Vietnam Biography

Quando, nel 1972, Tiziano Terzani arrivò in Vietnam, era – come scrive lui stesso – il giovane corrispondente «ottimista, sorridente e speranzoso raffigurato coi sandali di gomma dei vietcong in copertina». Consegnò la propria esperienza di testimone della guerra al diario che l’anno dopo apparve col titolo Pelle di leopardo, con riferimento alla carta del Vietnam a chiazze, a seconda che una zona fosse occupata dall’una o dall’altra delle parti in lotta. Si ritrovò di nuovo in Vietnam nel 1975, e fu uno dei pochissimi giornalisti occidentali testimoni della liberazione di Saigon.

In this gripping memoir, a former marine returns to Vietnam to try to make sense of the war. Previously published as Brothers in Arms, this edition includes a new preface by the author. When William Broyles Jr. was drafted, he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University in England, hoping to avoid military service. During his physical exam, however, he realized that he couldn't let social class or education give him special privileges. He joined the marines, and soon commanded an infantry platoon in the foothills near Da Nang.

In February 1966, U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over "neutral Laos". He crashed deep in territory controlled by North Vietnamese army regulars and the communist Pathet Lao, who would eventually capture him and hold him prisoner in a fortified jungle prisoner-of-war camp.

Jeff Danziger, one of the leading political cartoonists of his generation, captures the fear, sorrow, absurdity, and unintended but inevitable consequences of war with dark humor and penetrating moral clarity.

In 1967, at age 19, John Stillman - refusing to wait for the draft - voluntarily enlisted in the Army to aid his fellow countrymen in one of the most opposed involvements in our nation’s history: the Vietnam War. Written with John’s daughter, Lori Stillman, Jumping from Helicopters is a vivid and moving memoir that unearths 50 years of repressed memories with stunning accuracy and raw details.

Grady Myers was an artistic but aimless teenager in 1968, when, desperate for troops, the U.S. Army overlooked his extreme nearsightedness and transformed him into Hoss, an M-60 machine gunner. His memoir Boocoo Dinky Dow: My Short, Crazy Vietnam War is by turns funny and sobering. Grady recounts his military initiation at Fort Lewis, where there could be a fuzzy line between training and torture.

In Vietnam, we weren’t out to be heroes. We just did our jobs. For a helicopter pilot, each day was like all the others. You flew the mission and never stopped to think that it might be your last. You didn’t think about the bullet holes in the helicopter, the cracks in the tail boom, or any of it until night, lying in bed when you couldn’t think of anything else.

On June 13, 1971, the front page of the New York Times announced the existence of a 7,000-page collection of documents containing a secret history of the Vietnam War. Known as The Pentagon Papers, these documents had been commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Warren Robinson planned to go to law school after completing his undergraduate degree. He saw a career in law as a chance to leave his small hometown for a new life in the big city. In another time, Robinson might have achieved his goal, but the year was 1967, and the Vietnam War was reaching its bloody height. Knowing he would be drafted if he went ahead with his plans, Robinson asked for his name to be put at the top of his community's selective service list.

In Jersey Boy Takes Flight, you are taken on an extraordinary journey through the life of a man whose adventure began as a child, growing up in a middle-class, blue-collar family in Newark, New Jersey. Discover the carefree escapades of a boy in the 1950s and early 60s, engaging in boy scouting, hunting, fishing, and his ultimate passion - baseball. Yet, these innocent exploits soon collided with a country in turmoil, a nation grappling with assassinations, race riots, voting rights protests, anti-war movements, the dawn of space exploration, and the ever-expanding conflict in Vietnam.

Con Thien was a United States Marine Corps firebase that was the scene of fierce combat for months on end during 1967. Staving off attacks and ambushes while suffering from ineffectual leadership from Washington as well as media onslaughts, courageous American Marines protected this crucial piece of land at all costs. They would hold Con Thien, but many paid the ultimate price. By the end of the war, more than 1,400 Marines had died and more than 9,000 sustained injuries.

When the US Army went to war in South Vietnam in 1965, the general consensus was that counterinsurgency was an infantryman's war; if there were any role at all for armored forces, it would be strictly to support the infantry. However, from the time the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment arrived in country in September 1966, troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment demonstrated the fallacy of this assumption.

Kevin Osterman takes us through a fascinating journey from delinquency, his time as a Marine scout in Vietnam to learning leadership and ultimately becoming a peacemaker. Becoming Kevin – From Warrior to Peacemaker is a chronology that highlights specific pivotal events in the author's personal development that impacted the world around him.

A Different Face of War is a riveting account of one American officer in the Medical Service Corps during the early years of the Vietnam War. Assigned as the senior medical advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in I Corps, near the DMZ, James G. Van Straten traveled extensively and interacted with military officers and non-commissioned officers, peasant-class farmers, Buddhist bonzes, shopkeepers, nurses, the mentally ill, and even political operatives. He sent his wife daily letters from July 1966 through June 1967, describing in impressive detail his experiences, and those letters became the primary source for his memoir.

"Fifty Years in a Foxhole" is an episodic account of the author's seven months in combat in Vietnam. He and his platoon were in several major engagements including the Battle of the Hills and Operation Utah. The main focus of these operations are the lives of the marines and attrition through action and "friendly fire" as they endure these pointless dangers.

FSB Argonne, Hill 1308, was located on the border with Laos and just south of the DMZ. This story is told by the Marines that fought this fight, in their own words. There are 22 stories of the same fight, all from individual perspectives and experiences. LZ Sitting Duck is a down-in-the-dirt, grunt view of the Vietnam war. This was a fierce battle for the Marines of Delta Company (+ HQ), 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, and 3rd Marine Division.

The true story of Captain Sounthone Ratanakone is simply incredible. He was born into royalty in Laos and was a war hero and a CIA operative in the Secret War in Laos during the Vietnam War. The captain barely survived being a POW in a communist concentration camp (which the communists to this day deny ever existed), made a death-defying escape, had to escape the communist regime again once he had settled back home, and lived in a refugee camp. Til the Last is a story of heroism, patriotism, and self-sacrifice at the highest and most dramatic levels.

This sequel to Welcome to Vietnam, Macho Man digs deep into the mind of a Khe Sanh vet. The author, Ernest Spencer, opens up and shares with the world his life experiences from both before and after surviving the longest battle in the Vietnam War. How does wartime service change a person? Ernest shares his struggles with finding a place to fit back into the American Dream. Some, like the author, transition back into society very well in the eyes of the world, yet the demons deep inside are grappled with daily.

Kevin ‘Dasher’ Wheatley, VC, is one of the most extraordinary characters in Australian history. Dasher was a husband, father, champion footballer and one of the finest soldiers this country has ever produced. The story of his sacrifice is used by the ADF as a perfect example of valour and mateship to this day. Although he is one of the most famous Victoria Cross recipients of all time, his story has never been fully told. Until now.

Why you may ask, would they want to stop you from listening to my story? They say it’s because it tells too many secrets and that I’m a spy … a spy for the Brotherhood! Now you can follow my story from my birth in the Midwestern city of St. Louis, Missouri, to the gang-infested streets of Chicago, Illinois, and into the war-torn jungles of Vietnam.