"The Nightmare of the Mekong" is a gritty account of the Vietnam War, from a sailor who manned automatic weapons in intense combat, on the rivers, streams and canals of the Mekong Delta. It is profoundly personal, with diary entries, and letters to and from home. It includes summaries of official "Operations Reports" and military historical records. The interwoven references to music and news of the day provides a vivid picture of the culture and politics of the times. It is a true story of love, family, war, life and death.Some of this story will bring a smile to your face and warm your ...

Have you ever wanted to pull up the curtain and look at what the US Army was really like during the Vietnam War? From enlistment through Basic, Officer, and Flight training, veteran pilot Richard Guay will take you on a journey many have never witnessed… Sit with Richard in the cockpit of the venerable UH-1 Huey helicopter as he maneuvers the sky to accomplish missions, protect his troops, and put to the test his years of training to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. Through a journey from steamy jungles to war-torn skies over battlefields, Richard’s raw and informative ...

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.

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."

There was a truce on New Year’s Day, 1968, and Third Brigade of 25th Infantry Division used the respite to build a new fire support base near the Cambodian border, in a vast forested area of Viet Nam called War Zone C. They called it Fire Support Base Burt, manned by two infantry battalions and three batteries of artillery. When the truce ended at midnight, January 1, the Communist forces in the area responded by launching a massive assault on the base. Vastly outnumbered, the American soldiers repelled attack after attack and eventually forced the enemy to withdraw after suffering ...

A no-holds-barred, straight-in-your-face account of combat in Vietnam. You know it's going to be hot when your brigade is referred to as a Fireball unit. 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 eight-hundred men, it was his job to see them through this jungle hell and get them back home again.

When he was a student in Paris, Truong Nhu Tang met Ho Chi Minh. Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as one of the major figures in the "fight for liberation" - and one of the most determined adversaries of the United States. He became the Vietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fled the country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exile in Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnam to the West. This is his candid, revealing, and unforgettable autobiography.

Most of us never get to test ourselves in combat. As a UH-1 Helicopter pilot flying in the jungle highlands of South Vietnam, Warrant Officer Jim Crigler and the men he flew with were tested daily. Coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s was challenging for most young men of that era. Throw in drugs, free love, draft notices, the Vietnam War, and a country deeply divided, and you have one of the most important books of this genre. This true story is a raw, bold, introspective autobiography.

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 listener in the center of bloody ambushes and devastating firefights. But Constance's extraordinary adventure goes even farther - beyond 'Nam.

Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy.

The author, a retired Navy Commander, presents a unique view of the Vietnam War while providing an understanding of the horror, brutality, chaos, and insanity of war. His interviews with 61 members of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1965 who served during the war in Vietnam include candid, first-hand accounts of American action on the ground, in the air, on the rivers, and offshore. Their stories involve Marines fighting bloody battles for hills soon abandoned after being captured; Naval aviators watching their wingman being shot down on missions targeting meaningless targets while Hanoi ...

Vietnam, June, 1969 and the war was still raging on. Assigned to the 5th Marine Regiment in An Hoa, Quang Nam Province, Bill Petite soon realized the reality of this war. In the year which would follow, he would experience all the horrors of this war and also experience once in a lifetime friendships. These were friendships which he would remember for the rest of his life. He would learn the importance of the dependence on those friends and those who would fight next to him. He would realize the importance of how to listen and learn and later in his tour how to pass that important ...

The United States Army drafted Steve in 1969. Like many young men, he was unaware of the consequences of being drafted until being sent to Vietnam. Although his father was also drafted into the Armed Forces for World War II, nothing could have prepared Steve for the year of duty to come. Growing up in a large family, he developed a talent early on for storytelling. His accounts of Vietnam will have you imagining him sitting across a campfire telling his story.

The personal account of a guerrilla fighter in the French Foreign Legion reveals the Nazi Battalion's inhumanities to Indochinese villagers.

Things I’ll Never Forget is the story of a young high school graduate in 1965 who faces being drafted into the Army or volunteering for the Marine Corps. These are his memories of funny times, disgusting times and deadly times. The author kept a journal for an entire year; therefore many of the dates, times and places are accurate. The rest is based on memories that are forever tattooed on his brain. This is not a pro-war book, nor is it anti-war. It is the true story of what the Marine Corps was like in the late 1960’s.