Vietnam Journal: Series Two - Volume 3: Ripcord

Vietnam Journal: Series Two - Volume 3: Ripcord
Author: Don Lomax
Publisher: Caliber Comics
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2020-06-29
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN:

Vietnam Journal, the award-winning series, returns! July 1970. Scott (Journal) Neithammer has been reporting first-hand on President Nixon's military incursion into Cambodia to root out the North Vietnamese Army's, until then, untouchable sanctuaries. However, this all comes to an abrupt end when he is kidnapped by over-zealous Military Police and returned to South Vietnam to face the Provost Marshall's wrath. The incident sparks Neithammer's unexpected journey back into the dreaded A Shau Valley where the 101st Airborne Division, once again, attempts to bloody the noses of the NVA. This brings us to the siege of Fire Support Base RIPCORD. This is a story of over-confidence, arrogance, and revenge on the part of Military Assistance Command Vietnam in Saigon, coupled with an under-strength U.S. force sent to face an enemy who outnumbers them ten to one. RIPCORD was the final large unit battle in the waning days of the Vietnam War for the United States. The troops were expected to face a massive enemy presence, have minimal or no casualties, and receive limited ordinance and support, while vanquishing a highly motivated and well supplied enemy. In the jargon of the boonie rats of the day - "f**king typical". RIPCORD...a little known battle with an all too predictable outcome. Collects Vietnam Journal: Series 2 issues 11-15. A Caliber Comics release.

Vietnam Journal - Series 2

Vietnam Journal - Series 2
Author: Don Lomax
Publisher:
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2020-04-13
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781635298628

Vietnam Journal Returns! Scott 'Journal' Neithammer had been reporting on the U.S. incursion into Cambodia to root out the North Vietnamese. However, he is returned to South Vietnam to face the Provost Marshall. This sparks his journey back to the A Shau Valley and the siege of Fire Support Base RIPCORD. Collects VJ: Series 2 issues 11-15.

Withdrawal

Withdrawal
Author: Gregory A. Daddis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190691093

A "better war." Over the last two decades, this term has become synonymous with US strategy during the Vietnam War's final years. The narrative is enticingly simple, appealing to many audiences. After the disastrous results of the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Hanoi's forces demonstrated the failures of American strategy, popular history tells of a new American military commander who emerged in South Vietnam and with inspired leadership and a new approach turned around a long stalemated conflict. In fact, so successful was General Creighton Abrams in commanding US forces that, according to the "better war" myth, the United States had actually achieved victory by mid-1970. A new general with a new strategy had delivered, only to see his victory abandoned by weak-kneed politicians in Washington, DC who turned their backs on the US armed forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a bold new interpretation of America's final years in Vietnam, acclaimed historian Gregory A. Daddis disproves these longstanding myths. Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' long Vietnamese civil war. In a riveting sequel to his celebrated Westmoreland's War, Daddis demonstrates he is one of the nation's leading scholars on the Vietnam War. Withdrawal will be a standard work for years to come.

America, History and Life

America, History and Life
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2001
Genre: Canada
ISBN:

Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

Vietnam Journal - Series Two

Vietnam Journal - Series Two
Author: Don Lomax
Publisher: Caliber Comics
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781635299267

Scott "Journal" Niethammer returns to report on the seemingly endless conflict and this time he heads into Cambodia as the incursion of that country is well underway by United States and South Vietnamese military forces. He is accompanied by a slightly erratic photographer with the unhealthy attitude that he is impervious to enemy fire when behind the camera's lens. While in Cambodia they meet a pistol packing, single-minded Nun and dozens of ethnic Vietnamese orphans who have been delivered a death sentence by Cambodia's new acting Prime Minister, Lon Nol. With Journal's help they make a desperate race for the border and salvation. Now wanted by the Judge Advocate General's office for questioning, Journal retreats back into Cambodia hoping the farce will all blow over. But he meets a female reporter as much an outcast from the mainstream media as he. Their similarities create a bond until the war finds a way to force the heavy hand of horror into their fledgling relationship. And lastly, racism and drugs rear their ugly heads as rear echelon United States troops are moved forward in a support capacity for the line troops. Their real world prejudices and minimal training threaten to rot the core of the effort from the inside out. And the ever present enemy awaits any opportunity to hand the Americans a sound defeat should there be a misstep in their favor. Collects Vietnam Journal Series Two issues 6-10. "Lomax bases his fictional work on his real experiences in Vietnam in 1966, with powerful results. It is Lomax's concern for average soldiers that, in the end, makes his work significant." - Publishers Weekly. "Vietnam Journal by Don Lomax is the best comic book portrayal of Vietnam I have ever read. It's probably one of the best works ever put down in any art form about the war." - Daniel Robert Epstein.

Hell On A Hill Top

Hell On A Hill Top
Author: Benjamin L. Harrison
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2004
Genre: Vietnam War, 1961-1975
ISBN: 0595327303

HELL ON A HILL TOP-for four months in 1970, Hell raged on the hill tops of Ripcord, 805, 902 and 1000, all just east of the A Shau Valley. HELL ON A HILL TOP Instead of backing away from the fight, the North Vietnamese mortar, recoilless rifle, heavy machine gun, sapper and regular infantry attacks increased. The last offensive around Ripcord was starting to look like the last stand. Unwilling to keep American soldiers at high risk at this stage of the war; Ripcord was evacuated on 23 July. The battle went unnoticed for 30 years until Keith Nolan's book, RIPCORD, was published. As powerful and gripping as was the story of great leadership and courageous fighting by our soldiers, the magnitude of the enemy force still remained unknown. The author, the 3rd Brigade commander during the siege and evacuation, made trips to Vietnam in 2001 and 2004 and interviewed the 324B Division Commander whose first-ever division sole mission, was to destroy Firebase Ripcord. The full story is now told.

The Generals

The Generals
Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101595930

A New York Times bestseller! An epic history of the decline of American military leadership—from the bestselling author of Fiasco and Churchill and Orwell. While history has been kind to the American generals of World War II—Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley—it has been less kind to the generals of the wars that followed, such as Koster, Franks, Sanchez, and Petraeus. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In chronicling the widening gulf between performance and accountability among the top brass of the U.S. military, Ricks tells the stories of great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and generals who failed themselves and their soldiers. In Ricks’s hands, this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails.

Ripcord

Ripcord
Author: Keith Nolan
Publisher: Presidio Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2003-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0891418091

On April 10, 1970, Hill 927 was occupied by troopers of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. By July, the activities of the artillery and infantry of Ripcord had caught the attention of the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and a long and deadly siege ensued. Ripcord was the Screaming Eagles’ last chance to do significant damage to the NVA in the A Shau Valley before the division was withdrawn from Vietnam and returned to the United States. At Ripcord, the enemy counterattacked with ferocity, using mortar and antiaircraft fire to inflict heavy causalities on the units operating there. The battle lasted four and a half months and exemplified the ultimate frustration of the Vietnam War: the inability of the American military to bring to bear its enormous resources to win on the battlefield. In the end, the 101st evacuated Ripcord, leaving the NVA in control of the battlefield. Contrary to the mantra “We won every battle but lost the war,” the United States was defeated at Ripcord. Now, at last, the full story of this terrible battle can be told.