Russell Babcock is a Vietnam War veteran and recipient of the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. He traveled the country as a truck driver, and also worked as a security guard, farmhand, artist, cook and museum guide. He published his first book at age 76, a memoir titled Twice a Soldier: One American's Life and War Stories.
Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject History - America, grade: A-, Aalborg University, course: USA in the 60's, language: English, abstract: This paper will address the topic of how and why the American news media reported and interpreted the Tet Offensive and the Siege of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War the way they did. In order to answer this question I have divided the paper up into two chapters; both chapters will follow a chronological analysis and fact presentation form. The first chapter will deal with the military reality of the Tet Offensive and the Siege of Khe Sanh; the background to the Tet crisis, the day to day events and the ebb and flow of the siege etc. This chapter will serve as a background to chapter two, which will deal with the news media. Here I will examine and explain the performance of America's major press and television organizations who operated under conditions of unusual stress, complexity and uncertainty which prevailed in Vietnam and Washington during the Tet crisis. The surprise and ferociousness of the Offensive caught the American and South Vietnamese forces completely off-guard, and at home it came as a horrible shock both to the public and official Washington. Immediately the American public turned its attention towards Vietnam and in particular the besieged Marine compound at Khe Sanh. The importance of Khe Sanh was not just perceived by the U.S. military but also by the news media. During the Tet Offensive it would see more media coverage than any other place in Vietnam. It was the most fought over objective during the Tet offensive and after the siege ended both sides would claim victory. The U.S. Commander of all American forces in Vietnam William C. Westmoreland claimed that the Communists at Khe Sanh had tried to recreate their victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. While the North Vietnamese commander General Giap stated that the siege was a diversion, meant to draw American troops to the Khe Sanh area and thus deplete the rest of South Vietnam of forces, in preparation for the Tet Offensive. However, there was a third part who played a role in the Tet Offensive and Siege of Khe Sanh, namely the American news media. The sudden penetration of downtown Saigon by Viet Cong sapper teams impacted personally on correspondents' lives. And daily, reporters in the field vividly brought the conflict home to the American people. The Siege of Khe Sanh was one of the best stories during the entire war; it filled a journalistic need that was exploited to the outmost.
This book was donated as a part of the David H. Hugel Collection, an archival collection of the Special Collections & Archives, University of Baltimore.
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.
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.
Jerry Thigpen's study on the history of the Combat Talon is the first effort to tell the story of this wonderfully capable machine. This weapons system has performed virtually every imaginable tactical event in the spectrum of conflict and by any measure is the most versatile C-130 derivative ever produced. First modified and sent to Southeast Asia (SEA) in 1966 to replace theater unconventional warfare (UW) assets that were limited in both lift capability and speed the Talon I quickly adapted to theater UW tasking including infiltration and resupply and psychological warfare operations into North Vietnam. After spending four years in SEA and maturing into a highly respected UW weapons system the Joint Chief of Staff (JCS) chose the Combat Talon to lead the night low-level raid on the North Vietnamese prison camp at Son Tay. Despite the outcome of the operation the Talon I cemented its reputation as the weapons system of choice for long-range clandestine operations. In the period following the Vietnam War United States Air Force (USAF) special operations gradually lost its political and financial support which was graphically demonstrated in the failed Desert One mission into Iran. Thanks to congressional supporters like Earl Hutto of Florida and Dan Daniel of Virginia funds for aircraft upgrades and military construction projects materialized to meet the ever-increasing threat to our nation. Under the leadership of such committed hard-driven officers as Brenci Uttaro Ferkes Meller and Thigpen the crew force became the most disciplined in our Air Force. It was capable of penetrating hostile airspace at night in a low-level mountainous environment covertly to execute any number of unconventional warfare missions.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Based on the celebrated PBS television series, the complete text of an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict, “a significant milestone [that] will no doubt do much to determine how the war is understood for years to come.” —The Washington Post More than forty years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War, but its memory continues to loom large in the national psyche. In this intimate history, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns have crafted a fresh and insightful account of the long and brutal conflict that reunited Vietnam while dividing the United States as nothing else had since the Civil War. From the Gulf of Tonkin and the Tet Offensive to Hamburger Hill and the fall of Saigon, Ward and Burns trace the conflict that dogged three American presidents and their advisers. But most of the voices that echo from these pages belong to less exalted men and women—those who fought in the war as well as those who fought against it, both victims and victors—willing for the first time to share their memories of Vietnam as it really was. A magisterial tour de force, The Vietnam War is an engrossing history of America’s least-understood conflict.
In this account of one of the worst intelligence failures in American history, James J. Wirtz explains why U.S. forces were surprised by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968. Wirtz reconstructs the turning point of the Vietnam War in unprecedented detail. Drawing upon Vietcong and recently declassified U.S. sources, he is able to trace the strategy and unfolding of the Tet campaign as well as the U.S. response.
