Vietnam Biography

Chief Petty Officer James "Patches" Watson was there at the start. One of the first to come out of the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was an initial member—a "plank owner"—of America's deadliest and most elite fighting force, the U.S. Navy SEALs. Through three tours in the jungle hell of Vietnam, he walked the point—staying alert to trip wires, booby traps, and punji pits, guiding his squad of amphibious fighters on missions of rescue, reconnaissance, and demolition—confronting a war's unique terrors head-on, unprotected . . . and unafraid.

The classic Vietnam war memoir, ...and a hard rain fell is the unforgettable story of a veteran's rage and the unflinching portrait of a young soldier's odyssey from the roads of upstate New York to the jungles of Vietnam. Updated for its twentieth anniversary with a new afterword on the Iraq War and its parallels to Vietnam, John Ketwig's message is as relevant today as it was twenty years ago.

The Ignorance of Bliss tells the true story of 10-year-old Sandy, who moves with her American military family to Saigon, Vietnam, where her father, the colonel, serves as a military advisor to the South Vietnamese Army.

From award-winning journalist and children’s book author Mary Cronk Farrell comes the inspiring and fascinating story of the woman who gave a human face to the Vietnam War. Close-Up on War tells the story of French-born Catherine Leroy, one of the war’s few woman photographers, who documented some of the fiercest fighting in the 20-year conflict. Although she had no formal photographic training and had never before traveled more than a few hundred miles from Paris, Leroy left home at age 21 to travel to Vietnam and document the faces of war.

In October 1969, Captain William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Fire Base Kate, held by only 27 American soldiers and 150 Montagnard militiamen. He found their defenses woefully unprepared. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments - some 6,000 men - crossed the Cambodian border and attacked.

American discussions of the Vietnam War tend to gloss over the period from 1972 to the final North Vietnamese offensive in 1975. But these were brutal times for America's South Vietnamese allies combined with a period of intense diplomatic negotiations conducted under the increasing reality that America had abandoned them.

In the Vietnam War, 2,197 helicopter pilots and 2,717 crew members were killed. Black Cat 2-1 is the story of one pilot who made it home and the valiant men he served with who risked their lives for the troops on the ground. Bob Ford invites listeners into the Huey helicopters he flew on more than 1,000 missions when he and his men dared to protect and rescue. For those whose voices were silenced in that faraway place or who have never told their stories, he creates a tribute that plays like a thriller, captures the humor of men at war, and resounds with respect for those who served with honor.

Chief Warrant Officer Gary O'Neal is no ordinary soldier. For nearly 40 years, he has fought America's enemies, becoming one of the greatest Warriors this nation has ever known. Part Native American, O'Neal was trained in both military combat and the ways of his Native people, combining his commitment to freedom with his respect for the enemy, his technical fighting skills with his fierce warrior spirit.

The new commander of the Company E, 52d Infantry LRRPs, Capt. George Paccerelli, was tough, but the men's new AO was brutal. Former LRRP Kregg Jorgenson provides a gripping account of ordinary men with extraordinary courage and heroism.

In the late summer of 1942, more than 10,000 members of the First Marine Division held a tenuous toehold on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. As American marines battled Japanese forces for control of the island, they were joined by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis. Only one of two civilian reporters to land and stay with the marines, Tregaskis’ notebook captured the daily and nightly terrors faced by American forces in one of World War II’s most legendary battles - and it served as the premise for his best-selling book Guadalcanal Diary.

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.

The Freedom Shield brings together stories of veterans of the 191st Assault Helicopter Company, who were tasked with carrying troops into battle, attacking enemy positions, and evacuating the wounded in their UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" helicopters. The unit was assembled from a hodgepodge of hand-me-down aircraft, used equipment, and overlooked personnel-its appearance belied the invaluable work the crews of the 191st would undertake during the Vietnam War.

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.

Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world’s most isolated and unforgiving environments - Nome, Alaska. That’s what happen to Dr. Sims. His plans to become a pediatric surgeon were drastically changed when, on the eve of being drafted into the army to serve as a MASH surgeon in Vietnam, he was offered a commission in the US Public Health for assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was scheduled to act as chief of pediatrics at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

A swamp warrior who served five tours in Vietnam tells it like it was in Death in the Jungle.

First published in the New Yorker in 1969 and later adapted into an acclaimed film starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, Casualties of War is the shocking true story of the abduction, rape, and murder of a young Vietnamese woman by US soldiers.

In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so Americans could leave.

Lt. Col. Ed “Fast Eddie” Cobleigh flew as a fighter pilot with the US Air Force, the US Navy (TOPGUN), the Royal Air Force, the Imperial Iranian Air Force, and the French Air Force. This is his story--a prequel and a sequel to his number-one best-selling memoir, War for the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot’s View of Vietnam.

By the spring of 1970, American troops were ordered to pull out of Vietnam. The Marines of First Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel "Wild Bill" Drumright, were assigned to cover the withdrawal of First Marine Division. The Marines of First RECON Bn operated in teams of six or seven men. Heavily armed, the teams fought a multitude of bitter engagements with a numerically superior and increasingly aggressive enemy. Michael C. Hodgins served in Company C, First RECON Bn (Rein), as a platoon leader. In powerful, graphic prose, he chronicles his experience.

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.