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Drawing upon both archival research and his own military experiences in Vietnam, Willbanks focuses on military operations from 1969 through 1975. He begins by analyzing the events that led to a change in U.S. strategy in 1969 and the subsequent initiation of Vietnamization. He then critiques the implementation of that policy and the combat performance of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which finally collapsed in 1975.
An intelligence officer stationed in Southeast Asia offers a “detailed, insightful, documented, and authentic account” of US policy failure in the region (Lewis Sorley, author of Westmoreland). In the early 1970s, the United States began to withdraw combat forces from Southeast Asia. Though the American government promised to support the South Vietnamese and Cambodian forces in their continued fight against the Viet Cong, the funding was drastically reduced over time. The strain on America’s allies in the region was immense, as Major General Ira Hunt demonstrates in Losing Vietnam. As deputy commander of the United States Support Activities Group Headquarters (USAAG) in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, Hunt received all Southeast Asia operational reports, reconnaissance information, and electronic intercepts, placing him at the forefront of military intelligence and analysis in the area. He also met frequently with senior military leaders of Cambodia and South Vietnam, contacts who shared their insights and gave him personal accounts of the ground wars raging in the region. In Losing Vietnam, Major Hunt details the catastrophic effects of reduced funding and of conducting "wars by budget." This detailed and fascinating work highlights how analytical studies provided to commanders and staff agencies improved decision making in military operations. By assessing allied capabilities and the strength of enemy operations, Hunt effectively demonstrates that America's lack of financial support and resolve doomed Cambodia and South Vietnam to defeat.
An astonishing memoir of military courage at a remote outpost during the Vietnam War “A riveting, dead-true account in the tradition of Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers Once...and Young.”—Steven Pressfield, national bestselling author of The Lion’s Gate In October 1969, William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret captain in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Firebase Kate held by only 27 American soldiers and 156 Montagnard militiamen. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments—some six thousand men—crossed the Cambodian border and attacked. Outnumbered three dozen to one, Albracht’s men held off the assault but, after five days, Kate’s defenders were out of ammo and water. Refusing to die or surrender, Albracht led his troops off the hill and on a daring night march through enemy lines. Abandoned in Hell is an astonishing memoir of leadership, sacrifice, and brutal violence, a riveting journey into Vietnam’s heart of darkness, and a compelling reminder of the transformational power of individual heroism. Not since Lone Survivor and We Were Soldiers Once...and Young has there been such a gripping and authentic account of battlefield courage. INCLUDES PHOTOS
A Gift of Barbed Wire is a penetrating look at the lives of South Vietnamese officials and their families left behind in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Robert McKelvey went on to practice psychiatry and, through his work in refugee camps and U.S. social service organizations, met South Vietnamese men from all walks of life who had been imprisoned in re-education camps immediately after the war. McKelvey's interviews with these former political prisoners, their wives, and their children reveal the devastating, long-term impact of their incarceration. From the early years in French colonial Vietnam through the Vietnam War, from postwar ordeals of re-education camps, social ostracism, and poverty to eventual emigration to the United States, this collection of narratives provides broad and highly personal accounts of individuals and families evolving against the backdrop of war and vast social change. Some of the people interviewed for the book eventually reached the United States as boat people fleeing Vietnam in unsafe vessels; others arrived, after rigorous screening, through U.S. Government-sponsored programs. But even in the safety of the United States they had to begin anew, devoting all their remaining energies to survival. While crediting the courage and resilience of these families, McKelvey holds a critical mirror up to our culture, exploring the nature of our responsibility to our allies as well as the attitudes that obscured the reality of war as "a grinding, brutal interplay of complex forces that often develops a sustaining energy and momentum of its own, driving us in directions that we neither anticipated nor desired."
"Last Men Out" tells the riveting story of the last 11 United States soldiers to escape South Vietnam on April, 30, 1975, the day America ended its combat presence.
The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us. Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview. Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.
