Vietnam Biography

Terry Buckler is an all-American boy from the Heartland who is selected for one of the most daring Special Operations missions in world history. See the 1970 Son Tay Raid through his eyes, with top secret planning by CIA, Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine special warfare legends in secret locations both in the US and in Southeast Asia. Twists in the story will take the listener from Hanoi, some of the most highly-defended airspace in the world, to idyllic farmlands in America to a secret CIA compound to the East Room of the White House.

101st Airborne Helicopter Gunships Supporting Airborne Infantry, LRRPs, and Special Forces SOG Units in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bien Hoa, Hue, Northern I Corps, & the A-Shau Valley.

In 2003, already an older father, National Book Award–winning novelist Tim O’Brien resolved to give his young sons what he wished his own father had given to him—a few scraps of paper signed “Love, Dad.” Maybe a word of advice. Maybe a sentence or two about some long-ago Christmas Eve. Maybe some scattered glimpses of their rapidly aging father, a man they might never really know. For the next fifteen years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living.

A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to Vietnam War literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday's writing illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.

While the rain and mist of an early March moved over the valley, then-Sergeant First Class Bennie Adkins and 16 other Green Berets found themselves holed up in an undermanned and unfortified position at Camp A Shau, a small training and reconnaissance camp located right next to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam's major supply route. And with the rain came the North Vietnamese Army in force. Filled with the sights, smells, and sounds of a battle fought in the middle of a tropical forest, A Tiger Among Us is a riveting tale of bravery, valor, skill, and resilience.

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 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, D.C., intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA's counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs.

Jakovenko was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Special Forces Distinguished Member of the Regiment in 2024. His name is engraved on the Ranger Memorial at Fort Benning, the site used for Fox News' special America's Top Ranger which follows the Army's Best Ranger Competition.

In 1967, US Air Force fighter pilot James Shively was shot down over North Vietnam. After ejecting from his F-105 Thunderchief aircraft, he landed in a rice paddy and was captured by the North Vietnamese Army. For the next six years, Shively endured brutal treatment at the hands of the enemy in Hanoi prison camps. Bound in iron stocks at the Hanoi Hilton, unable to get home to his loved ones, Shively contemplated suicide. Yet somehow he found hope - and he became determined to help his fellow POWs survive.

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.

Following the success of Jarhead, Anthony Swofford assumed he had exorcised his military demons - but as every veteran knows, that isn't exactly how it works. In these searing, courageous pages, Swofford struggles to make sense of what his military service meant, and to decide - after nearly ending it - what his life can and should become. Consumed by drugs, booze, fast cars, and the wrong women, Swofford almost lost everything and everyone that mattered to him.

A chronicle of the divergent journeys of a father, who fled post-war Vietnam on a small boat to find refuge in the United States, and his American-born daughter, who ventures to Vietnam as an adult, capturing the stark contrast between their perspectives on their shared homeland, as they search for common ground and a path toward mutual healing.

It was the tumultuous year 1968, and Robert Tonsetic was Rifle Company commander of the 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry in Vietnam. He took over a group of grunts demoralized by defeat but determined to get even. Through the legendary Tet and May Offensives, he led, trained, and risked his life with these brave men, and this is the thrilling, brutal, and honest story of his tour of duty.

Vietnam - There & Back: A Combat Medic's Chronicle is a candid account of the time when Jim Purtell and several other combat vets found themselves conducting operations in the jungles of Vietnam during and after the Tet Offensive. Purtell describes in gritty detail what it was like to live and fight with an infantry company only to return to anti-Vietnam sentiment so strong that he and his fellow veterans felt nobody cared about them or the sacrifices they made.

At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country.

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.

The definitive biography of Henry Kissinger - at least for those who neither revere nor revile him.

I have waited for over 45 years to tell this story, initially because I just wanted to forget the war and get on with making a living and raising a family. The other reason is that, 45 years ago, the American fighting man was not held in very high esteem. No one was ready to hear anything good about the Vietnam War or about the men who fought and died there. This book is less about me and more about the sacrifice, incredible hardships, and heroic actions displayed by the Marine grunts that I had the privilege to treat during battles on the demilitarized zone.

I'm Just a Supply Sgt. is a compelling narrative of the Vietnam War with a very personal, psychological perspective that is difficult to find in most histories. Don Stout's ability to comprehend and record his feelings during the war, and his struggles after the war, provide not only a window into the suffering of many veterans but also a tool for catharsis for those afflicted with PTSD. Without a doubt, Don's story provides one of the most unique perspectives on the war and is not only a history of his service but a psychological epic.

Quando, nel 1972, Tiziano Terzani arrivò in Vietnam, era – come scrive lui stesso – il giovane corrispondente «ottimista, sorridente e speranzoso raffigurato coi sandali di gomma dei vietcong in copertina». Consegnò la propria esperienza di testimone della guerra al diario che l’anno dopo apparve col titolo Pelle di leopardo, con riferimento alla carta del Vietnam a chiazze, a seconda che una zona fosse occupata dall’una o dall’altra delle parti in lotta. Si ritrovò di nuovo in Vietnam nel 1975, e fu uno dei pochissimi giornalisti occidentali testimoni della liberazione di Saigon.