I Left Myself in Viet Nam

I Left Myself in Viet Nam PDF Author: Nam Sam
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1669838137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
This book is an autobiography of my experiences in combat during the Vietnam War. At those controversial times, I had to reinvent myself and adjust to every unique situation, not only for my survival but also for my comrades. Many times, I used humor at critical times. Was I a clown, fool, survivor, or all of the above? All I know, as a leader in combat, I could not show fear or become too emotional even as men were being torn apart from shrapnel or bullets. I was expected to keep my composure and a clear head to have a chance to come back alive at the same time accomplish our mission. Trust me, I was not any different than the other men, but I had to act like I was. I still had to find ways to vent my emotions. In Nam, one-liners and sick humor became my repertoire. Some new guys thought I was crazy at times, which was okay as long as I could maintain control.

I Left Myself in Viet Nam

I Left Myself in Viet Nam PDF Author: Nam Sam
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1669838137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 106

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is an autobiography of my experiences in combat during the Vietnam War. At those controversial times, I had to reinvent myself and adjust to every unique situation, not only for my survival but also for my comrades. Many times, I used humor at critical times. Was I a clown, fool, survivor, or all of the above? All I know, as a leader in combat, I could not show fear or become too emotional even as men were being torn apart from shrapnel or bullets. I was expected to keep my composure and a clear head to have a chance to come back alive at the same time accomplish our mission. Trust me, I was not any different than the other men, but I had to act like I was. I still had to find ways to vent my emotions. In Nam, one-liners and sick humor became my repertoire. Some new guys thought I was crazy at times, which was okay as long as I could maintain control.

Left For Dead

Left For Dead PDF Author: Jon Hovde
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452907455
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The inspirational memoir of a Vietnam War veteran and a double amputee recounts not only his remarkable recovery but also recognizes the efforts of the people who aided him, with a lack of bitterness and abundance of hope that will stir emotions in veterans, the families of veterans, and civilians.

Why Didn't You Get Me Out?

Why Didn't You Get Me Out? PDF Author: Frank Anton
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312974886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
After his chopper was shot down over Vietnam in 1968, Anton spent five years as a prisoner of war in jungle camps. This is the story of that ordeal and the startling revelation after he was released that the U.S. government knew of his exact location all along. Years, later Frank has figured out the answer to the question posed by title.

For Self and Country

For Self and Country PDF Author: Estate of Rick Eilert
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612514510
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Vietnam was often called a “teenager’s war.” The average age was 19.2, so in the main, the War was fought by 17, 18, 19 and 20 year olds barely out of high school and often without the income, intelligence, inclination, or focus to attend college. For everyone, the draft loomed large in our futures, so you could choose your branch of service or let the draft decide for you. This was the 60’s. Fresh from sock hops and college freshman mixers, young men found themselves in a fight for their lives, from the Delta to the DMZ, on animal trails, numbered hills and in remote jungle outposts. Teenagers witnessed the unspeakable carnage of war while trying to understand the collision of emotions and insult to the senses that is combat. Thousands died there and many thousands more were wounded and maimed. So the hell of combat was replaced by the painful recovery in a military hospital. For me and thousands of others it was Great Lakes Naval Hospital at Great Lakes, Illinois. For Self and Country follows my many months of recovery along with the stories of the brave young men who surrounded me and sustained me with friendship, uncommon humor, and courage. This is a story of family, young love, and the magnificent care administered by the Navy doctors, nurses and revered Corpsmen. Great Lakes was a place of great pain but also recovery, not just from the physical damage we sustained but also the unseen emotional injuries everyone endured but rarely talked about. We helped each other in our recovery by talking to each other about our wartime experiences and how we would need to cope outside the insulated and protected hospital. Most of us had no expectation of surviving Vietnam; now that we had we were unsure what place we would have in civilian life.

Don't Ask and I Will Tell

Don't Ask and I Will Tell PDF Author: John C. Whitener
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692862414
Category : Christian biography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
When John Carroll Whitener volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army, he had no idea that five months later President Johnson would begin sending combat and support troops to South Vietnam to fight the Communist insurgency. He expected to be assigned to a stateside military hospital, complete his tour of duty, and return to his hometown in rural North Carolina to live happily ever after. By 1966, however, he found himself in war torn Vietnam, setting up an army optometry clinic in support of the 101st Airborne. While the airborne troops faced the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnam soldiers, Whitener faced a war within himself regarding his faith and sexuality. In this intimate and candid memoir, Whitener shares his diary entries, reflecting and connecting the events of the war with current political issues, as well as his spiritual war to reconcile his homosexuality with his fundamentalist religious upbringing. With wry observations Don't Ask and I Will Tell chronicles his time in Vietnam and his further travels across Asia. He credits the American War in Vietnam as the catalyst for his career in public health and activism for gay rights. More than fifty years later, he looks back on his journey toward inner peace and self-acceptance.

In the Lake of the Woods

In the Lake of the Woods PDF Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547527047
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
A politician’s past war crimes are revealed in this psychologically haunting novel by the National Book Award–winning author of The Things They Carried. Vietnam veteran John Wade is running for senate when long-hidden secrets about his involvement in wartime atrocities come to light. But the loss of his political fortunes is only the beginning of John’s downfall. A retreat with his wife, Kathy, to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota only exacerbates the tensions rising between them. Then, within days of their arrival, Kathy mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness. When a police search fails to locate her, suspicion falls on the disgraced politician with a violent past. But when John himself disappears, the questions mount—with no answers in sight. In this contemplative thriller, acclaimed author Tim O’Brien examines America’s legacy of violence and warfare and its lasting impact both at home and abroad.

Escape from Saigon

Escape from Saigon PDF Author: Andrea Warren
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
ISBN: 146683448X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
An unforgettable true story of an orphan caught in the midst of war Over a million South Vietnamese children were orphaned by the Vietnam War. This affecting true account tells the story of Long, who, like more than 40,000 other orphans, is Amerasian -- a mixed-race child -- with little future in Vietnam. Escape from Saigon allows readers to experience Long's struggle to survive in war-torn Vietnam, his dramatic escape to America as part of "Operation Babylift" during the last chaotic days before the fall of Saigon, and his life in the United States as "Matt," part of a loving Ohio family. Finally, as a young doctor, he journeys back to Vietnam, ready to reconcile his Vietnamese past with his American present. As the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, this compelling account provides a fascinating introduction to the war and the plight of children caught in the middle of it.

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.

Dispatches

Dispatches PDF Author: Michael Herr
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307814165
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

Close Quarters

Close Quarters PDF Author: Larry Heinemann
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307517705
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From the moment his first novel was published, Larry Heinemann joined the ranks of the great chroniclers of the Vietnam conflict--Philip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, and Gustav Hasford.In the stripped-down, unsullied patois of an ordinary soldier, draftee Philip Dosier tells the story of his war. Straight from high school, too young to vote or buy himself a drink, he enters a world of mud and heat, blood and body counts, ambushes and firefights. It is here that he embarks on the brutal downward path to wisdom that awaits every soldier. In the tradition of Naked and the Dead and The Thin Red Line, Close Quarters is the harrowing story of how a decent kid from Chicago endures an extraordinary trial-- and returns profoundly altered to a world on the threshold of change.