Book picks similar to
Window on a War: An Anthropologist in the Vietnam Conflict by Gerald Cannon Hickey
vietnam
history
anthropology
bibliocurious
STUPID WAR STORIES: Tales from the Wonder War, Vietnam 1970-1971
Keith Pomeroy - 2015
The Atomic Outhouse, Hot Extractions, Listening Out, and Best Vacation Ever, will have you enthralled. These stories and sixty more like them pull no punches to give you a genuine understanding of a war that was more bizarre than you ever imagined.
The Tiger Man of Vietnam
Frank Walker - 2008
The CIA wanted to kill him. This is the remarkable true story of Australian war hero Barry Petersen. In 1963, 28-year-old Australian Captain Barry Petersen was sent to Vietnam as part of the 30-man Australian Training Team, two years before the first official Australian troops arrived. Seconded to the CIA, he was sent to the remote Central Highlands to build an anti-communist guerrilla force among the indigenous Montagnard people. He was sent off with bagloads of cash and a vague instruction to 'get to know the natives'. Petersen took over the running of the paramilitary force that had been started by the local police chief and started to earn the Montagnards respect. He lived drank and ate with the Montagnards, learned their language and respected their skills. The Vietcong dubbed Petersen's force 'Tiger Men'. When Petersen he heard this, he had special badges made for their berets and supplied tiger print uniforms. The Montagnards loved Petersen and flocked to join his force but the CIA were worried. They thought he was out of control and too close to the Montagnard people...
Good to Go: The Life And Times Of A Decorated Member Of The U.S. Navy's Elite Seal Team Two
Harold Constance - 1997
What amazing violence can be meted out in the blink of an eye."
In the mid-nineteen sixties, Harry Constance made a life-altering journey that led him out of Texas and into the jungles of Vietnam. As a young naval officer, he went from UDT training to the U.S. Navy's newly formed SEAL Team Two, and then straight into furious action. By 1970, he was already the veteran of three hundred combat missions and the recipient of thirty-two military citations, including three Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart.Good To Go is Constance's powerful, firsthand account of his three tours of duty as a member of America's most elite, razor-sharp stealth fighting force. It is a breathtaking memoir of harrowing missions and covert special-ops—from the floodplains of the Mekong Delta to the beaches of the South China Sea—that places the reader in the center of bloody ambushes and devastating firefights. But his extraordinary adventure goes even farther—beyond 'Nam—as we accompany Constance and the SEALs on astonishing missions to some of the world's most dangerous hot-spots . . . and experience close-up the courage, dedication, and unparalleled skill that made the U.S. Navy SEALs legendary.
Includes 8 Pages of SEAL Team Action Photos!
Hunters Shooters: An Oral History of the U.S. Navy SEALs in Vietnam
Bill Fawcett - 1995
The U.S. Navy SEALs have long been considered among the finest, most courageous and professional soldiers in American military history– an elite fighting force trained as parachutists, frogmen, demolition experts and guerrilla warriors, and ready for combat on the Sea, Air and Land. Born out of a proud naval tradition dating back to World War II, the first SEAL teams were commissioned in the early 1960s. Vietnam was their proving ground.In this remarkable volume, fifteen former SEALs share their vivid, first–person remembrances of action in Vietnam– brutal, honest and thrilling stories of covert missions and ferocious firefights, of red–hot chopper insertions and extractions, revealing astonishing truths that will only add strength to the SEAL legend.
