Monk’s War: An 18 Year Old Marine’s Story from the Rice Paddies

Monk’s War: An 18 Year Old Marine’s Story from the Rice Paddies PDF Author: Frank M. Beyea
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1483408167
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
In the last few years, Vietnam Veterans, including myself, have experienced a phenomenon that is hard to explain. People are interested in the Vietnam War! I think the audience for Vietnam War stories is a diverse one. From young people with a thirst for knowledge about what their fathers and grandfathers went through in the only war that America has lost (so far history hasn't made its final judgment on Iraq and Afghanistan) to the baby boomers who fought in Vietnam. Even those boomers who demonstrated actively against the war and resisted being part of it are suddenly interested. This book provides those interested with what they crave: more true stories of what it was like to live the life of a Marine ground pounder in Vietnam. It's like a good adventure novel, when your own "theater of the mind" puts you in the shoes of the main character.

Monk’s War: An 18 Year Old Marine’s Story from the Rice Paddies

Monk’s War: An 18 Year Old Marine’s Story from the Rice Paddies PDF Author: Frank M. Beyea
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1483408167
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book

Book Description
In the last few years, Vietnam Veterans, including myself, have experienced a phenomenon that is hard to explain. People are interested in the Vietnam War! I think the audience for Vietnam War stories is a diverse one. From young people with a thirst for knowledge about what their fathers and grandfathers went through in the only war that America has lost (so far history hasn't made its final judgment on Iraq and Afghanistan) to the baby boomers who fought in Vietnam. Even those boomers who demonstrated actively against the war and resisted being part of it are suddenly interested. This book provides those interested with what they crave: more true stories of what it was like to live the life of a Marine ground pounder in Vietnam. It's like a good adventure novel, when your own "theater of the mind" puts you in the shoes of the main character.

Monk's War in Vietnam

Monk's War in Vietnam PDF Author: Frank M. Beyea
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780913337707
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
When the U.S. Marines were sent to South Vietnam in the 1960s, 18-year-old Beyea was among them. He offers here a vital document that illustrates his transformation from teenager to soldier in a modern war.

Cold War Monks

Cold War Monks PDF Author: Eugene Ford
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300231288
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
The groundbreaking account of U.S. clandestine efforts to use Southeast Asian Buddhism to advance Washington’s anticommunist goals during the Cold War How did the U.S. government make use of a “Buddhist policy” in Southeast Asia during the Cold War despite the American principle that the state should not meddle with religion? To answer this question, Eugene Ford delved deep into an unprecedented range of U.S. and Thai sources and conducted numerous oral history interviews with key informants. Ford uncovers a riveting story filled with U.S. national security officials, diplomats, and scholars seeking to understand and build relationships within the Buddhist monasteries of Southeast Asia. This fascinating narrative provides a new look at how the Buddhist leaderships of Thailand and its neighbors became enmeshed in Cold War politics and in the U.S. government’s clandestine efforts to use a predominant religion of Southeast Asia as an instrument of national stability to counter communist revolution.

In Buddha's Company

In Buddha's Company PDF Author: Richard A. Ruth
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
In Buddha’s Company explores a previously neglected aspect of the Vietnam War: the experiences of the Thai troops who served there and the attitudes and beliefs that motivated them to volunteer. Thailand sent nearly 40,000 volunteer soldiers to South Vietnam to serve alongside the Free World Forces in the conflict, but unlike the other foreign participants, the Thais came armed with historical and cultural knowledge of the region. Blending the methodologies of cultural and military history, Richard Ruth examines the individual experiences of Thai volunteers in their wartime encounters with American allies, South Vietnamese civilians, and Viet Cong enemies. Ruth shows how the Thais were transformed by living amongst the modern goods and war machinery of the Americans and by traversing the jungles and plantations haunted by indigenous spirits. At the same time, Ruth argues, Thailand’s ruling institutions used the image of volunteers to advance their respective agendas, especially those related to anticommunist authoritarianism. Drawing on numerous interviews with Thai veterans and archival material from Thailand and the United States, Ruth focuses on the cultural exchanges that occurred between Thai troops and their allies and enemies, presenting a Southeast Asian view of a conflict that has traditionally been studied as a Cold War event dominated by an American political agenda. The resulting study considers such diverse topics as comparative Buddhisms, alternative modernities, consumerism, celebrity, official memories vs. personal recollections, and the value of local knowledge in foreign wars. The war’s effects within Thailand itself are closely considered, demonstrating that the war against communism in Vietnam, as articulated by Thai leaders, was a popular cause among nearly all segments of the population. Furthermore, Ruth challenges previous assertions that Thailand’s forces were merely "America’s mercenaries" by presenting the multiple, overlapping motivations for volunteering offered by the soldiers themselves. In Buddha’s Company makes clear that many Thais sought direct involvement in the Vietnam War and that their participation had profound and lasting effects on the country’s political and military institutions, royal affairs, popular culture, and international relations. As one of only a handful of academic histories of Thailand in the 1960s, it provides a crucial link between the keystone studies of the Phibun-Sarit years (1946–1963) and those examining the turbulent 1970s.

