Vietnam War Memoir

Kiss the Boys Goodbye convincingly shows that a legacy of shame remains from America’s ill-fated involvement in Vietnam even though that conflict ended over 35 years ago. Until US government policy on POW/MIAs changes, it remains one of the most crucial issues for any American soldier who fights for home and country, particularly when we are engaged with an enemy who doesn't adhere to the international standards for the treatment of prisoners - or any American hostage...

Father Vincent Robert Capodanno was a US Navy chaplain killed in Vietnam in 1967 with his Marine search unit in Operation Swift. Outnumbered 2,500 to 500 Marines, he was killed protecting a corpsman who was administering first aid to a soldier.

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.

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.

A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, in 1973, Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a lifelong passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary circumnavigation of the globe, and in its pursuit he set several ballooning distance records, including the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1984. But the aeronautical feats that first made him an American hero had occurred a quarter of a century earlier....

Story is a force that transcends ages. Through the development of humankind’s culture, the holy vessel of story has exerted a power that defines generations. A good story has the ability to entertain; a great story has the ability to inspire. But a story like Outnumbered 20 to 1 possesses the ability to transform. Now retired, Colonel Bill Collier’s razor-sharp memories of his firsthand experiences in Vietnam, fighting through the brutality, devastation, and desperation, all speak to the nature of that grisly war. And, like many of his fellow soldiers who returned home, he kept many of ...

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.

Sandra’s Hands is a true personal story written by a young teacher responding to the challenge of educating children who have been severely traumatized by violence. The book describes events in the life of Paul Berg between the years of 1966 and 1976, beginning with Berg’s service in the Vietnam War and following his life as he returns to America. Berg struggles to adjust to civilian life, becomes a Bureau of Indian Affairs teacher, and encounters another war on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

In this intimate memoir, Perry A. Ulander chronicles with powerful clarity the bewildering predicament he confronted and the fellowship and guidance that transformed him during the year he served as an American GI in the jungles of Vietnam. Conveying with unadorned precision the harrowing experiences that shattered his core beliefs, Ulander also captures the camaraderie and humor of his platoon, the hostility between "lifers" and draftees, the physical hardships of reconnaissance missions, and the unrelenting apprehension underlying everyday life.

On November 18, 1967, Private First Class Davis' artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At 21 years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body. Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated.

On November 25, 1950, during one of the toughest battles of the Korean War, the US Eighth Army Ranger Company seized and held the strategically important Hill 205 overlooking the Chongchon River. Separated by more than a mile from the nearest friendly unit, 51 soldiers fought several hundred Chinese attackers. Their commander, Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, was wounded three times before he was evacuated. For his actions, he received the country's second-highest award for courage on the battlefield and resumed active duty later that year as a living legend.

On October 17, 1965, Navy LTJG Porter Halyburton was shot down over North Vietnam and listed as killed in action. One-and-a-half years later, he was found to be alive and a prisoner of war. Halyburton was held captive for more than seven years. Reflections on Captivity is a collection of fifty short stories about this naval officer's experiences as a POW in North Vietnam.

This volume contains the United States’ explanation for the war, a review of Vietnam’s history and the war’s and US armed forces in it, as well as various problems during it, including drug and racial problems, desertion, sedition, and treason.

The story of the indomitable American POWs who endured "Alcatraz," the Hanoi prison camp where North Vietnam locked up its most dangerous and subversive prisoners, and the wives who fought to bring them home. As these men suffered in Hanoi, their wives launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the POW/MIA movement. When the survivors finally returned, one would receive the Medal of Honor, another became a U.S. Senator, and a third still serves in Congress.

In this inspiring meditation on courage, Senator John McCain shares his most cherished stories of ordinary individuals who have risked everything to defend the people and principles they hold most dear. These are some of the examples McCain turns to for inspiration and offers to others to help them summon the resolve to be both good and great. He explains the value of courage in both everyday actions and extraordinary feats. Most of all, listeners discover how sometimes simply setting the right example can be the ultimate act of courage.

This is hands down the most heartbreaking and thought-provoking book about Khe Sanh and even the Vietnam War you will ever have the honor to explore. Other books are easier to understand, yet none of them will leave you a believer in the way that this book has. Seldom is the author so true to himself and the memory of those lost that he is willing to blind others with their own tears and shame rather than sacrifice what he knows to be the true story.

Fifty years after America's involvement in the Korean War began, Richard E. Mack's memories of his time spent on the front lines are still strong and clear. A career soldier, Mack served in the U.S. Army until 1976, when he retired as a colonel. In Memoir of a Cold War Soldier, he recalls his service in front-line combat infantry units in Korea and Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader, adviser, and battalion commander. His accounts, perceptions, and observations of the military culture are incisive and candid.

In May 1962, Naval Chief Petty Officer Bryant Arbuckle flew to Saigon to establish a new armed forces radio station. Next to follow were his wife and three boys, Leslie among them. Saigon Kids is the candid, recondite slice of 14-year-old military brat Les Arbuckle's experience at the American Community School during the critical months of the Vietnam War when events would, quite literally, ignite in downtown Saigon.

During Vietnam, the basic role of the USMC gunship squadrons was to protect the transport helicopters during medevac missions, troop insertions and extractions, resupply missions, and supporting the Marines on the ground during operations and patrols. Basically, whenever the Marines or South Vietnam friendlies got in trouble the gunships were dispatched to assist them.

Peter Huchthausen, a river patrol officer on Vietnam's Mekong River Delta in 1967, rescued a badly wounded Vietnamese child, Nguyen Thi Lung. He and his men arranged for the girl's treatment and education, only to lose track of her when her town was overrun by the North Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive.