Download or read book Fighting Shadows in Vietnam written by Michael P. Moynihan, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-23 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, set as deeply in his mind as in the Southeast Asian jungle, a young American soldier embarks on a journey to a war that, for him, will never be over. The world was a playground for Mickey, a naive Irish American kid bored with his life. His father served in World War II, his brother was a Marine in Vietnam; now it was his turn. His 365 days in the hell that was Vietnam builds in torment until an attack on a bunker complex in Cambodia. Wounded, his friend captured, he becomes a tormented survivor knowing he is always just a heartbeat from death. His adventure-turned-nightmare brings a visceral understanding of the words penned by Thoreau, the very same words Mickey's father spoke throughout Mickey's youth: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," especially those at war. This memoir chronicles the key perspective-shaping experiences of a U.S. Army grunt fighting in Vietnam.

Download or read book Fighting Shadows in Vietnam written by Michael P. Moynihan, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-02-10 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, set as deeply in his mind as in the Southeast Asian jungle, a young American soldier embarks on a journey to a war that, for him, will never be over. The world was a playground for Mickey, a naive Irish American kid bored with his life. His father served in World War II, his brother was a Marine in Vietnam; now it was his turn. His 365 days in the hell that was Vietnam builds in torment until an attack on a bunker complex in Cambodia. Wounded, his friend captured, he becomes a tormented survivor knowing he is always just a heartbeat from death. His adventure-turned-nightmare brings a visceral understanding of the words penned by Thoreau, the very same words Mickey's father spoke throughout Mickey's youth: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," especially those at war. This memoir chronicles the key perspective-shaping experiences of a U.S. Army grunt fighting in Vietnam.

Download or read book Vietnam Shadows written by Arnold R. Isaacs and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2000-04-14 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Isaacs talks to the veterans unable to forget the war no one wanted to talk about. He explores the class divisions deepened by a conflict in which the privileged avoided service that an earlier generation had embraced as a duty. And he shows how the "Vietnam Syndrome" continues to affect nearly every major U.S. foreign policy decision, from the Persion Gulf to Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti.

