The Vietnam War Which Is Not One

The Vietnam War stands uneasily on the edge of public memory – slipping into the past and becoming part of our national history, yet still too recent to be forgotten by those who lived through its trials. But history seeks a meaning in its clouded events, a retrospective order and pattern that could instruct, and sometimes even inspire, successive generations. At present, then, Americans face the peculiar dilemma of having to respond to the impact of a war for which there is still no comprehensively shared vision. One cannot expect broad enthusiasm for a vision of the past whose primary purpose is to justify current policies, acquisitions, deployment, and research. Americans have thought of themselves as individualistic and unruly people – a flattering self-image, though in some ways a false one. Indeed, during the Vietnam War it was the patience and long-suffering of the American people that most deserved comment. This was not the first war to fact great protest and challenge from Americans. Opposition to a massive commitment that was killing young Americans, as well as many Southeast Asians, should hardly have seemed surprising. What should have caused real surprise was how long it took for opposition to coalesce. In the end, the Vietnam experience ought to remind us of how well Americans can rally to a cause, even when it is poorly conceived and executed. But these are not the lessons of Vietnam. They are only illustrations of how we may come to different understandings of the Vietnam experience. The central lesson is that even when we cannot control the circumstances around us, we can still control ourselves. The use of military and political resources to have our way is not only a practical and technical issue, it is also a philosophical and moral one. It may be worth asking if we have ever won a war by betraying our own traditions and values. In this study, Dr. Donald J. Mrozek probes various groups of Americans as they come to grips with the consequences of the Vietnam War. He poses far more questions that he answers, and some of what he says may invite strong dissent. Yet it will serve its purpose if something here provokes creative thinking and critical reexamination, even of some long-cherished ideas. Viewing the Vietnam War as a logical outcome of American defense thinking has challenging implications, as does seeing the “cold war consensus” on foreign affairs as an oddity. Yet this is not a litany of objection and protest. Doctor Mrozek raises serious questions about how the contemporary notion of deterrence has emerged; and dealing with such questions forthrightly could make deterrence more effective. So, too, questions the past relationship of military professionals with the mass media is not an assignment of guilt but an invitation to develop a beneficial and cooperative relationship. Nor is this study a tale of gloom and despair; it is rather an appeal for self-consciousness and self-awareness. It is a plea for us to take command of the problems that beset us by taking control of ourselves first.

Get out! Run! We must leave this place! They are going to destroy this whole place! Go, children, run first! Go now! These were the final shouts nine year-old Kim Phuc heard before her world dissolved into flames—before napalm bombs fell from the sky, burning away her clothing and searing deep into her skin. It’s a moment forever captured, an iconic image that has come to define the horror and violence of the Vietnam War. Kim was left for dead in a morgue; no one expected her to survive the attack. Napalm meant fire, and fire meant death. Against all odds, Kim lived—but her journey toward healing was only beginning. When the napalm bombs dropped, everything Kim knew and relied on exploded along with them: her home, her country’s freedom, her childhood innocence and happiness. The coming years would be marked by excruciating treatments for her burns and unrelenting physical pain throughout her body, which were constant reminders of that terrible day. Kim survived the pain of her body ablaze, but how could she possibly survive the pain of her devastated soul? Fire Road is the true story of how she found the answer in a God who suffered Himself; a Savior who truly understood and cared about the depths of her pain. Fire Road is a story of horror and hope, a harrowing tale of a life changed in an instant—and the power and resilience that can only be found in the power of God’s mercy and love.

Original Scholarly Monograph

"This is the story of a civilian technology engineer working with the Marines in DaNang, Vietnam, from 1968 to 1969. Wilhelm arrived in a blue suit and tie from a military plane and finally found his back way to the USA for a company who would not agree to end his work term long after it was over. A Civilian Working in a War Zone: The position was working with the computer technology of the time and the US Marine Corp. No one else from his company had previously gone to Vietnam to tell him what he could expect. No one was there to meet his plane! Working with the Marines: The memories include the night sky being alive with planes circling the base, listening to a bamboo band play American military songs, learning first-hand how difficult holidays are in a war, and not being allowed to carry a weapon. His volunteer position as a substitute English teacher for the South Vietnamese was protected by Marines with shotguns and side-arms. Life Learning: This is a story of survival and the life perspective war can bring. Gary Wilhelm worked with the Marines and using the computer technology of the time. As an engineer, Wilhelm viewed rocket attacks as physics lessons which he describes in one story. He never knew when he might have to travel to another country to phone the United States, so at a moment's notice, he had many unplanned adventures. He planned his own travel to finally leave Vietnam when his company kept ignoring his requests to return home a year longer than his assignment"--Amazon.com.

No one in Vietnam had to tell door gunner and gunship crew chief Al Sever that the odds didn’t look good. He volunteered for the job well aware that hanging out of slow-moving choppers over hot LZs blazing with enemy fire was not conducive to a long life. But that wasn’t going to stop Specialist Sever. From Da Nang to Cu Chi and the Mekong Delta, Sever spent thirty-one months in Vietnam, fighting in eleven of the war’s sixteen campaigns. Every morning when his gunship lifted off, often to the clacking and muzzle flashes of AK-47s hidden in the dawn fog, Sever knew he might not return. This raw, gritty, gut-wrenching firsthand account of American boys fighting and dying in Vietnam captures all the hell, horror, and heroism of that tragic war.

