The First Marine Captured in Vietnam

The First Marine Captured in Vietnam PDF Author: Donald L. Price
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book

Book Description
Colonel Donald Gilbert Cook was the first U.S. Marine captured in Vietnam, the first and only Marine in history to earn the Medal of Honor while in captivity; and the first Marine POW to have a U.S. Navy ship named in his honor, the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75). On December 31, 1964, while serving as an observer with a South Vietnamese Marine Corps battalion on a combat operation against Viet Cong forces, he was captured near the village of Binh Gia in South Vietnam. Until his death in captivity in December 1967, Cook led ten POWs in a series of primitive jungle camps. This first book-length biography concentrates especially on Cook's three years in captivity, and is the first book exclusively about a Marine POW held in South Vietnam. Throughout, Cook's adherence to the Corps' traditional leadership principles and knowledge of the Code of Conduct are highlighted. His biography provides a unique case study of exemplary leadership under extremely difficult conditions. Includes 68 photographs.

The First Marine Captured in Vietnam

The First Marine Captured in Vietnam PDF Author: Donald L. Price
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book

Book Description
Colonel Donald Gilbert Cook was the first U.S. Marine captured in Vietnam, the first and only Marine in history to earn the Medal of Honor while in captivity; and the first Marine POW to have a U.S. Navy ship named in his honor, the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75). On December 31, 1964, while serving as an observer with a South Vietnamese Marine Corps battalion on a combat operation against Viet Cong forces, he was captured near the village of Binh Gia in South Vietnam. Until his death in captivity in December 1967, Cook led ten POWs in a series of primitive jungle camps. This first book-length biography concentrates especially on Cook's three years in captivity, and is the first book exclusively about a Marine POW held in South Vietnam. Throughout, Cook's adherence to the Corps' traditional leadership principles and knowledge of the Code of Conduct are highlighted. His biography provides a unique case study of exemplary leadership under extremely difficult conditions. Includes 68 photographs.

The First Marine Captured in Vietnam

The First Marine Captured in Vietnam PDF Author: Donald L. Price
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786441167
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Get Book

Book Description
"This is the first book-length biography of Colonel Donald G. Cook. With background information on Cook's life and prewar career, it concentrates especially on his three years in captivity, and is the first book exclusively about a Marine POW held in South Vietnam. The author outlines the circumstances surrounding Cook's Medal of Honor citation and death"--Provided by publisher.

U.S. Marines In Vietnam: Fighting The North Vietnamese, 1967

U.S. Marines In Vietnam: Fighting The North Vietnamese, 1967 PDF Author: Maj. Gary L. Telfer
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1787200841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book

Book Description
This is the fourth volume in an operational and chronological series covering the U.S. Marine Corps’ participation in the Vietnam War. This volume details the change in focus of the III Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF), which fought in South Vietnam’s northernmost corps area, I Corps. This volume, like its predecessors, concentrates on the ground war in I Corps and III MAF’s perspective of the Vietnam War as an entity. It also covers the Marine Corps participation in the advisory effort, the operations of the two Special Landing Forces of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, and the services of Marines with the staff of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. There are additional chapters on supporting arms and logistics, and a discussion of the Marine role in Vietnam in relation to the overall American effort.

U.S. Marines In Vietnam: The Landing And The Buildup, 1965

U.S. Marines In Vietnam: The Landing And The Buildup, 1965 PDF Author: Dr. Jack Shulimson
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1787200833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

Get Book

Book Description
This is the second volume in a series of chronological histories prepared by the Marine Corps History and Museums Division to cover the entire span of Marine Corps involvement in the Vietnam War. This volume details the Marine activities during 1965, the year the war escalated and major American combat units were committed to the conflict. The narrative traces the landing of the nearly 5,000-man 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade and its transformation into the ΙII Marine Amphibious Force, which by the end of the year contained over 38,000 Marines. During this period, the Marines established three enclaves in South Vietnam’s northernmost corps area, I Corps, and their mission expanded from defense of the Da Nang Airbase to a balanced strategy involving base defense, offensive operations, and pacification. This volume continues to treat the activities of Marine advisors to the South Vietnamese armed forces but in less detail than its predecessor volume, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, 1954-1964; The Advisory and Combat Assistance Era.

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The defining year, 1968

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The defining year, 1968 PDF Author: United States. Marine Corps. History and Museums Division
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Languages : en
Pages : 828

Get Book

Book Description


Lullabies for Lieutenants

Lullabies for Lieutenants PDF Author: Franklin Cox
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book

Book Description
Capturing the chaotic nature of the U.S. Marine experience at war in Vietnam, this memoir recounts the experiences of a young officer in a series of unrelated short pieces. In a narrative as fragmented as the war itself, the only resolution is the same one reached by the Marines who fought--the conclusion of a tour of duty with no happy ending. Each chapter describes a specific event, a story of emotion, or a remarkable person (some are heroes, some are cowards). The reader lives the experience alongside the author, gaining a true sense of the pulse-pounding contact, surrealism, pathos, humor, and beauty that defined one of the low points of the American experience.

