At age nineteen, Tom Johnson flew in the thick of it, and lived to tell his harrowing tale. Johnson piloted the UH-1 "Iroquois"-better known as the "Huey"-as part of the famous First Air Cavalry Division. His battalion was one of the most decorated units of the Vietnam War, and helped redefine modern warfare. This riveting memoir gives the pilot's perspective on key battles and rescue missions, including those for Hue and Khe Sanh. From dangerous missions to narrow escapes, Johnson's account vividly captures the adrenaline rush of flying and the horror of war, and takes readers on an unforgettable ride.

    Army as a two-tour helicopter pilot in Vietnam. It is a true-life story of a pilot who fought for freedom and often his very life. Vietnams Saga is also a story about the meaning of life. Standing back from his war experience, Stan reflects on his ever-present faith and how it carried him through this challenging period of his life. Originally written as a legacy to Stan Corvin’s family- something that will be passed down for many generations-Vietnam Saga is now an opportunity for you to share in the legacy and the personal recollections, memories, thoughts, fears and shed tears of a decorated and dedicated American military pilot. The book also contains numerous photos.

    For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot. Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions. The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets. The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others.Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.From the Hardcover edition.

    Only the Royal Navy stood between Napoleon's legions and ultimate victory. In that dark hour America saw its chance to challenge British dominance: her troops invaded Canada and American frigates attacked British merchant shipping, the lifeblood of British defence. War polarised America. The south and west wanted land, the north wanted peace and trade. But America had to choose between the oceans and the continent. Within weeks the land invasion had stalled, but American warships and privateers did rather better, and astonished the world by besting the Royal Navy in a series of battles. Then in three titanic single ship actions the challenge was decisively met. British frigates closed with the Chesapeake, the Essex and the President, flagship of American naval ambition. Both sides found new heroes but none could equal Captain Philip Broke, champion of history's greatest frigate battle, when HMS Shannon captured the USS Chesapeake in thirteen blood-soaked minutes. Broke's victory secured British control of the Atlantic, and within a year Washington, D.C. had been taken and burnt by British troops.

    Fought during the worst blizzard in a century, the ensuing battle is considered by the United States Marine Corps to be 'the Corps' Finest Hour.' The soldiers who fought there would later become known as the 'Frozen Chosen'.Published now in paperback, this incredible story is based on first hand interviews from surviving veterans, telling of heroism and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, as a handful of Marines fought desperately against wave after wave of Chinese forces. Sometimes forced into desperate hand to hand combat, the fighting retreat from Chosin marked one of the darkest moments for Western forces in Korea, but would go on to resonate with generations of Marines as a symbol of the Marine Corps' dogged determination, fighting skill, and never-say-die attitude on the battlefield.

     The inaugural edition of 'SOG Chronicles Volume One' will be the first in a series of books focusing on the many untold stories from that eight-year secret war where Green Berets went deep behind enemy lines without conventional support from artillery, tanks, or ground support troops where communist forces massed 50,000-100,000 troops to combat them while keeping the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply lines open. The centerpiece of 'SOG Chronicles Volume One' is the 1970 story of Operation Tailwind, features a SOG element of 16 Green Berets and 120 indigenous soldiers that went deeper into Laos than any operation during the secret war. Every Green Beret received at least one Purple Heart, including the sole medic, Gary Mike Rose. He is slated to receive the Medal of Honor from President Donald J. Trump in October 2017 for his valor and medical skills tending to more than 60 wounded troops during that four-day mission. “John Meyer’s story about Operation Tailwind does justice to the valor and heroism of the men involved in the four-day battle. Meyer writes about this historic SOG mission with clarity and attention to detail that is long overdue in regards to this top secret mission. 'SOG Chronicles Volume One' is mandatory reading for anyone remotely interested in SOG history or simply in how the Green Berets operate deep behind enemy lines.” —Billy Waugh, SOG/CIA operative

    The special volunteers who make up Long Range Patrols are tasked with setting up ambushes and conducting dangerous night patrols, helicopter insertions behind enemy lines, and fire support in the hottest of fights.Enriched with a memorable cast of characters and thrilling details that only a Vietnam veteran could capture, Long Range Patrol is a powerhouse tale of a band of heroes fighting to keep their brothers alive.

    

    From May 1967 through May 1968, Ted Arthurs was in the thick of it, humping an eighty-pound rucksack through triple canopy jungle, chasing down the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. As sergeant major for a battalion of 800 men, it was his job to see them through this jungle hell and get them back home again.

    Here is the Vietnam War, in the air and on the ground: gritty, urgent, genuine, a story torn from the hearts and minds of those who served.

