Download or read book Cherries A Vietnam War Novel Revised Edition written by John Podlaski and published by Nook Press. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a soldier leaves for war, those left behind often wonder what their loved ones are experiencing. Letters home are always cheerful and vague - no sense in worrying the family. Then upon returning home, these young soldiers do not want to talk about their experiences. Family and friends allege they are now distant, changed, and not the same person they remember from several months earlier. What causes this? Although the backdrop for this novel is the Vietnam War, "Cherries" exist in every war. They are the young "Newbie" soldiers, who are trained for war. However, most are not ready to absorb the harsh physical, mental and emotional stress of war. Once they come under fire and witness death firsthand, a life-changing transition begins. This eye-opening account offers readers an in-depth look into the everyday struggles of these young infantry soldiers. You'll feel their fear, awe, drama, and sorrow, witness the bravery and sometimes laugh at their humor. No two war experiences are the same, but after finishing "Cherries - A Vietnam War Novel," readers will have a much better understanding as to why these changes occur and why our military heroes are different upon their return home. Veterans will relate!
Download or read book Cherries A Vietnam War Novel written by John Podlaski and published by Scribl. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 933 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 have to endure, and why change is imminent.
Download or read book Cherries written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Reeducation of Cherry Truong written by Aimee Phan and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cherry Truong's parents have exiled her wayward older brother from their Southern California home, sending him to Vietnam to live with distant relatives. Determined to bring him back, twenty-one-year-old Cherry travels to their homeland and finds herself on a journey to uncover her family's decades-old secrets—hidden loves, desperate choices, and lives ripped apart by the march of war and currents of history. The Reeducation of Cherry Truong tells the story of two fierce and unforgettable families, the Truongs and the Vos: their harrowing escape from Vietnam after the war, the betrayal that divided them, and the stubborn memories that continue to bind them years later, even as they come to terms with their hidden sacrifices and bitter mistakes. Kim-Ly, Cherry's grandmother, once wealthy and powerful in Vietnam, now struggles to survive in Little Saigon, California without English or a driver's license. Cherry's other grandmother Hoa, whose domineering husband has developed dementia, discovers a cache of letters from a woman she thought had been left behind. As Cherry pieces their stories together, she uncovers the burden of her family's love and the consequences of their choices. Set in Vietnam, France, and the United States, Aimee Phan's sweeping debut novel reveals a family still yearning for reconciliation, redemption, and a place to call home.
Download or read book A Better War written by Lewis Sorley and published by HMH. This book was released on 1999-06-03 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A comprehensive and long-overdue examination of the immediate post–Tet offensive years [from a] first-rate historian.” —The New York Times Book Review Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing from thousands of hours of previously unavailable (and still classified) tape-recorded meetings between the highest levels of the American military command in Vietnam, A Better War is an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these final years. Through his exclusive access to authoritative materials, award-winning historian Lewis Sorley highlights the dramatic differences in conception, conduct, and—at least for a time—results between the early and later years of the war. Among his most important findings is that while the war was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress, the soldiers were winning on the ground. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War sheds new light on the Vietnam War.
Download or read book When Can I Stop Running written by John Podlaski and published by Booktango. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'When Can I Stop Running?' the author juxtaposes his nightmarish hours when he and a buddy shared a Listening Post ('LP') in the Vietnam jungle with some of his most heart-pounding childhood escapades. Readers will relate to the humorous childish antics with amusement; military veterans will find themselves relating to both of the entertaining and compelling recollections.