The Raid: The Son Tay Prison Rescue Mission
Benjamin F. Schemmer - 1976
on November 21, 1970, more than one hundred U.S. war planes shattered the dark calm of the skies over Hanoi. Their mission: rescue sixty-one American POWs from Son Tay prison. Less than thirty minutes later, the raid was over, but no Americans had been rescued. The prisoners had been moved from Son Tay four and a half months earlier and that wasn’t all. Part of the raiding force landed at the wrong compound, a “school” bristling with enemy soldiers, but the soldiers weren’t Vietnamese . . . Replete with fascinating insights into the workings of high-level intelligence and military command, The Raid is Benjamin Schemmer’s unvarnished account of the courageous mission that was quickly labeled an intelligence failure by Congress and a Pentagon blunder by the world press. Determined to ferret out the truth, Schemmer uncovers one of the CIA’s most carefully guarded secrets. From the planning and live-fire rehearsals to the explosive reactions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff watching the drama unfold to the aftermath as the White House and Pentagon struggled for damage control, Schemmer tackles the tough questions. What really happened during the twenty-seven minutes the raiders spent on the ground? Did the CIA know the whole time that the Americans were gone? Had the Agency in fact been responsible for the POWs being moved? And perhaps most intriguing, why was the rescue—though it never freed a single prisoner—not a failure after all?
Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
Nick Turse - 2011
Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.
Hitler's Children - Spitting Fire (Eyewitness Accounts - 12th SS Panzer 'Hitler Youth' in Normandy 1944)
Sprech Media - 2015
Who were these 15 to 17 year-old Hitler Youth soldiers, why were they so fanatical, and how could they be cleanly defeated? The Allied mood turned to bitterness and hatred as the brutal cunning and sheer ruthlessness of the boy soldiers and their adult leaders became clear. This book assembles a range of astonishing eyewitness testimony to the ferocious combat between Hitler Youth panzer troops, snipers and infantry against British and Canadian forces after D-Day. There are the disturbing combat experiences of surviving 12th SS Panzer fighters themselves, recorded after the war; eyewitness accounts from Allied soldiers who fought tank-to-tank and hand-to-hand against these opponents in the hedgerows, fields and streets of Normandy; and accounts too from terrified French civilians caught up in the firefights. The accounts featured are: The Tank Destroyer (Jagdpanzer IV) The Bocage Ambush (British Sergeant) The Battle for the Bunkers (12th SS Panthers) The Flail Tanks (French Civilian) The Panzerfaust Fighters (Hitlerjugend Panzergrenadiers) The Sniper (Canadian Captain) The War Crimes (12th SS Panzer Radio Operator) Panthers in the Smoke (British Cromwell Commander) Thunderbolts, Typhoons and Flak (12th Panzer Flak Unit) These are graphic and often shocking accounts of one of the strangest phases of the second world war in the west, and one that left a dreadful mark on so many who were involved in it. Sprech Media is an independent researcher and publisher of eyewitness testimonies to armed conflict in the 20th century.
Reflections of a Warrior: Six Years as a Green Beret in Vietnam
Franklin D. Miller - 1991
A Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipient describes his experiences with an elite Special Forces unit in Vietnam from 1966 to 1972, where his missions ranged from intelligence gathering to search-and-destroy operations in enemy territory.
Saigon Has Fallen
Peter Arnett - 2015
Arnett’s clear-eyed coverage incurred the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson and officials on all sides of the conflict. Writing candidly and vividly about his gambles and glories, Arnett also shares his fears and fights in reporting against the backdrop of war. Arnett places readers at the historic pivot-points of Vietnam: covering Marine landings, mountaintop battles, Saigon’s decline and fall, and the safe evacuation of a planeload of 57 infants in the midst of chaos. Peter Arnett’s sweeping view and his frank, descriptive, and dramatic writing brings the Vietnam War to life in a uniquely insightful way for this year’s 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his Vietnam coverage. He later went on to TV-reporting fame covering the Gulf War for CNN. Includes 21 dramatic photographs from the AP Archive and the personal collection of Peter Arnett. About the Author Peter Arnett started as an intern at his local newspaper at age 18, but knew even then his interest was in covering the world. Less than a decade later, he was traveling the globe for The Associated Press, the first of several major American news organizations he would work for. His Vietnam War coverage for the AP won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. Arnett joined CNN at its birth in the early 1980s, earning a television Emmy for his live television coverage of the first Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991. Born in New Zealand in 1934, he later became an American citizen and now lives in Fountain Valley, CA. About The Associated Press The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.