    Dien Bien Phu was a remote valley on the border of Laos along a simple rural trade route. But it would also be where a great European power fell to an underestimated insurgent army and lost control of a crucial colony. Valley of Death is the untold story of the 1954 battle that, in six weeks, changed the course of history.A veteran of the French Army, Ted Morgan has made use of exclusive firsthand reports to create the most complete and dramatic telling of the conflict ever written. Here is the history of the Vietminh liberation movement’s rebellion against French occupation after World War II and its growth as an adversary, eventually backed by Communist China. Here too is the ill-fated French plan to build a base in Dien Bien Phu and draw the Vietminh into a debilitating defeat—which instead led to the Europeans being encircled in the surrounding hills, besieged by heavy artillery, overrun, and defeated.    Making expert use of recently unearthed or released information, Morgan reveals the inner workings of the American effort to aid France, with Eisenhower secretly disdainful of the French effort and prophetically worried that “no military victory was possible in that type of theater.” Morgan paints indelible portraits of all the major players, from Henri Navarre, head of the French Union forces, a rigid professional unprepared for an enemy fortified by rice carried on bicycles, to his commander, General Christian de Castries, a privileged, miscast cavalry officer, and General Vo Nguyen Giap, a master of guerrilla warfare working out of a one-room hut on the side of a hill. Most devastatingly, Morgan sets the stage for the Vietnam quagmire that was to come.    Superbly researched and powerfully written, Valley of Death is the crowning achievement of an author whose work has always been as compulsively readable as it is important.

    A very well written book that will be hard for anyone to put down!This is a must read.Jerry's interesting and riveting account of his childhood years and transition to a young adult and Infantry NCO are truly endearing! His honest and impelling novel reminds one of why we serve, fight, and are willing to lay down our lives for God, Country, and our fellow man. God Bless the Infantryman!!Thank the Lord for Soldiers and West Virginia !This book is a great read. This honest account of growing up in West Virginia and becoming a Sergeant in Vietnam is sometimes thrilling and sometimes heart wrenching. Through a lot of true grit, thank goodness Jerry Horton survived to tell this story. I highly recommend this book. It is a Winner.This is an inspiring memoir written about a young man coming of age in West Virginia in the 1960's. It is a memoir but also a real thriller story as we follow Jerry from the streets surrounding Lincoln playground to Chicago Steel mills to the French Quarter in New Orleans and to San Francisco in the Summer of Love 1967. The book then moves you to the Central Highlands in Vietnam where Jerry is an infantry platoon sergeant. Jerry's interesting and truthful account of his childhood years and transition to an adult and Infantry Sergeant are truly endearing. It is an honest and compelling story. It gives a first person narrative of hand-to-hand combat in the trenches of Vietnam that can leave you scared, glad to be alive and eternally grateful to those who died for our freedom. Jerry joined the army to simply be able to afford to go to college. Forty years later he has a PhD and multiple degrees but they were earned at a heavy price for this patriot. Jerry shares his experiences in Vietnam in an articulate, honest and direct assessment of his time in Vietnam, the men he served with and the horrors of war. It is an incredible story of leadership and survival.We see Jerry develop as a young boy who is very independent and then see him being schooled on the streets of Charleston, West Virginia learning how to come to grips with the breakup and divorce in his family. He takes refuge in becoming the best he could be as a basketball player on the courts of Lincoln playground. Later we see him leaving home for the mean streets of the Chicago Steel mills and then on to Louisiana where he completes one year of college and then goes flat broke. Then the book shifts to New Orleans Louisiana and the excitement of the French Quarter. Jerry's life is rocked by the turbulent waters in New Orleans; he had no money no plan and is drifting. He seeks out another lifestyle in California hitching to and then living in San Francisco during the Summer of Love 1967. He describes how it was, the music and time and place and he takes you there through his vivid descriptions. Once again, his life spins into turmoil and as he tries to get back on the path to achieve his life's dream of going to college he is drafted in the Army. He finds himself becoming a leader, an infantry sergeant. His goal is to bring himself and his men back home alive, the reader gets the sense that all his life Jerry has been prepared for this moment. The reader is taken through and sees through Jerry's eyes what combat is really like.This story covers much ground and has something for everyone. You live through Jerry 's experiences of what it's like to conquer your own demons, you read about his mother's courage having Jerry in the Salvation Army by herself, the excitement and freedom of the 1960's and you learn what it is like to want something so bad you lay your life down for it. It is a book you truly won't lay down once you start reading.

    A first hand account of my tour of duty in Vietnam.

    Little did he know that he would see some of the war's most intense action, including the Tet offensives. Carlock portrays countless dangers, from an elusive enemy and treacherous terrain to blinding weather, faulty equipment, and friendly fire. He rides the pendulum between fear and fearlessness during his many brushes with death. Along with the danger and tension, Carlock tells us about the camaraderie and humor shared by men who lived on the edge. Carlock's stories will sometimes shock you, sometimes bring a smile to your face, and sometimes make you angry. Learn about "secret" missions into a neutral country. Discover how the Walker spy ring cost American lives. Most of all, find out what it was like for a twenty-one-year-old farm boy to find himself suddenly immersed in vicious daily combat, making decisions that determined the fate of hundreds of lives.

    Then one day I found myself in a foreign country carrying an M-16 rifle and a medical bag fighting a war I knew little about. Within weeks of my arrival in Vietnam the Tet Offensive exploded all around me, changing my life, the war, and the entire world. I witnessed death on a daily basis and became known as Baby-san Bac-si, the baby-faced combat medic.