The Lotus Unleashed

The Lotus Unleashed PDF Author: Robert J. Topmiller
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813137012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese Buddhist peace activists made extraordinary sacrifices -- including self-immolation -- to try to end the fighting. They hoped to establish a neutralist government that would broker peace with the Communists and expel the Americans. Robert J. Topmiller explores South Vietnamese attitudes toward the war, the insurgency, and U.S. intervention, and lays bare the dissension within the U.S. military. The Lotus Unleashed is one of the few studies to illuminate the impact of internal Vietnamese politics on U.S. decision-making and to examine the power of a nonviolent movement to confront a violent superpower.

Buddha's Child

Buddha's Child PDF Author: Nguyen Cao Ky
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466860855
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
The history of the Vietnam War has rarely been told from the Vietnamese perspective-and never by a leader of that country. In Buddha's Child, Nguyen Cao Ky reveals the remarkable story of his tumultuous tenure as Premier of South Vietnam, and offers unprecedented insight into the war's beginning, escalation, and heartbreaking end. A thirty-four year old pilot and Air Force commander, known for his fighter-pilot's moustache, flowing lavender scarf and his reputation as a ladies' man, Ky in 1965 agreed to lead South Vietnam after a series of coups had dangerously destabilized the nation. Ky's task was to unite a country riven by political, ethnic, and religious factions and undermined by corruption. With little experience in governing and none in international affairs, and while continuing to fly combat missions over Vietnam, Ky plunged into a war to save his homeland. He served as premier until 1967, continued to be active in the war after his resignation, and finally left Vietnam in 1975 during the fall of Saigon. Buddha's Child offers Ky's perspective on the crucial events and memorable images of the Vietnam War: the coup against and execution of President Diem; the self-immolation by the Buddhist monk, and the radical Buddhists' attempt to topple Ky's government; the bloody and pivotal Tet Offensive; the shooting of a Vietcong prisoner, captured in one of the war's most notorious photographs; the Paris Peace talks that sold out South Vietnam; and the last, desperate days of Saigon. In frank language, Ky discusses his own successes and failures as a leader and dramatically relates the progress of the war as it unfolded on the ground and behind the scenes-including anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, William Westmoreland, Henry Cabot Lodge, William Colby, Henry Kissinger, and many others. Buddha's Child is a revelatory, fascinating account of a nation at war by a most unusual man.

Monk's War

Monk's War PDF Author: Frank M. Beyea
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780913337660
Category : Vietnam
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Join 18-year-old Monk and his ground-pounding Marine buddies as they hold it together again. Monk gets to leave Vietnam in the way he has anticipated--on a stretcher.

Monk's War

Monk's War PDF Author: Frank M. Beyea
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780913337653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
Monk's War is true stories of what it was like to live the life of a Marine ground pounder in Vietnam. It reads like a good adventure novel.

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War PDF Author: Karen Bush Gibson
Publisher: Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1612288529
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
The Vietnam War sparked one of the most controversial periods in American history. Although Vietnam had been fighting for its independence for thousands of years, the United States didn't enter the picture until the 1950s. Increasing tensions between North and South Vietnam officially brought the U.S. into the war in 1964. At the same time, a military draft was instituted. People struggled to understand the role of the U.S. in Vietnam. Americans began learning more about the Vietnam War through television. As the first "televised" war, Americans were treated to horrific scenes with their evening news. Popular magazines and newspapers published the effects of battle on their front pages. These images added to the antiwar sentiment. Meanwhile, three million U.S. troops faced constant danger in a war eventually determined to be "unwinnable." After more than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, the U.S. finally pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, and South Vietnam fell in 1975. The effects of the war would last much longer.

The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960–1968

The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960–1968 PDF Author: Mervyn Edwin Roberts III
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700625836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960–1968, for the first time fully explores the most sustained, intensive use of psychological operations (PSYOP) in American history. In PSYOP, US military personnel use a variety of tactics—mostly audio and visual messages—to influence individuals and groups to behave in ways that favor US objectives. Informed by the author’s firsthand experience of such operations elsewhere, this account of the battle for “hearts and minds” in Vietnam offers rare insight into the art and science of propaganda as a military tool in the twentieth century. The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960–1968, focuses on the creation, capabilities, and performance of the forces that conducted PSYOP in Vietnam, including the Joint US Public Affairs Office and the 4th PSYOP Group. In his comprehensive account, Mervyn Edwin Roberts III covers psychological operations across the entire theater, by all involved US agencies. His book reveals the complex interplay of these activities within the wider context of Vietnam and the Cold War propaganda battle being fought by the United States at the same time. Because PSYOP never occurs in a vacuum, Roberts considers the shifting influence of alternative sources of information—especially from the governments of North and South Vietnam, but also from Australia, Korea, and the Philippines. The Psychological War for Vietnam, 1960–1968, also addresses the development of PSYOP doctrine and training in the period prior to the introduction of ground combat forces in 1965 and, finally, shows how the course of the war itself forced changes to this doctrine. The scope of the book allows for a unique measurement of the effectiveness of psychological operations over time.