Vietnam's Forgotten Army

Vietnam's Forgotten Army PDF Author: Andrew Wiest
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081479467X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
War.

Vietnam's Forgotten Army

Vietnam's Forgotten Army PDF Author: Andrew Wiest
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081479467X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
War.

Remembering the ARVN

Remembering the ARVN PDF Author: Michael Do
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781653303434
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
A Collection of the Patches, Badges, Insignia, Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (1955-1975). It took the author almost 30 years to collect, rework, touch up thousands of images. We made this collection to dedicate to the members of the ARVN who fought persistently and bravely in Vietnam War. This work is also to pass down to the next generations the legacy of suffering but courage of the soldiers of South Vietnam Armed Forces.The book is 150 pages with thousands of colorful images including a photo album of the ARVN typical activities.

Invasion of Laos, 1971

Invasion of Laos, 1971 PDF Author: Robert D. Sander
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806145897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In 1971, while U.S. ground forces were prohibited from crossing the Laotian border, a South Vietnamese Army corps, with U.S. air support, launched the largest airmobile operation in the history of warfare, Lam Son 719. The objective: to sever the North Vietnamese Army’s main logistical artery, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, at its hub, Tchepone in Laos, an operation that, according to General Creighton Abrams, could have been the decisive battle of the war, hastening the withdrawal of U.S. forces and ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. The outcome: defeat of the South Vietnamese Army and heavy losses of U.S. helicopters and aircrews, but a successful preemptive strike that met President Nixon’s near-term political objectives. Author Robert Sander, a helicopter pilot in Lam Son 719, explores why an operation of such importance failed. Drawing on archives and interviews, and firsthand testimony and reports, Sander chronicles not only the planning and execution of the operation but also the maneuvers of the bastions of political and military power during the ten-year effort to end Communist infiltration of South Vietnam leading up to Lam Son 719. The result is a picture from disparate perspectives: the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations; the South Vietnamese government led by President Nguyen Van Thieu; and senior U.S. military commanders and army aviators. Sander’s conclusion is at once powerful and persuasively clear. Lam Son 719 was doomed in both the planning and execution—a casualty of domestic and international politics, flawed assumptions, incompetent execution, and the resolve of the North Vietnamese Army. A powerful work of military and political history, this book offers eloquent testimony that “failure, like success, cannot be measured in absolute terms.”

A Raid Too Far

A Raid Too Far PDF Author: James H. Willbanks
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623491177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
In February 1971, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) launched an incursion into Laos in an attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy North Vietnamese Army (NVA) base areas along the border. This movement would be the first real test of Vietnamization, Pres. Richard Nixon’s program to turn the fighting over to South Vietnamese forces as US combat troops were withdrawn. US ground forces would support the operation from within South Vietnam and would pave the way to the border for ARVN troops, and US air support would cover the South Vietnamese forces once they entered Laos, but the South Vietnamese forces would attack on the ground alone. The operation, dubbed Lam Son 719, went very well for the first few days, but as movement became bogged down the NVA rushed reinforcements to the battle and the ARVN forces found themselves under heavy attack. US airpower wreaked havoc on the North Vietnamese troops, but the South Vietnamese never regained momentum and ultimately began to withdraw back into their own country under heavy enemy pressure. In this first in-depth study of this operation, military historian and Vietnam veteran James H. Willbanks traces the details of battle, analyzes what went wrong, and suggests insights into the difficulties currently being incurred with the training of indigenous forces.

A Better War

A Better War PDF Author: Lewis Sorley
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547417454
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 547

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Book Description
“A comprehensive and long-overdue examination of the immediate post–Tet offensive years [from a] first-rate historian.” —The New York Times Book Review Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing from thousands of hours of previously unavailable (and still classified) tape-recorded meetings between the highest levels of the American military command in Vietnam, A Better War is an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these final years. Through his exclusive access to authoritative materials, award-winning historian Lewis Sorley highlights the dramatic differences in conception, conduct, and—at least for a time—results between the early and later years of the war. Among his most important findings is that while the war was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress, the soldiers were winning on the ground. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War sheds new light on the Vietnam War.

