Download or read book Rucksack Grunt written by Robert Kuhn and published by . This book was released on 2023-03-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A military memoir with an underlying love story

Download or read book Rucksack Grunt written by Robert Kuhn and published by . This book was released on 2022-10-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A naive teenage boy's journey to becoming a Vietnam war veteran. 2nd edition paperback. 186 pages.

Download or read book Rucksack Grunt written by Robert Kuhn and published by Robert Kuhn. This book was released on 2021-09-08 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: RUCKSACK GRUNT - A VIETNAM VETERAN'S MEMOIR A Vietnam War Memoir with an Underlying Love Story. A narrative about a naïve teenage boy’s evolutionary journey from his safe suburban neighborhood in Pennsylvania to the dangerous Central Highlands in Vietnam to becoming a Vietnam War Veteran as he remembers it and still struggles today to understand it all. The events of this narrative take place from 1969-1972, beginning with a young teenage boy’s love for and his marriage proposal to his high school sweetheart. Robert then decided that the best path to obtaining an education and a “real” job needed to support their future marriage was through an easy short stint in the US Army. Little did the naïve teenager know that the path to accomplishing his goals would take him through the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam during the latter years of the war. Although not a blood and guts war story, this first-hand emotional account details the many traumatic and sometimes distressing encounters of Robert Kuhn, the “rucksack carrying grunt” who served with the 1st Battalion 22nd Infantry unit during his Vietnam tour of duty.

Download or read book The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Download or read book Baptism written by Larry Gwin and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry had the dubious distinction of being the unit that had fought the biggest battle of the war to date, and had suffered the worst casualties. We and the 1st Battalion." A Yale graduate who volunteered to serve his country, Larry Gwin was only twenty-three years old when he arrived in Vietnam in 1965. After a brief stint in the Delta, Gwin was reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in An Khe. There, in the hotly contested Central Highlands, he served almost nine months as executive officer for Alpha Company, 2/7, fighting against crack NVA troops in some of the war's most horrific battles. The bloodiest conflict of all began November 12, 1965, after 2nd Battalion was flown into the Ia Drang Valley west of Pleiku. Acting as point, Alpha Company spearheaded the battalion's march to landing zone Albany for pickup, not knowing they were walking into the killing zone of an NVA ambush that would cost them 10 percent casualties. Gwin spares no one, including himself, in his gut-wrenching account of the agony of war. Through the stench of death and the acrid smell of napalm, he chronicles the Vietnam War in all its nightmarish horror.

Download or read book The Shake n Bake Sergeant written by Jerry S. Horton and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2007-08-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unforgettable mixture of vivid realism, poignant sadness and unexpected humor. Once you begin reading The Shake 'n Bake Sergeant, you will find it hard to put it down. See www.shakenbakesergeant.com.

Download or read book Looking for a Hero written by Peter Maslowski and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely acclaimed as the Vietnam War's most highly decorated soldier, Joe Ronnie Hooper in many ways serves as a symbol for that conflict. His troubled, tempestuous life paralleled the upheavals in American society during the 1960s and 1970s, and his desperate quest to prove his manhood was uncomfortably akin to the macho image projected by three successive presidents in their "tough" policy in Southeast Asia. Looking for a Hero extracts the real Joe Hooper from the welter of lies and myths that swirl around his story; in doing so, the book uncovers not only the complicated truth about an American hero but also the story of how Hooper's war was lost in Vietnam, not at home. Extensive interviews with friends, fellow soldiers, and family members reveal Hooper as a complex, gifted, and disturbed man. They also expose the flaws in his most famous and treasured accomplishment: earning the Medal of Honor. In the distortions, half-truths, and outright lies that mar Hooper's medal of honor file, authors Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow find a painful reflection of the army's inability to be honest with itself and the American public, with all the dire consequences that this dishonesty ultimately entailed. In the inextricably linked stories of Hooper and the Vietnam War, the nature of that deceit, and of America's defeat, becomes clear.

Download or read book Paco s Story written by Larry Heinemann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paco Sullivan is the only man in Alpha Company to survive a cataclysmic Viet Cong attack on Fire Base Harriette in Vietnam. Everyone else is annihilated. When a medic finally rescues Paco almost two days later, he is waiting to die, flies and maggots covering his burnt, shattered body. He winds up back in the US with his legs full of pins, daily rations of Librium and Valium, and no sense of what to do next. One evening, on the tail of a rainstorm, he limps off the bus and into the small town of Boone, determined to find a real job and a real bed–but no matter how hard he works, nothing muffles the anguish in his mind and body. Brilliantly and vividly written, Paco’s Story–winner of a National Book Award–plunges you into the violence and casual cruelty of the Vietnam War, and the ghostly aftermath that often dealt the harshest blows.

Download or read book Inside the Crosshairs written by Col. Michael Lee Lanning and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The American sniper could be regarded as the greatest all-around rifleman the world has ever known. . . ." At the start of the war in Vietnam, the United States had no snipers; by the end of the war, Marine and army precision marksmen had killed more than 10,000 NVA and VC soldiers--the equivalent of an entire division--at the cost of under 20,000 bullets, proving that long-range shooters still had a place in the battlefield. Now noted military historian Michael Lee Lanning shows how U.S. snipers in Vietnam--combining modern technology in weapons, ammunition, and telescopes--used the experience and traditions of centuries of expert shooters to perfect their craft. To provide insight into the use of American snipers in Vietnam, Lanning interviewed men with combat trigger time, as well as their instructors, the founders of the Marine and U.S. Army sniper programs, and the generals to whom they reported. Backed by hard information and firsthand accounts, the author demonstrates how the skills these one-shot killers honed in the jungles of Vietnam provided an indelible legacy that helped save American lives in Grenada, the Gulf War, and Somalia and continues to this day with American troops in Bosnia.