Download or read book Two Souls Indivisible written by James S. Hirsch and published by HMH. This book was released on 2005-05-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How two Vietnam POWs, one white and one black, formed an unexpected friendship that saved them both: “A moving story.” —John McCain Fred Cherry was one of the few black pilots taken prisoner by the Vietnamese, tortured and intimidated by captors who tried and failed to get him to sign antiwar statements. Porter Halyburton was a white southern navy flier who the Vietnamese threw into a cell with Cherry at the famous Hanoi Hilton, hoping that close quarters would inspire racial tensions to boil over. Instead, they fostered an intense connection that would help both men survive the war—and continue for the rest of their lives. An unforgettable story of courage and friendship, Two Souls Indivisible is a compelling reminder of what can be achieved, in the face of incredible odds, when we put our differences aside. “A riveting tale . . . Two Souls Indivisible joins the small list of essential tomes on the war, race, and to an even larger degree, books that describe the true meaning of heroism.” —The Seattle Times “A moving story of two men whose courage, sense of duty, and love proved greater than the depravity of their captors.” —Sen. John McCain
Download or read book The 13th Valley written by John M. Del Vecchio and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-02-15 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work that has served as a literary cornerstone for the Vietnam generation, The 13th Valley follows the strange and terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in territory controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account of Chelini's plunge and immersion into jungle warfare traces his evolution from a semipacifist to an all-out warmonger. The seminal novel on the Vietnam experience, The 13th Valley is a classic that illuminates the war in Southeast Asia like no other book.
Download or read book LIMA 3 written by Frank McCarthy and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1966, career Marine Lieutenant Frank McCarthy received the assignment of a lifetime when he was assigned as a platoon commander in an infantry battalion preparing for deployment to Vietnam. Following several months of training his men, whom he would soon come to believe were some of the finest Marines ever to wear the uniform, boarded a ship in San Diego and set sail for Southeast Asia, not knowing how many of them would ever see their beloved country again. Following a harrowing sea voyage that nearly ended their tour before it began, they finally arrived in Vietnam. Though a “cherry” unit with no combat experience, within three short months that all changed. Eighty-two of those first ninety nights were spent in mud filled foxholes or ambush positions, covered with leeches, shivering through the limitless, and cold monsoon rains and incessant enemy mortar fire. Days of endless patrols, in in an area laced with thousands of mines and booby traps as well as the ever-present but often unseen enemy. As difficult as those first three months were, McCarthy says it was a picnic compared to what would follow. Recounting his first fourteen months in Vietnam in gripping detail, in this book McCarthy draws on his own memory as well as official records to provide an unflinching firsthand account of what it was like to serve—and lead—as a Marine during the Vietnam War.
Download or read book Down and Out in Saigon written by Haydon Cherry and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving portrait of the lives of six poor city-dwellers, set in early twentieth century colonial Saigon Historian Haydon Cherry offers the first comprehensive social history of the urban poor of colonial French Saigon by following the lives of six individuals--a prostitute, a Chinese laborer, a rickshaw puller, an orphan, an incurable invalid, and a destitute Frenchman--and how they navigated the ups and downs of the regional rice trade and the institutions of French colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century. "Down and Out in Saigon is marked by three qualities that endow it with unusual value: the originality of its subject matter, as the first and only history of colonial Saigon's poor population, the excellence of its research, and Cherry's elegant prose."--Peter B. Zinoman, University of California, Berkeley "This is more than a corrective of revolutionary historiography--it is a tour de force that brings marginal and forgotten lives into the story of modern Vietnamese history."--Charles Keith, author of Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation
Download or read book Ru written by Kim Thúy and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A runaway bestseller in Quebec, with foreign rights sold to 15 countries around the world, Kim Thúy's Governor General's Literary Award-winning Ru is a lullaby for Vietnam and a love letter to a new homeland. Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream. As an adult, the waters become rough again: now a mother of two sons, she must learn to shape her love around the younger boy's autism. Moving seamlessly from past to present, from history to memory and back again, Ru is a book that celebrates life in all its wonder: its moments of beauty and sensuality, brutality and sorrow, comfort and comedy.
