Life Struggle of a Vietnam Veteran

Life Struggle of a Vietnam Veteran
Author: Christopher Rowling
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2016-05-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1524609579

This book is all about personal life experiences, which aims to inspire people. This book is made out of the realization that you should share your story to the world so that when you die, people will know about you, and your story will serve as an inspiration to other people.

Beyond Medals of Valor

Beyond Medals of Valor
Author: Bill Roberts
Publisher: BalboaPress
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2013-06-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1452575355

Influenced by patriotic war movies, joining the army and fighting for his country seemed to be a purposeful and honorable endeavor. Bill had been a delinquent kid and a high school dropout and later became a brokenhearted drunk whose girlfriend left him for a responsible insurance salesman. This is his true story and his perceived reality written from his paratrooper/infantrymans perspective in explicit detail. The reader will be outraged by the immorality, the lies from the top, and the insanity of the Vietnam War. The gripping detail of jungle warfare is riveting, touching, and raw. The author describes his intense search for meaning and his long battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the war. He details his college experiences during the turbulent counterculture movement of the sixties which deeply affected the country and was instrumental in stopping the war. He recounts his efforts through the years to find himself; he explains the darkest period of his life in the war and its paradoxical connection to his epiphany: a spiritual discovery of service, compassion, and love toward others as a means of preventing his own suicide. He describes his long journey toward healing as he seeks self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others and of God for his stupidity and perverse taking of life. He looks at the sociology of class struggle, both in the military and at a college in California, as a professor and counselor and as a director of a large disabled student services program. He finds peace, purpose, and healing through his work with disabled students and later with those living in his RV park who are among the lowest socioeconomic groups in our society. This book will make the reader cry, laugh, and become angry at the arrogance of authority and how history continues to repeat itself. The author realized years ago that surviving PTSD meant facing the whole truth. If he can help combat veterans cope with their problems and find truth and meaning in their lives as a result of this book, he will be deeply gratified.

Passing Time

Passing Time
Author: W.D. Ehrhart
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2016-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786487585

From 1969 to 1974 Ehrhart was just Passing Time. His reentry into the "world" began with his enrollment as a 21-year-old freshman (and token Vietnam vet) at Swarthmore College. At first simply trying to bury his past, Ehrhart slowly if inexorably came to understand what happened to him, and why, in Vietnam. Interspersed are flash-backs to the war itself. It is the story of political--and personal--awakening. As the war dragged on, the United States' deceitful involvement and its perpetuation of fallacies and lies about the war's conduct forced Ehrhart to confront his own feelings about his government, country, and self. Throughout, the reader shares with Ehrhart his odyssey through naivete, growing awareness, angry withdrawal and, finally, a measure of peace.

Vietnam Veterans Since the War

Vietnam Veterans Since the War
Author: Wilbur J. Scott
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806135977

War is hell, and the return to civilian life afterwards can be a minefield as well, especially for veterans of a “bad war.” Soldiers coming home from Vietnam faced unique challenges as veterans of a controversial war whose divisiveness permeated every step of the re-entry and readjustment process. In his balanced and highly readable account, Vietnam Veterans since the War, sociologist Wilbur J. Scott tells the story of how the veterans and their allies organized to articulate their concerns and to win concessions from a reluctant Congress, federal agencies, and courts. Scott draws on published records, hours of personal interviews with veterans, and his experience as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam to explore the major social movements among his fellow veterans in the crucial years from 1967 to 1990, including the antiwar movement, the successful effort to win recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by the American Psychiatric Association, the establishment of veterans’ outreach centers, the controversy over the defoliant Agent Orange and its long-term effects, and the struggle to create the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. His new afterword brings the story up to date and demonstrates that while the United States’ involvement in Vietnam continues to be controversial, many of the tensions engendered by the war have been overcome.

The Spitting Image

The Spitting Image
Author: Jerry Lembcke
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2000-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814751473

How the startling image of an anti-war protested spitting on a uniformed veteran misrepresented the narrative of Vietnam War political debate One of the most resilient images of the Vietnam era is that of the anti-war protester — often a woman — spitting on the uniformed veteran just off the plane. The lingering potency of this icon was evident during the Gulf War, when war supporters invoked it to discredit their opposition. In this startling book, Jerry Lembcke demonstrates that not a single incident of this sort has been convincingly documented. Rather, the anti-war Left saw in veterans a natural ally, and the relationship between anti-war forces and most veterans was defined by mutual support. Indeed one soldier wrote angrily to Vice President Spiro Agnew that the only Americans who seemed concerned about the soldier's welfare were the anti-war activists. While the veterans were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable about their service, this sense of unease was, Lembcke argues, more often rooted in the political practices of the Right. Tracing a range of conflicts in the twentieth century, the book illustrates how regimes engaged in unpopular conflicts often vilify their domestic opponents for "stabbing the boys in the back." Concluding with an account of the powerful role played by Hollywood in cementing the myth of the betrayed veteran through such films as Coming Home, Taxi Driver, and Rambo, Jerry Lembcke's book stands as one of the most important, original, and controversial works of cultural history in recent years.

