The Sun Sets On Vietnam: The Firebase War

The Sun Sets On Vietnam: The Firebase War
Author: Robert Haseman
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2016-02-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1483445852

Eaving his college deferment behind, this son of a WWII veteran enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1967, to help in the Vietnam fight. He was assigned to Officer Candidate School, became a 2nd Lieutenant and led a platoon in combat in 1969, when he was only 21. As the war progressed, the country's enthusiasm and support deteriorated and upon his return to the U.S., the author discovered that his service wasn't always respected as being patriotic and worthwhile. Over the years his interest in history prompted him to try to explain why. The Sun Sets On Vietnam describes his combat experience in a very personal way, and includes his own photos and watercolor illustrations. His reflections on the war have helped him resolve the experience.

Soldiering On in a Dying War

Soldiering On in a Dying War
Author: William J. Shkurti
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2022-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0700634037

By the autumn of 1971 a war-weary American public had endured a steady stream of bad news about the conduct of its soldiers in Vietnam. It included reports of fraggings, massacres, and cover-ups, mutinies, increased racial tensions, and soaring drug abuse. Then six soldiers at Fire Support Base Pace, a besieged U.S. artillery outpost near the Cambodian border, balked at an order to conduct a nighttime ambush patrol. Four days later, twenty soldiers from a second unit objected to patrolling even in daylight. The sensation these events triggered in the media, along with calls for a congressional investigation, reinforced for the American public the image of a dysfunctional military on the edge of collapse. For a time Pace became the face of all that was wrong with American troops during the extended withdrawal from Vietnam. William Shkurti, however, argues that the incidents at Firebase Pace have been misunderstood for four decades. Shkurti, who served as an artillery officer not far from Pace, uses declassified reports, first-person interviews, and other sources to reveal that these incidents were only temporary disputes involving veteran soldiers exercising common sense. Shkurti also uses the Pace incidents to bring an entire war and our withdrawal from it into much sharper focus. He reevaluates the performance and motivation of U.S. ground troops and their commanders during this period, as well as that of their South Vietnamese allies and North Vietnamese adversaries; reassesses the media and its coverage of this phase of the war; and shows how some historians have helped foster misguided notions about what actually happened at Pace. By taking a closer look at what we thought we knew, Shkurti persuasively demonstrates how combat units still in harm's way adapted to the challenges before them and soldiered on in a war everyone else wanted to be over. In doing so, he also suggests a context to better understand the challenges that may lie ahead in the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

My Vietnam War

My Vietnam War
Author: E.E. "Doc" Murdock
Publisher: H.O.T. Press Publishing
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2013-08-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0923178236

Writers have been writing about war since the siege of Troy, but few, if any, have captured the first-person experience of war as deeply as My Vietnam War. Set in 1967 (the deadliest year of the Vietnam War), this memoir-style novel depicts the psychological journey of a young man whose carefree days of studying philosophy at the university are ended by the draft. The story follows him from his initial rear-echelon assignment in Saigon, where he falls for a mysterious storytelling bar girl, to his eventual posting at an isolated front-line firebase in one of the deepest parts of the Vietnam jungle. While recovering from a leg wound (he is hit by a piece of bone from a fellow soldier who stepped on a booby trap mine), he becomes the assistant medic and sees the horrors of war close up. The experience begins his steady spiral down into PTSD. After he is seriously wounded, he ends up back in Saigon where, after an old friend from Arizona gets him involved in the underground drug trade, the mysterious bar girl may be his only hope for salvation. It is a powerful story, well-written, with vivid detail that you will never forget.

The Wars We Took to Vietnam

The Wars We Took to Vietnam
Author: Milton J. Bates
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 1996-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520204336

"Previous scholarship has established that American storytellers turned Vietnam into a landscape of American myth. Bates's lucid and judicious study . . . is a valuable addition to the conversation regarding the legacy of Vietnam."—John Hellmann, author of American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam "An absolutely stunning achievement. Milton Bates presents an incisively accurate analysis of the attitudes that shaped and controlled Americans' perceptions during the 1960s and '70s. He fuses literary analysis with historical scholarship to offer a comprehensive study of American thought and writing before, during, and after the war years. This is a book to be read carefully—and savored."—John Clark Pratt, author of The Laotian Fragments

