Military Vietnam

A gripping war story. For the first - and only - time in fiction, A Reckoning for Kings tells the story of the Vietnam conflict from both sides - Americans as well as North Vietnamese. In four short months - during the lightning-quick, bloody campaign known as the Tet Offensive - two bitterly opposing armies would clash in an epoch-shattering encounter that would alter the course of the war and the shape of the world forever. It was a time when America won the battle but lost the war.

With remarkable clarity and with great detachment, Kidder looks back at himself from across three and a half decades, confessing how, as a young lieutenant, he sought to borrow from the tragedy around him and to imagine himself a romantic hero. Unrelentingly honest, rueful, and revealing, My Detachment gives us war without heroism, while preserving those rare moments of redeeming grace in the midst of lunacy and danger.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

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.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

The rise of Adolf Hitler, America’s Great Depression in the heartland, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American life following World War II, the Korean War, America’s development of atomic weapons in the Cold War age, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Mariel boatlift. Captain Allen Brady not only witnessed all of these events but actually participated in them, in many instances as a US Naval Aviator.

The narrative of the Korean War in the West, and particularly in the United States, tells the tale of a conflict between two global superpowers and competing ideologies in a far-flung corner of the globe. The reality is that the wheels of motion that drove the country to war in 1950 began turning long before American boots set foot on Korean soil. The heart of the conflict was a civil war between a population arbitrarily divided by colonization and the global geopolitics at the end of the Second World War.

Some warriors are drawn to the thrill of combat and find it the defining moment of their lives. Others fall victim to fear, exhaustion, impaired reasoning, and despair. This was certainly true for twentieth-century American ground troops. Whether embracing or being demoralized by war, these men risked their lives for causes larger than themselves with no promise of safe return.

Captured by Love shares the real love stories of 20 Vietnam War POWs. Some had wives who started a movement that changed American foreign policy. Others came home and had to start over, while five single men met the loves of their lives. Despite their unique differences, all these couples have been happily married 40 to 65 years. Former POW Lee Ellis and love expert Greg Godek take you on a dramatic journey of faithfulness, passion, excitement, resilience, and practical love lessons from these couples.

Following the success of Jarhead, Anthony Swofford assumed he had exorcised his military demons - but as every veteran knows, that isn't exactly how it works. In these searing, courageous pages, Swofford struggles to make sense of what his military service meant, and to decide - after nearly ending it - what his life can and should become. Consumed by drugs, booze, fast cars, and the wrong women, Swofford almost lost everything and everyone that mattered to him.

The true story of the battle of Xom Bo II that was fought on June 17, 1967. It was a battle that pitted 500 1st Infantry Division soldiers against 800 to 2000 Viet Cong from the 271st Regiment. The bloody clash took the lives of 39 Americans and seriously wounded 150 more. It is the minute-by-minute story of what happened that day in the steamy jungle and the story of the men who fought so valiantly to survive the ambush.

Vietnam, October 1966. ANZAC and US forces have secured Route 15 running through the heart of Phuc Tuy Province. Now at full strength the ANZAC 5th Battalion take the fight to the enemy in a grand, aggressive sweep. Their mission to locate and destroy Viet Cong bases and infrastructure within the Nui Thi Vai Mountains. They’ve been in this area before, but never in sufficient numbers to bring the enemy to bear.

A collection of short stories of people and events about my time in the service, and the year serving my country in Vietnam.

Jessica Dudley is a child of the Vietnam War. Her parents came from two different worlds and were not able to make things work between them. With her father returning to the United States after his tour of service and her mother staying behind to have her baby, Jessica is born into a home without love.

The Vietnamese stole their land. The NVA raped their daughters. The Green Berets know them as the most fearless and loyal warriors in the land. They were the Montagnards, who called themselves “Sons of the Mountains” and always fought to the death. In this incredible memoir of wall-to-wall combat in the jungle near the Laotian border, Special Forces Lieutenant Don Bendell recounts the saga of the A camp of Dak Pek, 242.

I commanded American soldiers in Vietnam in 1968. I experienced the magnificence of the human spirit as my men triumphed over incredible adversity. This is a story that must be told. My men showed me that Americans are special, with a special destiny. Their bravery and courage was inspiring. I was transformed by our experience. By the way, I was the first captain in the US Army to ever receive the Legion of Merit. General Douglas MacArthur once said, "Only in combat can men experience the ultimate love and camaderie of the human experience. Only in combat can mankind rise to the highest ...

Midair is a true account of one of the most remarkable tales of survival in the history of aviation - a midair collision at 30,000 feet by two bomb-laden B-52s over a category 5 super typhoon above the South China Sea during the outset of the Vietnam War.

Delving into the last gasps of the First Indochina War, which saw the communist Viet Minh take control of North Vietnam, Éric Vuillard vividly illustrates the attitudes that both enabled French colonialist abuses and ultimately led to their defeat and withdrawal. From the Michelin rubber plantation, where horrific working conditions sparked an epidemic of suicides, to the battlefield, a sense of superiority over the "yellow men" pervaded European and American forces.

Truth cuts to the bone. It cannot be altered or spun to be something else. Truth speaks to us regardless of language or culture and it needs to be constant. One element that comes through in these engaging stories and songs in this unique audiobook is the authenticity with regard to the Vietnam War, and the soldiers who fought it, those who were left behind, and the impact it had on the survivors upon returning home.

The little girl who greets Frank on A Rainy Night told him about her father and uncle who had not come home from Afghanistan. But there was more to the story than she said … a lot more. Frank had already lost his wife and family. The girl’s loss reached out to him until the men appeared. In Ashes on the Ocean, her husband of forty-three years has died. Suddenly she was free of his strict ways. She rebuilds her life, filling the void he left with bright happy things. But she still had one remaining obligation—to get his ashes to the ocean. The temptation was to repay his years of ...