaks to us regardless of language or culture and it needs to be constant. One element that comes through in these engaging stories and songs in this unique audiobook is the authenticity with regard to the Vietnam War, and the soldiers who fought it, those who were left behind, and the impact it had on the survivors upon returning home.

In the decades since the "forgotten war" in Korea, conventional wisdom has held that the Eighth Army consisted largely of poorly trained, undisciplined troops who fled in terror from the onslaught of the Communist forces. Now, military historian Thomas E. Hanson argues that the generalizations historians and fellow soldiers have used regarding these troops do little justice to the tens of thousands of soldiers who worked to make themselves and their army ready for war.

The little girl who greets Frank on A Rainy Night told him about her father and uncle who had not come home from Afghanistan. But there was more to the story than she said … a lot more. Frank had already lost his wife and family. The girl’s loss reached out to him until the men appeared. In Ashes on the Ocean, her husband of forty-three years has died. Suddenly she was free of his strict ways. She rebuilds her life, filling the void he left with bright happy things. But she still had one remaining obligation—to get his ashes to the ocean. The temptation was to repay his years of ...

In the early months of 1970, Lt. Thomas Medici, NILO Ha Tien, enters Cambodia on US Naval Intelligence missions and negotiates a secret weapons agreement with the Cambodian Navy, then thwarts the destruction of of the Port of Sihanoukville - for which he is tried at a Naval Board of Inquiry.

In That Time tells the story of the American experience in Vietnam through the life of Michael O'Donnell, a bright young musician and poet who served as a soldier and helicopter pilot. O'Donnell wrote with great sensitivity and poetic force, and his best-known poem is among the most beloved of the war. In 1970, during an attempt to rescue fellow soldiers stranded under heavy fire, O'Donnell's helicopter was shot down in the jungles of Cambodia. He remained missing in action for almost three decades.