Vietnam Biography

At the height of the Vietnam war, the U.S. Army drafted Norman Hile out of law school, trained him to be an artillery officer, and in August 1970 sent him to serve a one year combat tour in South Vietnam’s I Corps, where the war was hottest. “Keeping Each Other Alive” is Hile’s memoir of that combat tour.

In May 1962, Naval Chief Petty Officer Bryant Arbuckle flew to Saigon to establish a new armed forces radio station. Next to follow were his wife and three boys, Leslie among them. Saigon Kids is the candid, recondite slice of 14-year-old military brat Les Arbuckle's experience at the American Community School during the critical months of the Vietnam War when events would, quite literally, ignite in downtown Saigon.

An inside account of the South Vietnamese elites who strove to carry on the war against the Communists during the US Army’s withdrawal. The book is a personal memoir of the author’s service as a US Army advisor during the end stages of America’s involvement in Vietnam. During the period 1970–71, the US was beginning to draw down its combat forces, and the new watchword was “Vietnamization.”

Bob Kerrey grew up outside Lincoln, Nebraska, in the 1950s, and in his trademark style - serious, sometimes wry - he tells of his journey from that heartland to the dangers of Vietnam, to the hospitals where he recovered from his grievous injuries, and finally to the Nixon White House where he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Want to know what Vietnam was really like? From a Marine sniper in Hue, to a medevac dust-off pilot going into a hot LZ, Navy Corpsmen, A-6 pilots taking out bridges and SAM sites in North Vietnam, a nurse on the USS Repose, combat medics deep in the jungle, machine gunners in I-Corps, mechanics working on the rolling deck of a big carrier on Yankee Station, squad leaders on infantry sweeps in “the Arizona Territory”, truck convoys under fire, riverine patrol boats in the Delta, and much more....

In this collection of true stories, decorated war veteran Major General Ian Cardozo recounts what really happened during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, piecing together every story in vivid detail through interviews with survivors and their families. The book also seeks to commemorate the lives of those who were killed and wounded in this war, which took place fifty years ago.

Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field. The blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran. Subsequent volumes in his Vietnam Trilogy will detail Lanning's tour as a company commander and his post-war investigation into the mind of the enemy.

In this frank, engaging memoir, Captain Chamberlain chronicles the missions, personal courage and sacrifice of the Marines he was privileged to command; painfully recalls the unspeakable order he and his Marines were forced to obey; and the cover-up which followed. Nearly four decades later, Captain Chamberlain makes right what was wrong; brings closure to the family of a fallen and abandoned warrior; and attempts to put to rest the guilt which plagued his military career and life.

Every Weapon I Had is an inspiring tale of valor and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of major escalations in both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. It is also a story of deferred honor and delayed recognition; Davis earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions, but his nomination for the Congressional Medal of Honor was repeatedly “lost.” No official reason has ever been given for this oversight, but those who fought to correct it believe that it was motivated by racial prejudice. Davis was finally awarded the Medal in 2023, 58 years after the battle.

I Did Not Miss the Boat is the coming of age story of an adolescent girl who struggled to help her family & assimilation into a new country while searching for her own identity. From surviving the vast South China Seas, pirate raids, and uninhabited Indonesian islands to surviving high school and family life, Lea Tran did not experience a typical American upbringing.

Curt Stocker began smoking pot in October of 1966, more than a year before he went to Vietnam. In fact, the rumor about the incredible superiority of Vietnamese pot was the only positive aspect about his pending tour. Upon being drafted in 1967, Curt enlisted for an extra year, in order to secure a position in Armed Forces Radio. The plan was to further his broadcasting career, while guaranteeing that he would never be in the infantry.

In the fall of 1969, Gary Bray landed in South Vietnam as a recently married, freshly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. His assignment was not enviable: leading the platoon whose former members had committed the My Lai massacre--the murder of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians--18 months earlier. In this compelling memoir, he shares his experiences of Vietnam in the direct wake of that terrible event.

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.

My Vietnam places the listener into the boots of a grunt roaming through the blood-ridden jungle. Experience the turmoil, inside and out, that was the life of a young soldier as he counted the days to return to "the world", hopefully alive.

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 vivid, fascinating, and compelling story of a helicopter pilot surviving Vietnam and its aftermath. Joe Sheridan’s memoir is one patriot’s true account of the helicopter war and the brave pilots who fought alongside him.

With remarkable clarity and with great detachment, Kidder looks back at himself from across three and a half decades, confessing how, as a young lieutenant, he sought to borrow from the tragedy around him and to imagine himself a romantic hero. Unrelentingly honest, rueful, and revealing, My Detachment gives us war without heroism, while preserving those rare moments of redeeming grace in the midst of lunacy and danger.

The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 after eight years of fighting, bloodshed, and loss. Yet the terms of the truce that ended the war were effectively identical to what had been offered to the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost America and Vietnam thousands of lives and billions of dollars, and they were the direct result of the supposed master plan of the most important voice in American foreign policy: Henry Kissinger.

Anyone who has a personal connection with someone who served as an infantryman in Vietnam or simply has curiosity about infantry life in Vietnam will better understand, after listening to this book, the answer to the question "What was daily life like for them there?"

It began like the genealogical search of so many families to find out more about the relatives who came before them. It led to the surprising discovery of the stories of family members spanning eight generations who each served in the conflict of their era from the War of Independence through Vietnam. Through this book’s masterfully re-created veterans’ stories, blending documented historical research with his gift for storytelling, author Armand Kinslow breathes life into his humble quest to know more about his ancestors and to now promise that They Shall Not Be Forgotten.