Book picks similar to
The Eleven Days of Christmas: America’s Last Vietnam Battle by Marshall L. Michel III
vietnam-war
vietnam
history
military
Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills
Charles Henderson - 1986
He lies in one position for days, barely twitching a muscle, able to control his heartbeat and breathing. His record has never been matched: 93 confirmed kills. This is the story of Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, Marine sniper, legend of military lore.
Firebirds
Chuck Carlock - 1995
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.
Shooting At The Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos
Roger Warner - 1995
For a few years in the early 1960s the CIA seemed to be running a perfect covert war in Laos - quiet, inexpensive, just enough arms to help Meo tribesmen defend their home territory from the Communist Pathet Lao. Then the big American war next door in Vietnam spilled across the border. How the perfect covert war ballooned into sorrow and disaster is the story Roger Warner tell in Shooting at the Moon, awarded the Cornelius Ryan Award for 1995's Best Book on Foreign Affairs by the Overseas Press Club.Warner describes his characters with a novelist's touch - soldiers and diplomats busy with war-making; CIA field officers from bareknuckle warriors to the quiet men pulling strings in the shadows; and above all the Meo as they realized they had been led down the garden path.This is a book about war, about secrecy, and its illusions, about the cruel sacrifice of small countries for the convenience of large ones. Nothing better has been written about the CIA in the years when it thought a handful of Americans in sunglasses could do anything with planeloads of arms and money to burn.
Days of Valor: An Inside Account of the Bloodiest Six Months of the Vietnam War
Robert Tonsetic - 2006
The human courage and carnage described in these pages resonates through the centuries, from Borodino to the Bulge, but the focus here is on the Vietnam War, and a unique unit formed to take part at its height.The 199th Light Infantry Brigade was created from three U.S. infantry battalions of long lineage, as a fast reaction force for the U.S. to place in Indochina. As the book begins, in December 1967, the brigade has been in Vietnam for a year, and many of its battered 12-month men are returning home. This is timely, as the Communists seem to be in a lull, and the brigade commander, in order to whet his new soldiers to combat, requests a transfer to a more active sector, just above Saigon. Through January the battalions scour the sector, finding increasing enemy strength, NVA personel now mixed within Viet Cong units. But the enemy is lying low, and a truce has even been declared for the Vietnamese New Year, the holiday called Tet. On January 30, 1968, the storm breaks loose, as Saigon and nearly every provincial capital in the country is overrun by VC and NVA, bursting in unexpected strength from their base camps. In these battles we learn the most intimate details of combat, as the Communists fight with rockets, mortars, Chinese claymores, mines, machine guns and AK-47s. The battles evolve into an enemy favoring the cloak of night, the jungle-both urban and natural-and subterranean fortifications, against U.S. forces favoring direct confrontational battle supported by air and artillery. When the lines are only 25 yards apart, however, there is little way to distinguish between the firepower or courage of the assailants and the defenders, or even who is who at any given moment, as both sides have the other in direct sight.Many of the vividly described figures in this book do not make it to the end. The narrative is jarring, because even though the author was a company commander during these battles, he has based this work upon objective research including countless interviews with other soldiers of the 199th LIB. The result is that everything we once heard about Vietnam is laid bare in this book through actual experience, as U.S. troops go head-to-head at close-range against their counterparts, perhaps the most stubborn foe in our history.Days of Valor covers the height of the Vietnam War, from the nervous period just before Tet, through the defeat of that offensive, to the highly underwritten yet equally bloody NVA counteroffensive launched in May 1968.The book ends with a brief note about the 199th LIB being deactivated in spring 1870, furling its colors after suffering 753 dead and some 5,000 wounded. The brigade had only been a temporary creation, designed for one purpose. Though its heroism is now a matter of history, it should remain a source of pride for all Americans. This fascinating book will help to remind us.
Abandoned in Hell: The Fight For Vietnam's Firebase Kate
William Albracht - 2015
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. Outnumbered three dozen to one, Albracht’s men held off repeated ground assaults by communist forces with fierce hand-to-hand fighting, air support and a dangerously close B-52 strike. For days, the NVA blanketed Kate in a rain of rockets, mortars, artillery, machineguns, and small arms, blocking efforts to resupply, reinforce, or evacuate the outpost. Albracht continually exposed himself to enemy fire to direct air strikes, to guide re-supply helicopters, to distribute ammunition and water to his men, to retrieve the dead and to rescue the wounded, often shielding men with his own body. Wounded by rocket shrapnel, he refused medical attention or evacuation. Exhausted from days without sleep, he continued to rally his men to beat off each new enemy attack. After five days, Kate’s defenders were out of ammo and water. Aerial resupply was suicidal, and reinforcements were denied by military commanders who had written off Kate. Albracht refused to surrender or die in place. Refusing to allow his men to surrender, Albracht led his troops, including many wounded, off the hill and on a daring night march through enemy lines. Abandoned in Hell is an astonishing memoir of leadership, sacrifice, and brutal violence, a riveting journey into Vietnam’s heart of darkness, and a compelling reminder of the transformational power of individual heroism. Not since Lone Survivor and We Were Soldiers Once, And Young has there been such a gripping and authentic account of battlefield courage.INCLUDES PHOTOS
Into the Mouth of the Cat: The Story of Lance Sijan, Hero of Vietnam
Malcolm McConnell - 1984
Although critically injured and virtually without supplies, he evaded capture in savage terrain for six weeks. Finally caught and placed in a holding camp, he overpowered his guards and escaped, only to be captured again. He resisted his interrogators to the end, and he died two weeks later in Hanoi. His courage was an inspiration to other American prisoners of war, and he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
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.
