Featuring a new introduction by the author about his return to Vietnam, his reflections on the war, and his humanitarian work in Cambodia. “The enemy had a single purpose: kill me and my teammates.” Larry Chambers was still new to Vietnam in early 1969 when the LRRPs of the 101st Airborne Division became L Company, 75th (Rangers). But his unit’s mission stayed the same: act as the eyes and ears of the 101st deep in the dreaded A Shau Valley—where the NVA ruled. Relentless thick fog frequently made fighter bombers useless in the A Shau, and the enemy had furnished the nearby mountaintops with antiaircraft machine guns to protect the massive trail network that snaked through it. So, outgunned, outmanned, and unsupported, the teams of L Company executed hundreds of courageous missions. Now, in this powerful personal record, Larry Chambers recaptures the experience of the war’s most brutal on-the-job training, where the slightest noise or smallest error could bring sudden—and certain—death. . . .
From the author of Da Nang Diary: A military history of the Battle of Hamburger Hill and other fights between the NVA and the US and its Vietnamese allies. Throughout the Vietnam War, one focal point persisted where the Viet Cong guerrillas and Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) were not a major factor, but where the trained professionals of the North Vietnamese and US armies repeatedly fought head-to-head. A Shau Valor is a thorough study of nine years of American combat operations encompassing the crucial frontier valley and a fifteen-mile radius around it―the most deadly killing ground of the entire war. Beginning in 1963, Special Forces A-teams established camps along the valley floor, followed by a number of top-secret Project Delta reconnaissance missions through 1967. Then, US Army and Marine Corps maneuver battalions engaged in a series of sometimes-controversial thrusts into the A Shau, designed to disrupt NVA infiltrations and to kill enemy soldiers, part of what came to be known as Westmoreland’s “war of attrition.” The various campaigns included Operation Pirous (1967); Operations Delaware and Somerset Plain (1968); and Operations Dewey Canyon, Massachusetts Striker, and Apache Snow (1969)―which included the infamous battle for Hamburger Hill―culminating with Operation Texas Star and the vicious fight for and humiliating evacuation of Fire Support Base Ripcord in the summer of 1970, the last major US battle of the war. By 1971, the fighting had once again shifted to the realm of small Special Forces reconnaissance teams assigned to the ultra-secret Studies and Observations Group (SOG). Other works have focused on individual battles or units, but A Shau Valor is the first to study the campaign―for all its courage and sacrifice―chronologically and within the context of other historical, political, and cultural events.
SNAKES, VIPERS, CROCS, SHARKS, AND THE VC With 257 combat missions in Vietnam under his belt, Gary Smith is a living witness to the realities of Naval Special Warfare. He worked with some of the toughest and most highly motivated men in the world, executing missions in the murderous terrain of Rung Sat Special Zone and Dung Island. The key to their success: go where no ordinary soldier would go and no VC would expect them. Though death reigned as king in the jungles of Vietnam, Gary Smith considered it a privilege and an honor to serve under the officers and with the men of Underwater Demolition Team Twelve and SEAL Team 1. Because he and his teammates, trained to the max, gave each other the courage to attain the unattainable . . . .
Between the French Indochina war of the fifties and the fall of Phnom Penn and Saigon in 1975, 134 photographers from different nations were killed. Horst Faas, two-times Pullitzer Prize winner and Chief Photographer for The Associated Press in Saigon at the height of the war, and Tim Page, another veteran who had been badly wounded, have gathered many thousands of photos from the Western agencies and from archives in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. These have now been assembled to form both a monument to the dead and a record of the most terrifying war photography ever taken. Never again will the media have the kind of access to the war zone that was offered to the photographers in Vietnam. In many cases the photographers tried to get as close as possible, then paid the price.
A candid memoir of being sent to Vietnam at age nineteen, witnessing the carnage of Hamburger Hill, and returning to an America in turmoil. Arthur Wiknik was a teenager from New England when he was drafted into the US Army in 1968, shipping out to Vietnam early the following year. Shortly after his arrival on the far side of the world, he was assigned to Camp Evans near the northern village of Phong Dien, only thirty miles from Laos and North Vietnam. On his first jungle patrol, his squad killed a female Viet Cong who turned out to have been the local prostitute. It was the first dead person he had ever seen. Wiknik's account of life and death in Vietnam includes everything from heavy combat to faking insanity to get some R & R. He was the first in his unit to reach the top of Hamburger Hill, and between sporadic episodes of combat, he mingled with the locals; tricked unwitting US suppliers into providing his platoon with hard-to-get food; defied a superior and was punished with a dangerous mission; and struggled with himself and his fellow soldiers as the antiwar movement began to affect them. Written with honesty and sharp wit by a soldier who was featured on a recent History Channel documentary about Vietnam, Nam Sense spares nothing and no one in its attempt to convey what really transpired for the combat soldier during this unpopular war. It is not about glory, mental breakdowns, flashbacks, or self-pity. The GIs Wiknik lived and fought with during his yearlong tour were not drug addicts or war criminals or gung-ho killers. They were there to do their duty as they were trained, support their comrades—and get home alive. Recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Military Writers Society of America.
