Vietnam War Biography

From 1964 to 1972, far beyond the battlefields of Vietnam and the glare of media distortions, American Green Berets and their indigenous troops fought a deadly secret war in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam under the aegis of the top secret Military Assistance Command Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group, or simply SOG.

Grady Myers was an artistic but aimless teenager in 1968, when, desperate for troops, the U.S. Army overlooked his extreme nearsightedness and transformed him into Hoss, an M-60 machine gunner. His memoir Boocoo Dinky Dow: My Short, Crazy Vietnam War is by turns funny and sobering. Grady recounts his military initiation at Fort Lewis, where there could be a fuzzy line between training and torture.

Musgrave writes honestly about his struggle to balance his deep love for the Marine Corps against his responsibility as a citizen to protect the very troops asked to protect America at all costs. Fiercely perceptive and candid, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave is one of the most powerful memoirs to emerge from the war.

Air Force pilot Captain Carlyle "Smitty" Harris was shot down over Vietnam on April 4, 1965 and taken to the infamous Hoa Lo prison—nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton." For the next eight years, Smitty and hundreds of other American POWs—including John McCain and George "Bud" Day—suffered torture, solitary confinement, and unimaginable abuse. It was there Smitty covertly taught the Tap Code—an old, long-unused World War II method of communication—to many POWs. In turn, they taught others, and it quickly became a way for POWs to communicate without their captors' knowledge.

Da Nang Diary is the story of how, in Vietnam, an elite group of Air Force pilots fought a secret air war in Cessna 0-2 and OV-10 Bronco prop planes - flying as low as they could get. The eyes and ears of the fast-moving jets who rained death and destruction down on enemy positions, the forward air controller made an art form out of an air strike - knowing the targets, knowing where friendly troops were, and reacting with split-second, life-and-death decisions as a battle unfolded.

Eighteen-year-old Marine recruit William V. Taylor, Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real but entirely surreal nightmare. Now, after more than 50 years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit—and often horrific—detail.

Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine, and Kate challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war reportage for generations.

The Freedom Shield brings together stories of veterans of the 191st Assault Helicopter Company, who were tasked with carrying troops into battle, attacking enemy positions, and evacuating the wounded in their UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" helicopters. The unit was assembled from a hodgepodge of hand-me-down aircraft, used equipment, and overlooked personnel-its appearance belied the invaluable work the crews of the 191st would undertake during the Vietnam War.

At the height of the Vietnam conflict, a complex system of secret underground tunnels sprawled from Cu Chi Province to the edge of Saigon. In these burrows, the Viet Cong cached their weapons, tended their wounded, and prepared to strike. They had only one enemy: US soldiers small and wiry enough to maneuver through the guerrillas’ narrow domain. The brave souls who descended into these hellholes were known as “tunnel rats”. Armed with only pistols and K-bar knives, these men inched their way through the steamy darkness where any number of horrors could be awaiting them.

When she was 18, she joined the army to finance her nursing education. With less than six months of nursing experience, she was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam. True tales of the war that are by turns horrifying and humorous, told with an eye for detail, by a woman who was in the thick of it.

Lt. Col. Ed “Fast Eddie” Cobleigh flew as a fighter pilot with the US Air Force, the US Navy (TOPGUN), the Royal Air Force, the Imperial Iranian Air Force, and the French Air Force. This is his story--a prequel and a sequel to his number-one best-selling memoir, War for the Hell of It: A Fighter Pilot’s View of Vietnam.

Real stories told by real people, in their own words. Hundred veterans, men and women, caught up in an all-too-real war. From the Delta to the DMZ, come walk in their boots. If you were there, you understand. If you weren't, buy this audiobook and you will, because they’re like Doritos. Try a few, and you won't be able to stop. The Vietnam War dominated my generation and affected so many lives in so many different ways. Some of us were drafted.

This memoir tells the story of a Marine rifle platoon commander’s time in the mountainous jungle of the northernmost province of the then Republic of Vietnam. While tasked with fighting the enemy, G.M. Davis made some great friends but saw too much death. The author tracks his tour of duty in the jungle, leading Marines not against the Viet Cong but against the North Vietnamese Army, a well-trained and well-supplied professional army dedicated to unifying the two Vietnams.

A swamp warrior who served five tours in Vietnam tells it like it was in Death in the Jungle.

In early February of 1968, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive, Private First Class Gregory V. Short arrived in Vietnam as an 18-year-old US Marine. Amid all of the confusion and destruction, he began his tour of duty as an 81mm mortarman with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which was stationed at Con Thien near the DMZ.

In Legend, acclaimed best-selling author Eric Blehm takes as his canvas the Vietnam War as seen through a single mission that occurred on May 2, 1968. A 12-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungles of neutral Cambodia - where US forces were forbidden to operate. Their objective, just miles over the Vietnam border, was to collect evidence that proved the North Vietnamese Army was using the Cambodian sanctuary as a major conduit for supplying troops and materiel to the south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In three straight years he was a paratrooper, an army seaman, and a LRRP - and he lived to tell about it. As an FNG paratrooper in the 173d Airborne, John Leppelman made that unit's only combat jump in Vietnam. Then he spent months in fruitless search of the enemy, watching as his buddies died because of poor leadership and lousy weapons. Often it seemed the only way out of the carnage in the central highlands was in a body bag. But Leppelman did get out.

An inspiring and astounding look at the extraordinary courage and contribution of Australian nurses and medics during the Vietnam War. From the best-selling author of Bush Nurses and Nurses of the Outback comes this collection of compelling and moving stories of our heroic nurses in the Vietnam War. Being a nurse always requires a cool head, a steady hand and an open heart. But if you're working in a war zone, the challenges are much harder.

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.

In the years since the Vietnam War, the elite unit known as SOG has spawned many myths, legends, and war stories. Special Forces medic Joe Parnar served with SOG during 1968 in FOB2/CCC near the tri-border area that gave them access to the forbidden areas of Laos and Cambodia. Parnar recounts his time with the recon men of this highly classified unit, as his job involved a unique combination of soldiering and lifesaving.