A true, bestselling story from the battlefield that faithfully portrays the horror, the madness, and the trauma of the Vietnam War More than half a million copies of Chickenhawk have been sold since it was first published in 1983. Now with a new afterword by the author and photographs taken by him during the conflict, this straight-from-the-shoulder account tells the electrifying truth about the helicopter war in Vietnam. This is Robert Mason’s astounding personal story of men at war. A veteran of more than one thousand combat missions, Mason gives staggering descriptions that cut to the heart of the combat experience: the fear and belligerence, the quiet insights and raging madness, the lasting friendships and sudden death—the extreme emotions of a "chickenhawk" in constant danger. "Very simply the best book so far about Vietnam." -St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The result of five years of research, First Heroes untangles an intricate web of information and ultimately concludes that the prisoners of war that were held captive in Southeast Asia were forgotten or ignored by their own country. Author Rod Colvin crisscrossed the country interviewing military and government officials, veterans, returned POWs, political figures, journalists, and members of the National League of Families and the National Forget-Me-Not Association and balances hard facts with the dramatic personal accounts of parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and children who have waged a difficult battle for the truth about their loved ones. This chronicle is as much a testament to the faith and unending hope of the family members as it is the story of the men themselves. First Heroes is destined to change the way readers think about war, freedom, and their country.
"Abandoned in Place" provides a snapshot of the Vietnam POW/MIA issue. From the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, in January 1973, ending American involvement in the war in Southeast Asia to the "dysfunctional" POW/MIA accounting effort of 2014. With the period 1980 -1981 a clear line in the sand. As the U.S. government refocused its efforts from the rescue of surviving POWs to the recovery of remains. "Abandoned in Place" painstakingly details the intelligence available in 1980 that led to the conclusion American POWs survived in Laos, six years after the end of the Vietnam War. Using never before seen documents, the author reconstructs events leading up to a CIA reconnaissance mission, doomed from the start, to confirm the presence of POWs held deep in the Laotian jungle. As the CIA team headed toward the camp, members of the Joint Special Operation Command trained for a strike of surgical precision. Its mission rescue the POWs held at the camp known as Nhom Marrott. A lack of political will, bureaucratic failures, and leaks forced a stand-down order, condemning any surviving POWs. The author highlights the post Nhom Marrott government accounting effort, focusing on several specific POW/MIA cases. Crippled by a "mindset to debunk" officials ignored evidence of capture and survival in captivity. They edited witness statements to support pre-conceived conclusion of death and dismissed Vietnamese admissions of capture. This despite overwhelming evidence POWs not only survived but also continued to lay down signals in hopes of eventual rescue. Early Reviews - Col. Don Gordon (USA-Ret) Special Operations Command, J2 Director of Intelligence 1980-1983 - "O'Shea leads readers to form their own reasoned conclusions. She writes the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched compendium, private or government, classified or unclassified, about this complicated and emotional subject. It is an event long needed to be told accurately and with respect for the missing in action and their families. O'Shea is fidelis to that cause. She carefully distinguishes fact from speculation. Abandoned in Place is a meticulously detailed, thoroughly verified, and reliable story, well told. It describes plans to rescue about 35 United States Military servicemen strongly believed held in a prison camp in Laos in 1980. Step-by-step, O'Shea builds a strong case that some US military likely remained under North Vietnamese and Lao control after the war." Former Senator and Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs Bob Smith - "Lynn O'Shea has provided the best in depth analysis ever written and brilliantly combined over 25 years of personal research, evidence and a chronological portrayal of the facts to prove, without any doubt, that America left men behind in Southeast Asia at the end of the Viet Nam War. When we were told that the North Vietnamese, Lao and Viet Cong had complied with the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 and returned all of our men, the evidence shows that was an outright lie and many of our government leaders and the intelligence community knew it." Dr. Jeffrey Donahue, Brother of Major Morgan Donahue - "Lynn masterfully connects a mind-boggling array of dots to not only affirm the truth of the Indochina POW-MIA issue but also to rigorously convey how and why the U.S. government knowingly left men behind and then covered it up. Lynn has woven together tens of thousands of documents and countless hours of interviews to produce a cogent and unassailable profile of one of the most tragic episodes of modern American history. The how and why have never been so brilliantly researched, documented and conveyed."
Tells the story of a boy and his father who endure danger and difficulties when they escape by boat from Vietnam, spend days at sea, and then months in refugee camps before making their way to the United States.