Download or read book Ghosts and Shadows written by Phil Ball and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-11-19 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego ill-prepared for the training and abuse that awaited him in boot camp. At the time, he would have done anything to escape; only upon reflection years later did he realize that the self-confidence instilled in him by his drill instructors had probably saved his life in Vietnam. A few months after boot camp, Private Ball was shipped out to Vietnam, joining F Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, near Khe Sanh. As a grunt, in the vernacular of the Corps, Ball, like the other youths of F Company, did a difficult and deadly job in such places as the A Shau Valley, Leatherneck Square, the DMZ and other obscure but critical I Corps locales. His--their--fear of death mingled with homesickness. Little did they realize that the horrors of the Vietnam War--horrors that while in-country they often claimed did not even exist--would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Download or read book Shadows of Saigon written by Elton Fletcher and published by . This book was released on 2001-05 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shadows of Saigon is a work of fiction based upon real people and factual events during the Vietnam War. The book covers the time period from the American Invasion of Cambodia in May 1970 to May 1971 when Vietnamization and U. S. troop withdrawals are well underway. During this time, the Vietnam War takes a major swing westward into the neighboring country of Cambodia. Shadows of Saigon is a compelling story of a young man who for various reasons leaves his chosen profession and the woman he loves to volunteer for service in the U. S. Air Force. The setting of the story revolves around Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, Republic of Vietnam. Former teacher, Lieutenant Paul Knight is fresh from officer's school and pilot training in Texas. He volunteers for Air Commando duty in the AC-119 Shadow gunship. Reporting for duty with the 17th Special Operations Squadron in Vietnam, he is assigned to Fighting C Flight at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. It is not long after American ground troops are withdrawn from Cambodia that Charlie Flight with its five fixed-wing gunships is assigned the task of providing twenty-four hour air support for the Cambodian Army. Flying antiquated, propeller-driven transport planes converted to attack-gunships, the Air Commandos are designated with the radio call sign "Shadow". The Shadows are accustomed to hiding in the darkness of night on combat missions, but now they must also operate during the day. The big black warplane becomes a most inviting target for enemy gunners as it flies low and slow to encircle the enemy with four side-firing Gatling guns that rain death. Knight and his fellow Air Commandos deal with the increased dangers of flying missions eye-to-eye with the enemy in broad daylight. Knight's chances of surviving his twelve-month tour of duty in Southeast Asia lessen with each combat mission. He soon learns that the gunship he pilots is not always reliable and that the monsoon season creates extremely hazardous combat flying conditions. No larger than the State of Missouri, Cambodia is a hotbed for U. S. air operations. Twenty-four hours a day, Shadow gunships from Saigon rotate every four hours to provide continual close fire support for the Cambodians. From the provincial capitals of Prey Veng, Kampong Cham, Kampong Thom, Siem Reap and the ancient ruins of Angkor to the nation's capital city of Phnom Penh and the nation's major seaport at Kompong Som, Shadows of Saigon are hell-bent to provide uninterrupted direct air support for the newly formed Republic of Cambodia. Knight's world of war ranges from sheer boredom to stark terror. It constantly transitions back and forth between the relatively safe sanctum of Tan Son Nhut and the dangerous combat environment over hostile enemy territory in Cambodia and Laos. Laying his life on the line for an unpopular and seemingly never-ending war, Knight struggles with his convictions that motivated him to volunteer for service. He wrestles with fears of getting killed or captured. With the enticement of Saigon just outside the gates of Tan Son Nhut, Knight takes advantage of the city to escape the rigors of war. Knight meets and eventually falls in love with a Eurasian war correspondent from Paris. She hates the Americans and what they have done to Vietnam. Three of Knight's pilot training buddies are also stationed in Vietnam. Their paths cross frequently as they too face the realities of war and the possibility of never returning home alive. Killer Dameron pilots AC-119G Shadow gunships along with Knight at Tan Son Nhut. He rejects his past life to become a renegade obsessed with killing the enemy. Joseph Eric Thomas, better known as JET, flies AC-119K Stinger gunships that carry much greater firepower than its sister-ship, Shadow. Youngblood is stationed at Phan Rang where he flies F-100 fighter/bombe

Download or read book Jungle Green Shadows written by Tony Howell and published by . This book was released on 2019-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Zealand Government ordered the deployment of combat forces to Vietnam in 1965 to join Australia and other Allies engaged in that War. Victor 2 Rifle Company arrived in Vietnam on 12 November 1967 and left on 13 May 1968. Major Brian Worsnop was the commander, and the author, Lieutenant Tony Howell, was one of the Platoon Commanders. Jungle Green Shadows is a very important historical record of Victor 2 Company's participation in New Zealand's most unpopular war. What is fascinating is how Tony has managed to weave the thoughts and experiences of so many surviving Company soldiers into this factual account. As a result it reads more like an educational novel than a history book. There is one chapter that deals with a typical day in the life of a Lead Scout, a tense and thought-provoking look at how these young men cared for themselves and each other. The reader may find the Scout's contact with two Viet Cong too graphically described - but it is indicative of what these young men were asked to do. The Company was deployed to Vietnam during the most violent period of the Vietnam War - the Tet Offensive. If you had any questions about how this Rifle Company became a legend, this book will provide the answers. The defining hours for Victor 2 Company were when they were attacked and surrounded by a Battalion of Viet Cong on 7 February 1968. For several hours the Company fought off the attackers, initially without artillery or air support. The book is not all combat action, however, although there is enough of that there. Tony deals thoroughly with the battlefield stress and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) issues that arose from being constantly in the front line. He is very sympathetic in the way he covers these stress issues and their effects on families and, in turn, their children. Tony brings to light the brutality of the Hanoi regime and the huge toll they inflicted on their own people, both during the War and after the Allies withdrew from Vietnam in 1972. It is not pleasant reading of assassination squads and 're-education camps' but that was the reality behind the bamboo curtain. He even follows the re-education fate of three key Phuoc Tuy Province officials who were in office during the time Victor 2 Company was in Vietnam. The real value of this book is that, while it may have been written for the families of the Victor 2 Company soldiers, the author's easy flowing style will appeal to all New Zealanders. This book is well-researched and the sources are all identified. Jungle Green Shadows is a must for Vietnam Veterans, families, schools, stress counsellors, amateur or professional military historians and researchers on the Vietnam War.

