Military Vietnam

21 Months, 24 Days is an engaging memoir of a blue-collar kid turned soldier. Threatened by the draft in the late 60s, he enlisted in the Army to avoid becoming a grunt, yet ended up one anyway. He endured a grueling war in Vietnam and then returned to a country too angry to care. While his journey took unexpected turns, his choices got him there, so he did his best to react positively and keep moving forward.

Of all the military assignments in Vietnam, perhaps none was more challenging than the defense of the Mekong River Delta region. Operating deep within the Viet Cong - controlled Delta, the 9th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army was charged with protecting the area and its population against Communist insurgents and ensuring the success of the South Vietnamese government's pacification program.

As the ground war struggled for success in Vietnam, it became intensely clear that the skies had to be owned by the allies for victory to have a chance. It was the F-4 and its pilots that made that possible. The author, a Phantom pilot himself, details intense stories of undaunted and valiant American pilots with their legendary fierce Phantom. These are personal stories of intrepid courage and self-sacrifice to get the mission done - whatever the cost.

Sherman Lead is the gripping story of a year flying the F-4 in combat during the Vietnam War, told through the eyes of a fighter pilot. Operating out of Ubon Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand in 1968-69, Gail Peck and his squadronmates in the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing were tasked with flying combat missions into North Vietnam and Laos. The F-4 was heavily involved in the air-to-ground mission at this time, with targets being well defended by enemy anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles.

Americans are accustomed to thinking that World War II ended on August 14, 1945, when the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Yet on the mainland of Asia, in the vast arc stretching from Manchuria to Burma, peace was a brief, fretful interlude. In some parts of Asia, such as Java and Southern Indonesia, only a few weeks passed before new fighting broke out between nationalist forces and the former colonial powers.

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.

A Different Face of War is a riveting account of one American officer in the Medical Service Corps during the early years of the Vietnam War. Assigned as the senior medical advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in I Corps, near the DMZ, James G. Van Straten traveled extensively and interacted with military officers and non-commissioned officers, peasant-class farmers, Buddhist bonzes, shopkeepers, nurses, the mentally ill, and even political operatives. He sent his wife daily letters from July 1966 through June 1967, describing in impressive detail his experiences, and those letters became the primary source for his memoir.

During a nearly 40-year career in the United States Army, Hugh Shelton has been known as a straight shooter - when he speaks he means what he says. Whether serving under a Democratic president or a Republican president, whether in a war that was popular at home or not, Hugh Shelton gave all he had, and asked nothing less of the men and women who worked for him. Politically independent, Shelton told the truth - not what his superiors wanted to hear.

From award-winning journalist and children’s book author Mary Cronk Farrell comes the inspiring and fascinating story of the woman who gave a human face to the Vietnam War. Close-Up on War tells the story of French-born Catherine Leroy, one of the war’s few woman photographers, who documented some of the fiercest fighting in the 20-year conflict. Although she had no formal photographic training and had never before traveled more than a few hundred miles from Paris, Leroy left home at age 21 to travel to Vietnam and document the faces of war.

Tiger Bravo’s War follows a band of young paratroopers, from the same battalion in the elite 101st Airborne Division portrayed in Stephen Ambrose’s World War II best seller Band of Brothers, during their first year in combat in the Vietnam War - from a bayonet charge in War Zone D and street fighting during the 1968 Tet Offensive, to a rescue mission of a surrounded platoon and rock and roll in the company mess hall, and much more.

Ghostriders: Mors De Caelis is a comprehensive history of AC-130 gunship combat operations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The story begins with the first AC-130 in 1968, and ends in 1975 at the end of the war in Vietnam. It tells the life and death stories of Spectre crews, who faced extreme danger while hunting trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and providing fire support for US and allied ground forces.

Phantom in the Sky is the story of a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the back seat of the supersonic Phantom jet during the Vietnam War - a unique, tactical perspective of the “guy in back”, or GIB, absent from other published aviation accounts. During the time of Terry L. Thorsen’s service from 1966 to 1970, the RIO played an integral part in enemy aircraft interception and ordnance delivery. In Navy and Marine F-4 Phantom jets, the RIO was a second pair of eyes for the pilot, in charge of communications and navigation, and great to have during emergencies.

A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, in 1973, Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a lifelong passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary circumnavigation of the globe, and in its pursuit he set several ballooning distance records, including the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1984. But the aeronautical feats that first made him an American hero had occurred a quarter of a century earlier....

The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In the Vietnamese fishing village of Phan Thiet, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her aunt Coi, her cousin Ha, and her two-year-old daughter, Anh. She can hardly remember her luxurious life in the city of Saigon, which she left just two years ago.

The Gunner and the Grunt is written in the voices of two soldiers who fought in the same battles as members of the same recon unit but from different angles. Michael Kelley, the "Gunner," was flying in an armed helicopter above the jungle providing suppressive fire support, while Peter Burbank, the "Grunt," was down in the jungle on foot patrol involved in fire fights with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops. The book follows these two Boston boys from army training through deployment to the war zone and the shock of first combat missions.

Stockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They’re young, they’re radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like pop stars - but the CIA is determined to stop all that.

The Vietnam War is largely recalled as a mistake, either in the decision to engage there or in the nature of the engagement. Or both. Veterans of the war remain largely anonymous figures, accomplices in the mistake. Critically recounting the steps that led to the war, this book does not excuse the mistakes, but it brings those who served out of the shadows. Enduring Vietnam recounts the experiences of the young Americans who fought in Vietnam and of families who grieved those who did not return.

The Vietnam War remains one of American history’s most hotly debated military involvements—and more than a half-century later, a profound misunderstanding seems to persist. Author T Starr, a decorated Vietnam veteran who held a Top Secret Crypto clearance, is here to inform the public with a meticulously researched and personally lived reference book on the Vietnam War, They Never Heard the Final Shot: After 50 Years–The Truth About Vietnam.

Our DANTES study guides are different! The A History of The Vietnam War Dantes/DSST Study Guide teaches you everything that you need to know to pass the DSST test. This study guide is more than just sample test questions. Our easy-to-understand study guide will teach you the information. We've condensed what you need to know into a manageable book - one that will leave you completely prepared to tackle the test. This study guide includes sample test questions that will test your knowledge and teach you new material. What are you waiting for?

Author Doug Beed relates his memories of the men and missions during his year (1968-69) as a combat soldier with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam. After two years of college he couldn't afford to continue, so he was forced to relinquish his student deferment and enter the draft. He tried various strategies to get a non-combat job; nevertheless, he ended up in the infantry and was assigned to Vietnam. The stories in this book depict the year Doug spent in Alpha Company, where he spent days on patrols finding and killing North Vietnamese soldiers.