The Vietnam War Trilogy

The Vietnam War Trilogy
Author: John M. Del Vecchio
Publisher: Warriors Publishing Group
Total Pages: 1879
Release: 2017-02-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Three classic novels by John M. Del Vecchio about Vietnam, Cambodia, and the aftermath of war. A classic combat novel and National Book Award finalist, The 13th Valley follows the terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in the North Vietnamese Army–infested mountains of the I Corps Tactical Zone. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account plunges Chelini into jungle warfare and traces his evolution from semi-pacifist to all-out, combat-crazed soldier. The seminal novel on the Vietnam experience, The 13th Valley is a classic that illuminates the war in Southeast Asia like no other book. Some reviewers have called For the Sake of All Living Things the most terrifying book they have ever read. This saga follows a rural Cambodian family—father Chhoun; his beautiful daughter, Vathana; and his young son, Samnang, who becomes the Khmer Rouge yothea Met Nang—from the mid-sixties through the escalation of the civil war, into the horrors of the holocaust, and finally to the country’s quest for rebirth. Documenting their story is American Special Forces Captain John Sullivan who served with the Military Equipment Delivery Team, and who has fallen in love with Vathana. Carry Me Home brings the troops back to America—a nation confused and divided by the wars in Southeast Asia. In this poignant epic, Del Vecchio transports a group of soldiers to their final battlefield: the home front. High Meadow Farm, in the fertile hill country of central Pennsylvania, becomes their salvation. In Vietnam they had been brothers in arms. Now, in the face of personal tragedy and bureaucratic deception, they create an even deeper allegiance—one of the spirit and of the land. This is the remarkable story of the veterans’ struggle to find one another and themselves. In its scope, breadth, and brilliance, Carry Me Home is much more than a novel about Vietnam vets; it is a testament to history and hope, to hometowns and homecomings, to love and loss, and to faith and family. It is an inspiring and unforgettable novel about America itself.

Soldiering After The Vietnam War

Soldiering After The Vietnam War
Author: Glyn Haynie
Publisher:
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2018-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780998209555

Haynie shares his struggles and his successes, completing a 20-year career in the Army culminating as an instructor at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. His story is one that clearly demonstrates just how wrong those protestors were, and just how much our country does owe these men and women who served their country with bravery and honor.

War Stories

War Stories
Author: Conrad M. Leighton
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2016-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 147666398X

As a GI reporter for the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam, the author--"an enlisted man writing primarily for enlisted men"--chronicled the experiences of combat soldiers in newspaper and magazine articles. His stories gave the Army's version of events, sprinkled with human interest and humor. They include his observations and photographs of jungle missions, life on firebases, struggles in the rear and his own survival as a harried frontline journalist. He also wrote almost daily letters home to his parents--personal dispatches filled with frank commentary and poignant, at times disturbing, anecdotes. His stories and letters are combined here in chronological order, providing a richly detailed narrative of combat in Vietnam.

Armed with Abundance

Armed with Abundance
Author: Meredith H. Lair
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807834815

Popular representations of the Vietnam War tend to emphasize violence, deprivation, and trauma. By contrast, in Armed with Abundance, Meredith Lair focuses on the noncombat experiences of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, redrawing the landscape of the war

Vietnam War Portraits

Vietnam War Portraits
Author: Thomas Sanders
Publisher: Casemate
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2020-02-29
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 161200704X

This volume honors those who experienced the Vietnam War through striking portraits and personal accounts of the conflict and its repercussions. This book offers a uniquely human perspective on the Vietnam War through portraits and stories of American veterans, southern Vietnamese veterans, and civilians. The surreal imagery of Thomas Sanders’ photography encourages the viewer to take a closer look at those who experienced the war. These images are paired with the individuals’ haunting, inspirational, and sometimes comical stories of the war. Set in a surreal jungle environment, the portraits evoke the sense of darkness and uncertainty felt by those who experienced the war. Some portrait subjects hold objects that evoke their time of service: the common cigarette pack smoked by the vets while in the jungle; a homemade grenade made by the northern Vietnamese; and the “order to report” document that changed many a life.

America's Last Vietnam Battle

America's Last Vietnam Battle
Author: Dale Andradé
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2000-12-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0700611312

In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam launched a massive military offensive designed to deliver the coup de grace to South Vietnam and its rapidly disengaging American ally. But an overconfident Hanoi misjudged its opponents who, led by American military advisers and backed by American airpower, were able to hold off the North's onslaught in what became the biggest battle of a very long war. Dale Andrade rescues this epic engagement from its previous neglect to tell a riveting tale of heroism against great odds. Originally published in cloth in 1995 as Trial by Fire and drawing upon recent Vietnamese-language sources, this new paperback edition will finally allow a true classic on the war to reach the wide readership it deserves.