Marines in Hue City

Marines in Hue City PDF Author: Eric Hammel
Publisher: Pacifica Military History
ISBN: 1890988782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book

Book Description
As Vietnam’s former imperial capital, Hue occupied a special place in the hearts of the Vietnamese people. Over decades of conflict, it had been spared the terrible effects of war. But that all changed on January 31, 1968, the eve of Tet—the lunar new year, Vietnam’s most important national holiday Tet had previously been marked by a mutual ceasefire, but this time the celebrations and hopes for a happy new year were shattered. All of South Vietnam erupted in a cataclysm of violence as the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a massive military and political offensive. The American embassy in Saigon came under siege and Vietnam’s ancient capital city was captured nearly in its entirety. The only forces immediately available to counterattack into Hue were two Marine infantry companies based ten miles south of the city. For the next four weeks, as the world looked on, fewer than two thousand U.S. Marines fought street by street and building by building, with virtually no air support, to retake the symbols of Hue’s political and cultural importance. It was savage work. Ground gained was often measured in yards, with every alley, street corner, window, and garden adding to the butcher’s bill. In the end, the Marines retook the city, but scores of Americans and thousands of Vietnamese civilians died there. This pictorial is a testament to their will and their sacrifice. The Vietnam War is often pictured as a jungle conflict, punctuated by American troops fighting in rural hut-filled villages. But in the 1968 Tet Offensive, the war spilled out of the jungle into the streets of Hue City. The battle for Hue became one of the most important of the war, a month of grueling house-to-house fighting through buildings and around civilians. Marines In Hue City documents the intense urban combat in Hue with many never-before-published photographs, including more than one hundred in full color.

1st Marine Division in Vietnam

1st Marine Division in Vietnam PDF Author: Simon Dunstan
Publisher:
ISBN: 1616732636
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book

Book Description


The 9th Engineer Battalion, First Marine Division, in Vietnam

The 9th Engineer Battalion, First Marine Division, in Vietnam PDF Author: Jean Shellenbarger
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476613362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
The combat engineers of the First Marine Division, 9th Engineer Battalion, risked their lives daily in Vietnam as they cleared the roads of mines, repaired and paved the famous "Highway 1," disarmed booby traps, built bridges and culverts, and destroyed enemy bunkers and tunnels. Despite their sacrifices and pain, the combat engineers in Vietnam have heretofore largely been ignored. This is the first oral (or other) history of the 9th Engineers, the only Marine battalion formed specifically to go to Vietnam. More than 35 men of the 9th talk about why they joined the Marines and their experiences in basic training. They speak candidly and compellingly about their five years (1966 to 1970) in country. The soldiers also discuss what it was like to come home and get on with their lives.

The Hill Fights

The Hill Fights PDF Author: Edward F. Murphy
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307417123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book

Book Description
While the seventy-seven-day siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968 remains one of the most highly publicized clashes of the Vietnam War, scant attention has been paid to the first battle of Khe Sanh, also known as “the Hill Fights.” Although this harrowing combat in the spring of 1967 provided a grisly preview of the carnage to come at Khe Sanh, few are aware of the significance of the battles, or even their existence. For more than thirty years, virtually the only people who knew about the Hill Fights were the Marines who fought them. Now, for the first time, the full story has been pieced together by acclaimed Vietnam War historian Edward F. Murphy, whose definitive analysis admirably fills this significant gap in Vietnam War literature. Based on first-hand interviews and documentary research, Murphy’s deeply informed narrative history is the only complete account of the battles, their origins, and their aftermath. The Marines at the isolated Khe Sanh Combat Base were tasked with monitoring the strategically vital Ho Chi Minh trail as it wound through the jungles in nearby Laos. Dominated by high hills on all sides, the combat base had to be screened on foot by the Marine infantrymen while crack, battle-hardened NVA units roamed at will through the high grass and set up elaborate defenses on steep, sun-baked overlooks. Murphy traces the bitter account of the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh from the outset in 1966, revealing misguided decisions and strategies from above, and capturing the chain of hill battles in stark detail. But the Marines themselves supply the real grist of the story; it is their recollections that vividly re-create the atmosphere of desperation, bravery, and relentless horror that characterized their combat. Often outnumbered and outgunned by a hidden enemy—and with buddies lying dead or wounded beside them—these brave young Americans fought on. The story of the Marines at Khe Sanh in early 1967 is a microcosm of the Corps’s entire Vietnam War and goes a long way toward explaining why their casualties in Vietnam exceeded, on a Marine-in-combat basis, even the tremendous losses the Leathernecks sustained during their ferocious Pacific island battles of World War II. The Hill Fights is a damning indictment of those responsible for the lives of these heroic Marines. Ultimately, the high command failed them, their tactics failed them, and their rifles failed them. Only the Marines themselves did not fail. Under fire, trapped in a hell of sudden death meted out by unseen enemies, they fought impossible odds with awesome courage and uncommon valor.