Understanding Vietnam

Understanding Vietnam PDF Author: Neil L. Jamieson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520916581
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese—both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Hell in An Loc

Hell in An Loc PDF Author: Quang Thi Lâm
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574412760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
"Three days before Easter last spring, the North Vietnamese struck South Vietnam with a fury unknown to the Vietnam war since the Tet offensive four years earlier. They poured south across the DMZ, smashed into the central highland from Laos, crossed the border from Cambodia and, with an army of 36,000 men and 100 Russian-made tanks, raced toward Saigon, boasting that they'd be in the city by May 19, Ho Chi Minh's birthday. From one end of the country to the other, bases and villages fell before the savagery of their onslaught. By April 5, all that blocked them from Saigon was a ragtag band of 6,800 South Vietnamese regulars and militiamen and a handful of American advisors holed up in An Loc, a once-prosperous rubber-plantation town of 15,000 astride Highway 13, which led to the capital, 60 miles to the south ... In Thi's opinion, reporting the victory of An Loc would contradict the U.S. media's basic premise that the war could not be won because ARVN was a corrupt and ineffective force. Subsequent published studies of the conflict provide a wealth of details about the use of U.S. airpower and the role of the U.S. advisors, but they fail to provide equal coverage to the activities and performance of ARVN units participating in the siege. Thi believes that it is time to set the record straight. Without denying the tremendous contribution of the U.S. advisors and pilots to the success of An Loc, this book is written primarily to tell the South Vietnamese side of the story and, more importantly, to render justice to the South Vietnamese soldier who withstood ninety-four days of horror and prevailed"--Publisher's website.

Westmoreland

Westmoreland PDF Author: Lewis Sorley
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547518277
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
“A terrific book, lively and brisk . . . a must read for anyone who tries to understand the Vietnam War.” —Thomas E. Ricks Is it possible that the riddle of America’s military failure in Vietnam has a one-word, one-man answer? Until we understand Gen. William Westmoreland, we will never know what went wrong in the Vietnam War. An Eagle Scout at fifteen, First Captain of his West Point class, Westmoreland fought in two wars and became Superintendent at West Point. Then he was chosen to lead the war effort in Vietnam for four crucial years. He proved a disaster. Unable to think creatively about unconventional warfare, Westmoreland chose an unavailing strategy, stuck to it in the face of all opposition, and stood accused of fudging the results when it mattered most. In this definitive portrait, prize-winning military historian Lewis Sorley makes a plausible case that the war could have been won were it not for General Westmoreland. An authoritative study offering tragic lessons crucial for the future of American leadership, Westmoreland is essential reading. “Eye-opening and sometimes maddening, Sorley’s Westmoreland is not to be missed.” —John Prados, author of Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975

ARVN

ARVN PDF Author: Robert Kendall Brigham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
"Offering insights into ARVN veterans' lives as both soldiers and devout kinsmen, Brigham reveals what they thought about their American allies, their Communist enemies, and their own government. He describes the conscription policy that forced these men into the army for indefinite periods with a shameful lack of training and battlefield preparation and examines how soldiers felt about barracks life in provinces far from their homes. He also explores the cultural causes of the ARVN's estrangement from the government and describes key military engagements that defined the achievements, failures, and limitations of the ARVN as a fighting force. Along the way, he explodes some of the myths about ARVN soldiers' cowardice, corruption, and lack of patriotism that have made the ARVN the scapegoat for America's defeat.".

Remembering Heaven's Face

Remembering Heaven's Face PDF Author: John Balaban
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820324159
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The author recounts his years in Vietnam as a conscientious objector, serving as a teacher and a rescue worker for an organization that sent children with war injuries to the United States.