Silver Dolphins: The Emblem of the Enlisted Submariner
Richard Hansher - 2015
The author doesn't pull any punches describing the good, the bad, the funny and the just plain ridiculous of the Submarine Service. Besides a wealth of information about what it's like to serve on a submarine, you'll meet real life characters like Tongue, Snake and Button Butt John. Did submarines make them rude, crude, and crazy. Or does the Submarine Service act as a magnet for every nut in the Navy? One thing is sure, after two months underwater, and with their back pay in their back pocket, Sub Sailors are as wild as cowboys after a cattle drive. Bar the doors and hide your daughters. Every reader owes it to themselves to use Amazons "Look In" feature to take a peek inside this unique and entertaining book.
Sgt. Rock: Last Warrior Standing
Rocky Olson - 2010
Hundreds of American soldiers were being killed every week in that war ravaged country. Rocky Olson, a newly trained and indoctrinated American infantryman, was sent as a combat replacement into that maelstrom of politics, suffering, and death. He was given an "experienced" M-16, and was provided with endless opportunities to force "Sir Charles" to give his last full measure of devotion to the communist cause.This true, amazing, first-hand account of that brutal war has touched thousands.Book includes 29 original color photographs taken by the author during his tour of combat. Area of operation maps are also included.
A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam
James R. Ebert - 1993
More than 60 Army and Marine Corps infantrymen speak of their experiences during their year-long tours of duty.
Pucker Factor 10: Memoir of a U.S. Army Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam
James Joyce - 2003
He flew both Huey "slicks" and Huey "gunships": the former on defense as he flew troops into battle, and the latter on offense as he took the battle to the enemy. Through this book, the author relives his experiences flying and fighting, with special attention given to the pilots' day-to-day lives - such as the prankish smoke bombing of Disneyland, the nickname for a United States Army-sponsored compound for prostitution. Some of the pilots Joyce served with survived the war and went on to have careers with commercial airlines, and many were killed.
Six Silent Men: 101st LRP/Rangers
Reynel Martinez - 1996
You couldn't live thirty minutes 'out there' with only six men." [pg. 13]In 1965 nearly four hundred men were interviewed and only thirty-two selected for the infant LRRP Detachment of the lst Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. Old-timers called it the suicide unit. Whether conducting prisoner snatches, search and destroy missions, or hunting for the enemy's secret base camps, LRRPs depended on one another 110 percent. One false step, one small mistake by one man could mean sudden death for all.Author Reynel Martinez, himself a 101st LRRP Detachment veteran, takes us into the lives and battles of the extraordinary men for whom the brotherhood of war was and is an ever-present reality: the courage, the sacrifice, the sense of loss when one of your own dies. In the hills, valleys, and triple-canopy jungles, the ambushes, firefights, and copter crashes, LRRPs were among the best and bravest to fight in Vietnam.
Vietnam
Larry Burrows - 2002
His images, published in Life magazine, brought the war home, scorching the consciousness of the public and inspiring much of the anti-war sentiment that convulsed American society in the 1960s. To see these photo essays today, gathered in one volume and augmented by unpublished images from the Burrows archive, is to experience (or to relive), with extraordinary immediacy, both the war itself and the effect and range of Larry Burrows’s gifts—his courage: to shoot “The Air War,” he strapped himself and his camera to the open doorway of a plane . . . his reporter’s instinct: accompanying the mission of the helicopter Yankee Papa 13, he captured the transformation of a young marine crew chief experiencing the death of fellow marines . . . and his compassion: in “Operation Prairie” and “A Degree of Disillusion” he published profoundly affecting images of exhausted, bloodied troops and maimed Vietnamese children, both wounded, physically and psychologically, by the ever-escalating war.The photographs Larry Burrows took in Vietnam, magnificently reproduced in this volume, are brutal, poignant, and utterly truthful, a stunning example of photojournalism that recorded history and achieved the level of great art. Indeed, in retrospect, says David Halberstam in his moving introduction, “Larry Burrows was as much historian as photographer and artist. Because of his work, generations born long after he died will be able to witness and understand and feel the terrible events he recorded. This book is his last testament.”With 150 illustrations, 100 in full color