Download or read book Tunnel Rat in Vietnam written by Gordon L. Rottman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1965, soon after the first US combat troops had arrived in Vietnam, it was realized that in some areas the Viet Cong had developed vast tunnel complexes in which to hide from the enemy. It was long known that such complexes existed, but it was not realized just how extensive they were in some areas, how important they were to the Viet Cong, and how difficult it was to detect and neutralize them. At first infantrymen volunteered to enter the tunnels armed with only pistols and flashlights – the 'tunnel runners' were born, known to the Australians as 'tunnel ferrets'. Starting as an ad hoc force of infantrymen, combat engineers and chemical troops, it was not long before units were 'formalized' as 'tunnel exploration personnel' and 4–6-man 'tunnel exploitation and denial teams' were created. They came to be known simply as 'tunnel rats' with the unofficial motto Non Gratum Anus Rodentum – 'Not Worth a Rat's Ass'. This title will be based on the personal accounts of those who served in this unique role and will describe the specialist training and equipment, not to mention the tactics and combat experiences, of those who fought an underground war against the Viet Cong in Vietnam.
Download or read book The Boys on Cherry Street written by Ron Boehm and published by . This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Boys on Cherry Street is a collection of stories both humorous and heroic. The stories start with the zany and outrageous antics of the author and his college friends and continues through his U.S. Marine Corps training, flight school and service in Vietnam. There are many great books written about the Vietnam War-its heroes, their courage and sacrifice. However, this book is different in that it also shows the keen sense of humor that some men showed in some of the most stressful situations imaginable. It was this sense of humor that Boehm believe was part of their coping mechanism that got them through the tense situations of combat. The book is a salute to the young men of the Vietnam War Era who answered their country's call.
Download or read book America s Longest War written by George C. Herring and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author portrays American participation in the Vietnam War as the logical culmination of the containment policy that began under Harry Truman in the late 1940's. Also his portrayal of the complex challenge that Vietnam posed for the United States and the varied responses it evoked from American people & leaders.
Download or read book Combat and Campus written by Annette Langlois Grunseth and published by ELM Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-05-17 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An infantryman's riveting letters from the Vietnam War are preserved for fifty years by his family and combined with poetry written by his sister as she lives through the war at home on the campus of University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1968- '69.
Download or read book The Mountains Sing written by Que Mai Phan Nguyen and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Bestseller New York Times Editors’ Choice SelectionWinner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship "[An] absorbing, stirring novel . . . that, in more than one sense, remedies history." —The New York Times Book Review “A triumph, a novelistic rendition of one of the most difficult times in Vietnamese history . . . Vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.” —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel in English.
Download or read book When Can I Stop Running written by John Podlaski and published by John Podlaski. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Rave Review Review Book Club awards: BOOK OF THE YEAR The year is 1970, and the story follows the two soldiers - impressionable Detroit teenagers - during their long night in a Listening Post ('LP'), some 400 meters beyond the bunker line of the new firebase. Their assignment as a "human early warning system" is to listen for enemy activity and forewarn the base of any potential dangers. As they were new to the "Iron Triangle" and its reputation, little did they know that units before them lost dozens of soldiers in this nightly high-risk task and referred to those assigned as "bait for the enemy" and "sacrificial lambs." As he sat in the pitch-black tropical jungle - with visibility at less than two feet - John's imagination took hold throughout the agonizing night and, at times, transported him back to some of his most vivid childhood memories - innocent but equally terrifying at the time. As kids, we instinctively run fast to escape imaginary or perceived danger. Still, as soldiers, men are trained to conquer their fears and develop the confidence to stand their ground and fight. It's time to stop, as running is no longer an option. Review by Gary F Jones: This is a long short story or novella about a young man's response to fear from when he was 7 years old until he was in Vietnam in the early 1970s. The story alternates back and forth between things that scared him as he grew up in Detroit and the things that terrify him in the jungle of the Iron Triangle in Vietnam. The tales are engaging and pleasant to read. However, he got into more frightening situations as he was growing up than I even came close to.