Achilles in Vietnam

Achilles in Vietnam
Author: Jonathan Shay
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1439124922

An original and groundbreaking book that examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In this moving, dazzlingly creative book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. A classic of war literature that has as much relevance as ever in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a “transcendent literary adventure” (The New York Times) and “clearly one of the most original and most important scholarly works to have emerged from the Vietnam War” (Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried).

Never Forgotten

Never Forgotten
Author: Jenny La Sala
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-10-28
Genre: Vietnam War, 1961-1975
ISBN: 9781490766416

When the Vietnam Veteran's tours were over, they came home to find a country divided and a nation unappreciative of their service. How they were treated, how they integrated back into society, and how their wartime experiences changed them are just some of the questions answered, as their stories unfold in Never Forgotten. Told by the Veterans themselves, these are their stories. "The book Never Forgotten, captures 58 Veteran's accounts and others on what it was like to experience the Vietnam War. In their own words, they talk about their return home, struggles to maintain healthy relationships, decades of recovery, and feelings of worthlessness. Many find emotional well-being and self-worth by helping other Veterans. Those of us who are Veterans or whose loved ones have served in war, know with certainty we are different when we return home, than before we marched off to war. Because of this difference, for ourselves and for those we love and enjoy having in our lives, Never Forgotten is a must read." Michael B. Christy, Lt. Col. USA (ret) and Vietnam Veteran

You Don't Lose 'Til You Quit Trying

You Don't Lose 'Til You Quit Trying
Author: Sammy Lee Davis
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2016-05-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0698408020

The inspiring true life story of Vietnam veteran, Medal of Honor recipient and veteran’s advocate Sammy Lee Davis. On November 18th, 1967, Private First Class Davis’s artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At twenty-one years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body. Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated. His heroism that day earned him a Congressional Medal of Honor—the ceremony footage of which ended up being used in the movie Forrest Gump. You Don’t Lose ’Til You Quit Trying chronicles how his childhood in the American Heartland prepared him for the worst night of his life—and how that night set off a lifetime battling against debilitating injuries, the effects of Agent Orange and an America that was turning on its veterans. But he also battled for his fellow veterans, speaking on their behalf for forty years to help heal the wounds and memorialize the brotherhood that war could forge. Here, readers will learn of Sammy Davis’s extraordinary life—the courage, the pain, and the triumph.

It Changed My Life

It Changed My Life
Author: Dan Johnson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-04
Genre: Post-traumatic stress disorder
ISBN: 9781604410983

The world of a combat veteran consists of violence and killings, and itas either kill or be killed. Post traumatic stress disorder is no stranger to a vet during wartime and after. Depression is now becoming a major part of my life, and war experiences or flashbacks have entered my life. Reflex sympathetic dystrophy is sharing first place with PTSD as my worst enemy. RSD can be explained in two wordsachronic painaand itas a combat-related injury produced by a traumatic force. I think it should be mandatory that all combat war veterans receive psychological examinations before a vet goes home after a tour of duty. Because itas not mandatory now, about sixty to seventy percent of the homeless are Vietnam veterans who possibly suffer from PTSD. After reading my book, please write or call your congressman or congresswoman and make this psychological exam mandatory for all veterans.

455 Days

455 Days
Author: Robert J. Conine
Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2022-02-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1638854300

It was like I was in battle, and a barrage of weaponry was thrown at me, like misgivings, haunting memories, and tears that were so poignantly and strategically shot. I had no defense, and in my mind, I became a casualty of war, believing I was wounded, lying in a hospital bed, relieved to be safe and out of the war. When I got home, I left the war in Vietnam, and once I was on American soil, life started over. The past was the past. The challenge of the next fifty years was to keep it in the past. But that wasn’t always easy. I had nightmares that subsided only when everyday life challenges took precedence in our family. I had moments of depression and guilt and memories that filled the spaces brought on by scents, sights, and sounds. I couldn’t read stories about Vietnam or view Vietnam films or war movies. I kept them out of my life. I had fifty years of denial, but one day, God, whom I kept in my back pocket, pulled my past out and placed it before me, demanding that I confront it. I prayed, “My God, who am I? Please help me,” and the rest is history. I am still dealing with it, but I am at peace. My spirit was wounded; now I’m healed. My story has changed over the years, but now it has a happy ending. This story represents one soldier’s feelings during battles and the daily regimen of a soldier waiting to fulfill their 365-day stint in ’Nam. It is the story of one man’s true feelings frozen for fifty years.