Download or read book Cherries written by John Podlaski and published by John Podlaski. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1970, John Kowalski is one of many young, naive teenage soldiers sent to Vietnam to fight in an unpopular war. Dubbed “Cherries” by their more seasoned peers, these newbies suddenly found themselves thrust into the middle of a terrible nightmare - literally forced to become men overnight. On-the-job-training is intense, however, most of these teenagers were hardly ready to absorb the harsh mental, emotional, and physical stress of war. When coming under enemy fire for the first time and witnessing death first-hand, a life changing transition begins...one that can't be reversed. The author is an excellent story teller, readers testify that they are right there with the characters, joining them in their quest for survival, sharing the fear, awe, drama, and sorrow, witnessing bravery and sometimes, even laughing at their humor. It's a story that is hard to put down. When soldiers return home from war, all are different - changed for life. "Cherries" tells it like it is and when finished, readers will better understand what these young men had to endure, and why change is imminent.

Download or read book How to Do Your Own Painting and Wallpapering written by Jackson Hand and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Grunt The Curious Science of Humans at War written by Mary Roach and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times / National Bestseller "America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again.

Download or read book Combat Ready Kitchen written by Anastacia Marx de Salcedo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans eat more processed foods than anyone else in the world. We also spend more on military research. These two seemingly unrelated facts are inextricably linked. If you ever wondered how ready-to-eat foods infiltrated your kitchen, you’ll love this entertaining romp through the secret military history of practically everything you buy at the supermarket. In a nondescript Boston suburb, in a handful of low buildings buffered by trees and a lake, a group of men and women spend their days researching, testing, tasting, and producing the foods that form the bedrock of the American diet. If you stumbled into the facility, you might think the technicians dressed in lab coats and the shiny kitchen equipment belonged to one of the giant food conglomerates responsible for your favorite brand of frozen pizza or microwavable breakfast burritos. So you’d be surprised to learn that you’ve just entered the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, ground zero for the processed food industry. Ever since Napoleon, armies have sought better ways to preserve, store, and transport food for battle. As part of this quest, although most people don’t realize it, the U.S. military spearheaded the invention of energy bars, restructured meat, extended-life bread, instant coffee, and much more. But there’s been an insidious mission creep: because the military enlisted industry—huge corporations such as ADM, ConAgra, General Mills, Hershey, Hormel, Mars, Nabisco, Reynolds, Smithfield, Swift, Tyson, and Unilever—to help develop and manufacture food for soldiers on the front line, over the years combat rations, or the key technologies used in engineering them, have ended up dominating grocery store shelves and refrigerator cases. TV dinners, the cheese powder in snack foods, cling wrap . . . The list is almost endless. Now food writer Anastacia Marx de Salcedo scrutinizes the world of processed food and its long relationship with the military—unveiling the twists, turns, successes, failures, and products that have found their way from the armed forces’ and contractors’ laboratories into our kitchens. In developing these rations, the army was looking for some of the very same qualities as we do in our hectic, fast-paced twenty-first-century lives: portability, ease of preparation, extended shelf life at room temperature, affordability, and appeal to even the least adventurous eaters. In other words, the military has us chowing down like special ops. What is the effect of such a diet, eaten—as it is by soldiers and most consumers—day in and day out, year after year? We don’t really know. We’re the guinea pigs in a giant public health experiment, one in which science and technology, at the beck and call of the military, have taken over our kitchens.

Download or read book The Knife of Never Letting Go written by Patrick Ness and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dystopian thriller follows a boy and girl on the run from a town where all thoughts can be heard – and the passage to manhood embodies a horrible secret. Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

Download or read book When I Turned Nineteen written by Glyn Haynie and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's the year 1969. I was serving in the U.S. Army with my brothers of First Platoon Company A 3/1 11th Bde Americal (23rd Infantry) Division. We were average American sons, fathers, husbands, or brothers who'd enlisted or been drafted from all over the United States and who'd all come from different backgrounds. We came together and formed a brotherhood that will last through time. I share my experiences about weeks of boredom and minutes to hours of terror and surviving the heat, carrying a 60-pound rucksack, monsoons, a forest fire, a typhoon, building a firebase, fear, death and fighting the enemy while mentally, physically, and morally exhausted.

Download or read book Killer Kane written by Andrew R. Finlayson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The leader of one of the most successful U. S. Marine long range reconnaissance teams during the Vietnam War, Andrew Finlayson recounts his team's experiences in the year leading up to the Tet Offensive of 1968. Using primary sources, such as Marine Corps unit histories and his own weekly letters home, he presents a highly personal account of the dangerous missions conducted by this team of young Marines as they searched for North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong units in such dangerous locales as Elephant Valley, the Enchanted Forest, Charlie Ridge, Happy Valley and the Que Son Mountains. In numerous close contacts with the enemy, the team (code-name Killer Kane) fights for its survival against desperate odds, narrowly escaping death time and again. The book gives vivid descriptions of the life of recon Marines when they are not on patrol, the beauty of the landscape they traverse, and several of the author's Vietnamese friends. It also explains in detail the preparations for, and the conduct of, a successful long range reconnaissance patrol.

Download or read book Vietnam No Regrets written by J. Richard Watkins and published by . This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vietnam No Regrets is the story of a soldier who volunteers to fight for his country in Vietnam. He would have no idea of what he will have to go through to leave the killing fields of Vietnam alive. You will be able to follow him from his first step in-country until his very last day and see for yourself what life was like for the infantry soldier in Vietnam. This story will be told through the eyes of one individual Vietnam combat soldier, but it is a compelling story that all combat veterans will have no trouble relating to.