Download or read book Scars of Vietnam written by Harry Spiller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Marine Corps recruiter returns to his old stamping grounds to speak with some of the men he enlisted, their families, and the families of others who were killed in action. Some remember their experience with a sense of patriotism; others are bitter and feel forgotten by their country. The 17 accounts are a reminder of the horrors of war, and the lasting effects of its aftermath.

Download or read book Shadow Games written by Glen Cook and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1989-06-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fantasy.

Download or read book The Boys of St Joe s 65 in the Vietnam War written by Dennis G. Pregent and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-12-26 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:  Eleven high school friends in idyllic North Adams, Massachusetts, enlisted to serve in Vietnam, and one stayed behind to protest the war. All were from patriotic, working-class families, all members of the class of 1965 at Saint Joseph's School. Dennis Pregent was one of them. He and his classmates joined up--most right out of school, some before graduating--and endured the war's most vicious years. Seven served in the Army, three in the Marine Corps, and one in the Navy. After fighting in a faraway place, they saw the trajectories of their lives dramatically altered. One died in combat, another became paralyzed, and several still suffer from debilitating conditions five decades later. Inspired by his 50th high school reunion, Pregent located his classmates, rekindled friendships, and--together, over hours of interviews--they remembered the war years.

Download or read book The Ghosts of Thua Thien written by John A. Nesser and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-02-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drafted in October 1968, John A. Nesser left behind his wife and young son to fight in the controversial Vietnam War. Like many in his generation, he was deeply at odds with himself over the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, instilled with a strong sense of duty to his country but uncertain about its mission and his role in it. Nesser was deployed to the Ashau Valley, site of some of the war's heaviest fighting, and served eight months as an infantry rifleman before transferring to become a door gunner for a Chinook helicopter. In this stirring memoir, he recalls in detail the exhausting missions in the mountainous jungle, the terror of walking into an ambush, the dull-edged anxiety that filled quiet days, and the steady fear of being shot out of the sky. The accounts are richly illustrated with Nesser's own photographs of the military firebases and aircraft, the landscapes, and the people he encountered.

Download or read book Shadows on the Wall written by Stan Krasnoff and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2002 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The adrenalin-pumping, heart-yammering true story of Project Rapid Fire.

Download or read book In the Shadows of the American Century written by Alfred W. McCoy and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning historian delivers a “brilliant and deeply informed” analysis of American power from the Spanish-American War to the Trump Administration (New York Journal of Books). In this sweeping and incisive history of US foreign relations, historian Alfred McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power from the 1890s through the Cold War, and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. Since American dominance reached its apex at the close of the Cold War, the nation has met new challenges that it is increasingly unequipped to handle. From the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracturing military alliances, and the blundering nationalism of Donald Trump, McCoy traces US decline in the face of rising powers such as China. He also offers a critique of America’s attempt to maintain its position through cyberwar, covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.

Download or read book Combat Photographer written by Nick Mills and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vietnam through G.I. lenses"--Jacket subtitle.

Download or read book Marigold written by James Hershberg and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed President Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned secret U.S.-North Vietnamese encounter in Poland. Yet, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted that Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate. This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that, in fact, Poland was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi as he utterly disregarded the pleas of both the Polish and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Marigold might have ended the war years earlier, saving thousands of lives, and dramatically changed U.S. political history.