LRRP Team Leader
John Burford - 1994
All of Sergeant John Burford's missions with F Company, 58th Infantry were deep in hostile territory. As leader of a six-man LRRP team, he found the enemy, staged ambushes, called in precision strikes, and rescued downed pilots. The lives of the entire team depended on his leadership and their combined skill and guts. A single mistake—a moment of panic—could mean death for everyone.Whether describing ambushes in the dreaded A Shau Valley or popping smoke to call in artillery only yards away from his position, Burford demonstrates the stuff the LRRPs are made of—the bravery, daring, and sheer guts that make the LRRPs true heroes. . . .
Diary of an Airborne Ranger: A LRRP's Year in the Combat Zone
Frank Johnson - 2001
Johnson served in I Corps, in northern Vietnam, where combat was furious and the events he recounts emerge, stark and compelling: walking point in the A Shau Valley, braving enemy fire to rescue a downed comrade, surviving days and nights of relentless tension that suddenly exploded in the blinding fury of an NVA attack.Undimmed and unmuddied by the passing of years, Johnson's account is unique in the annals of Vietnam literature. Moreover, it is a timeless testimony to the sacrifice and heroism of the LRRPs who dared to risk it all.
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.
To the Limit: An Air Cav Huey Pilot in Vietnam
Tom A. Johnson - 2006
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.
Snake Pilot: Flying the Cobra Attack Helicopter in Vietnam
Randy R. Zahn - 2003
First deployed in Vietnam in 1967 and loaded with a formidable arsenal of weaponry, the Cobra was the first helicopter designed from inception as an attack aircraft. It dramatically changed the nature of the war in Vietnam by offering the Army, for the first time, its own powerful and highly accurate weapons platform for close-air-support missions. Randy Zahn arrived in Vietnam shortly before the 1970 U.S. invasion of Cambodia, one of the most impressive demonstrations by the Cobra in the war. He describes his stunning transformation from a naive, middle-class teenager from southern California to a hardened killer during his tour in Vietnam. Unlike the pilots who flew the fast-moving strike jets, Zahn experienced the war “up close and personal,” witnessing the grisly effects of the Cobra’s firepower on enemy soldiers. The author does not glorify killing but rather explains in sharp relief the kaleidoscope of emotions associated with combat: fear, revenge, hate, remorse, pity, and even ecstasy. He captures many of the ironies and nuances inherent in Vietnam, especially during the final years of the conflict. Zahn displays a sensitivity rarely found in memoirs written by battle-hardened warriors. This human element, combined with the vast amount of archival research and interviews with members of his former unit, ensures that Snake Pilot will become the definitive account of the role helicopters played in Vietnam.
If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Tim O'Brien - 1973
The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content
Argentine Fight for the Falklands
Martin Middlebrook - 1989
Martin Middlebrook has produced a genuine 'first' with this unique work.Martin Middlebrook is the only British historian to have been granted open access to the Argentines who planned and fought the Falklands War. It ranks with Liddel Hart's The Other side of the Hill in analyzing and understanding the military thinking and strategies of Britain's sometime enemy, and is essential reading for all who wish to understand the workings of military minds.The book provides new light on the way Argentine forces were organized for war, the plans and reactions of the commanders, the sufferings of the soldiers and the shame and disillusionment of defeat.
Huey: The Story of a Helicopter Assault Pilot in Vietnam
Jay Groen - 1984
Army's UH-1H "Huey" Iroquois helicopter. He experiences screaming descents into hot landing zones to place military assault troops and rescue wounded soldiers. He has the clarity of mind to survive seven days of horror in a Vietnamese jungle swamp while the psychology of a fellow soldier is severely tested. He's got the guts to buck military orders and battle his own brass to pursue an investigation when a botched operation spells disaster for the men under him. Based on the authors' personal experiences in the Vietnam War, Huey is an authentic, action-filled book of historical fiction. Originally published 30 years ago, this moving novel became a New York Timesbestseller within days of publishing. Now it's available again on Kindle.