Fearful Odds is a no holds barred narrative told in three parts. It is the true story of a young Army officer, groomed for command and assigned to lead a platoon on a reconnaissance mission in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam in 1968. An otherwise routine mission is complicated by the contradiction of an inept chain of command. The resulting casualties devastate the platoon and the graphic images and memories of the action and the grueling months that follow, lead Chuck Newhall to a lifetime of severe trauma, guilt, grief and anger. Returning home, Newhall embarks on an extraordinary entrepreneurial career bringing great wealth, prestige and security, despite severe episodes of depression and anxiety which would hobble others from achieving such levels of success. And yet a few years later, and seemingly without warning, the family that he had worked so hard to create and support is suddenly ripped apart by tragedy intensifying an emotional upheaval that revisits the pain and anguish he first felt during his time in Vietnam. After decades of experience in managing the long-term effects of trauma and with the support of his family, Chuck Newhall has successfully come to terms with his past and the effects of PTSD. Fearful Odds offers hope, inspiration and valuable coping tools for anyone, or their families, who has been affected by post-traumatic stress, depression, mild traumatic brain disorder or the suicide of a loved one. Fearful Odds is a story of perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds and will offer a guiding hand to others who are facing challenges on the battlefield, boardroom or back at home. "Chuck Newhall's compelling narrative account of combat action in Vietnam takes you to one of the darkest hellholes on earth -- the A Shau Valley in 1968. Just when you thought that the war was over, Fearful Odds packs a punch in the gut you will be feeling for a long time." Joseph L. Galloway, author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young "If you care about America's warriors, and about how we as a society can help them come home after war, then you should read this book." Nathaniel Fick, author of One Bullet Away "The illuminating depictions of sessions with your phychiatrist Dr. Kaiser can be regarded as almost a manual for understanding PTSD and learning how to overcome it. However, unlike the majority of books on the subject, you explain how PTSD can be addressed via depictions of how your own efforts have succeeded to varying extents. Readers will learn far more from your book, which is "real life," than from others." Solomon H. Snyder, M.D. Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University
Within the context of the Vietnam War, the battle for Hue City stands as an example of urban warfare and how the U.S. military and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam were able to secure victory in the face of severe odds. This commemorative begins with an overview of the city and its geographical, political, and cultural importance to the region. According to Buddhist myth, the picturesque city of Hue, the provincial capital of Thua Thien Province and the former imperial capital of Vietnam, sprang to life as a lotus flower blossoming in a puddle of mud.* Hue is located on a bend of the Huong or Perfume River, a major waterway running from the western foothills to the sea. The river provides an excellent supply route from the South China Sea only seven kilometers northeast of the city. The mountain slopes of the Annamite Chain (or Giai Truong Son) begin an equal distance away and the Laotian border lies another 50 miles farther west. In between the mountains and the border are the A Shau Valley and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major North Vietnamese infiltration and supply route to the south. The narrow 25-mile long A Shau Valley, known as Base Area 114, served *Some of the content in the following work was originally published in 1997 by Jack Shulimson, LtCol Leonard A. Blasiol (USMC), Charles R. Smith, and Capt David A. Dawson (USMC) in U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Defining Year, 1968. as an arm of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and provided an important sanctuary from which Communist forces could launch their attacks on the population centers along the coast. The Annamite Chain presented a formidable obstacle that prevented allied forces from penetrating into the interior of the country except by helicopter.
Lurps is the revised edition of the memoir of a juvenile delinquent who drops out of ninth grade to chase his dream of military service. After volunteering for Vietnam, he joins the elite U.S. Army LRRP/Rangers—small, heavily armed long-range reconnaissance teams that patrol deep in enemy-held territory. It is 1968, and the Lurps find themselves in some of the war's hairiest campaigns and battles, including Tet, Khe Sanh, and A Shau. Readers witness all the horrors, humor, adrenaline, and unexpected beauty through the eyes of a green young warrior. Gone are the heroic clichZs and bravado as compelling narrative and realistic dialogue sweep the reader along with a powerful sense that this is actually happening. This poignant coming-of-age story explores the social background that shaped the protagonist's thinking, his uncertain quest for redemption through increased responsibility, the brotherhood of comrades in arms, women and sexual awakening, and the baffling randomness of who lives and who dies.
On April 10, 1970, Hill 927 was occupied by troopers of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. By July, the activities of the artillery and infantry of Ripcord had caught the attention of the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and a long and deadly siege ensued. Ripcord was the Screaming Eagles’ last chance to do significant damage to the NVA in the A Shau Valley before the division was withdrawn from Vietnam and returned to the United States. At Ripcord, the enemy counterattacked with ferocity, using mortar and antiaircraft fire to inflict heavy causalities on the units operating there. The battle lasted four and a half months and exemplified the ultimate frustration of the Vietnam War: the inability of the American military to bring to bear its enormous resources to win on the battlefield. In the end, the 101st evacuated Ripcord, leaving the NVA in control of the battlefield. Contrary to the mantra “We won every battle but lost the war,” the United States was defeated at Ripcord. Now, at last, the full story of this terrible battle can be told.