Download or read book Achilles in Vietnam written by Jonathan Shay and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original and groundbreaking examination of the psychological devastation of war through the lens of Homer’s Iliad in this “compassionate book [that] deserves a place in the lasting literature of the Vietnam War” (The New York Times). In this moving and dazzlingly creative book, Dr. Jonathan 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, Achilles in Vietnam 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). As a Veterans Affairs psychiatrist, Shay encountered devastating stories of unhealed PTSD and uncovered the painful paradox—that fighting for one’s country can render one unfit to be a citizen. With a sensitive and compassionate examination of the battles many Vietnam veterans continue to fight, Shay offers readers a greater understanding of PTSD and how to alleviate the potential suffering of soldiers. Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago, Shay shows how it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets. A groundbreaking and provocative monograph, Achilles in Vietnam takes readers on a literary journey that demonstrates how we can learn how war damages the mind and spirit, and work to change those things in our culture that so that we don’t continue repeating the same mistakes.

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation written by Melinda L. Pash and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-11-11 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Largely overshadowed by World War II’s “greatest generation” and the more vocal veterans of the Vietnam era, Korean War veterans remain relatively invisible in the narratives of both war and its aftermath. Yet, just as the beaches of Normandy and the jungles of Vietnam worked profound changes on conflict participants, the Korean Peninsula chipped away at the beliefs, physical and mental well-being, and fortitude of Americans completing wartime tours of duty there. Upon returning home, Korean War veterans struggled with home front attitudes toward the war, faced employment and family dilemmas, and wrestled with readjustment. Not unlike other wars, Korea proved a formative and defining influence on the men and women stationed in theater, on their loved ones, and in some measure on American culture. In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation not only gives voice to those Americans who served in the “forgotten war” but chronicles the larger personal and collective consequences of waging war the American way.

Download or read book Bloods written by Wallace Terry and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 1985-07-12 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The national bestseller that tells the truth about the Vietnam War from the black soldiers’ perspective. An oral history unlike any other, Bloods features twenty black men who tell the story of how members of their race were sent off to Vietnam in disproportionate numbers, and of the special test of patriotism they faced. Told in voices no reader will soon forget, Bloods is a must-read for anyone who wants to put the Vietnam experience in historical, cultural, and political perspective. Praise for Bloods “Superb . . . a portrait not just of warfare and warriors but of beleaguered patriotism and pride. The violence recalled in Bloods is chilling. . . . On most of its pages hope prevails. Some of these men have witnessed the very worst that people can inflict on one another. . . . Their experience finally transcends race; their dramatic monologues bear witness to humanity.”—Time “[Wallace] Terry’s oral history captures the very essence of war, at both its best and worst. . . . [He] has done a great service for all Americans with Bloods. Future historians will find his case studies extremely useful, and they will be hard pressed to ignore the role of blacks, as too often has been the case in past wars.”—The Washington Post Book World “Terry set out to write an oral history of American blacks who fought for their country in Vietnam, but he did better than that. He wrote a compelling portrait of Americans in combat, and used his words so that the reader—black or white—knows the soldiers as men and Americans, their race overshadowed by the larger humanity Terry conveys. . . . This is not light reading, but it is literature with the ring of truth that shows the reader worlds through the eyes of others. You can’t ask much more from a book than that.”—Associated Press “Bloods is a major contribution to the literature of this war. For the first time a book has detailed the inequities blacks faced at home and on the battlefield. Their war stories involve not only Vietnam, but Harlem, Watts, Washington D.C. and small-town America.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution “I wish Bloods were longer, and I hope it makes the start of a comprehensive oral and analytic history of blacks in Vietnam. . . . They see their experiences as Americans, and as blacks who live in, but are sometimes at odds with, America. The results are sometimes stirring, sometimes appalling, but this three-tiered perspective heightens and shadows every tale.”—The Village Voice “Terry was in Vietnam from 1967 through 1969. . . . In this book he has backtracked, Studs Terkel–like, and found twenty black veterans of the Vietnam War and let them spill their guts. And they do; oh, how they do. The language is raw, naked, a brick through a window on a still night. At the height of tension a sweet story, a soft story, drops into view. The veterans talk about fighting two wars: Vietnam and racism. They talk about fighting alongside the Ku Klux Klan.”—The Boston Globe