The U.S. Army Center of Military History is pleased to present a new pamphlet in its U.S. Army Campaigns of the Vietnam War series. Buying Time, 1965 1966, by Frank L. Jones, begins with President Lyndon B. Johnson s decision to commit the U.S. military to an escalating role in the ground war against the Communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam known as the Viet Cong. Beginning in 1965, William C. Westmoreland, the commanding general of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), sent large numbers of soldiers on search-and-destroy missions against Viet Cong forces. His strategy in Vietnam depended on the superiority of U.S. firepower, including intensive aerial bombardments of regular enemy units. The goal was to inflict more losses than the Communist forces could sustain. During 1966, the United States gradually built up not just its forces, but also the logistical and administrative infrastructure needed to support them. Pacification, which took a lesser role during the military buildup, remained central to the allies approach to the war, with the White House taking additional measures to elevate its importance. As 1966 drew to a close, General Westmoreland was in position to launch the type of large, sustained military campaign that he hoped would both cripple the enemy and enable the South Vietnamese to make substantial progress toward pacification. The tide had been stemmed, yet no one was under the illusion that the task ahead would be either easy or quick. Indeed, the events of 1965 and 1966 had shown the enemy to be a dangerous and able foe, unshaken despite heavy losses in his own pursuit of victory. The true struggle had just begun."

On November 18, 1965, U.S. Navy pilot Willie Sharp ejected from his F-8 fighter after being hit while positioned over a target in North Vietnam. With a cloud layer beneath him, he did not know if he was over land—where he would most certainly be captured or killed by the North Vietnamese—or over the Gulf of Tonkin. As he ejected, both navy and air force aircraft were already heading toward him to help. What followed was a dramatic rescue made by pilots and other airmen with little or no training or experience in combat search-and-rescue. Told by former military flight test engineer Eileen A. Bjorkman, this story includes nail-biting descriptions of air combat, flight, and rescue. Bjorkman places Sharp’s story in the larger context of the U.S. military’s bedrock credo—No Man Left Behind—and calls attention to the more than eighty thousand Americans still missing from conflicts since World War I. She also explores the devastating aftershocks of the Vietnam War as Sharp struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. Woven into this gripping tale is the fascinating history of combat search-and-rescue missions that officially began in World War II. Combining the cockiness and camaraderie of Top Gun with the heroics of Sully, Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin is a riveting tale of combat rescue and an unforgettable story about the U.S. military’s commitment to leave no man behind.

It is January of 1965 and without warning the North Vietnamese launch their Tet Offensive against the South, routing the American supported army and rolling over territory without a fight. In a matter of days it appears as if the Communists are about to score their biggest victory in the Cold War since Stalin's armies rolled over Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, while the West is on the verge of an unprecedented defeat. In Washington, President Lyndon B. Johnson cleans house at the Pentagon and reaches across the political divide to a man who has built a career out of being tough on the Reds: former Vice President M. Richard Nixon, a man in the wilderness of politics after a career ending defeat. With Nixon as Secretary of Defense, the United States sends more than a million men to South Vietnam and proceeds to bomb the North back to the Stone Age, but it is not enough, as the North Vietnamese refuse to give up and beg for terms of peace. Is it time to think about the unthinkable? Told in the form of an oral history by the men and women who fought, protested and profited from the Vietnam War, Beating Plowshares into Swords is a look at the history that never was, but might have been, and a very different 1960's than the one we remember. For years I've heard historians and armchair warriors claim that America fought the war in Vietnam with our hands tied behind our backs; that we really could have won if only North Vietnam had been bombed into to a waste land; if only the Ho Chi Minh Trail had been cut; if only a million more men had been sent in country; if only we had wanted to win. In this short novel, I attempt to construct a scenario where the United States military put the hammer down on the North Vietnamese and what the consequences of such a policy would have been for America, Indochina and the wider world. At the same time I constructed different fates for such historical personages as LBJ and Nixon, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as seen thought the eyes of fictional characters: a young man fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia, a General working in the halls of the Pentagon and the Oval Office, and an idealistic school teacher marching in the streets of America's cities. History is a great Leviathan, driven by ego and ambition, fear and avarice, ignorance and insight, brute instinct and sheer brilliance, and most of all by forces far beyond the control of any one person no matter how much power they possess. It is full of fascinating What Ifs and Beating Plowshares into Swords is but one of them.

As the year 1965 began, U.S. policymakers were deeply worried about the situation in Vietnam and divided about what should be done about it. Many feared that South Vietnam could not be saved, but in the context of the global war on communism, few believed that it was politically and strategically acceptable for the United States to allow South Vietnam to fall without putting up more of a fight. If the United States was truly dedicated to the preservation of a non-Communist South Vietnam, a few senior officials believed that the United States would have no choice but to deploy large ground forces in a bid to defeat the Communists militarily, or at least to bring them to the negotiation table on favorable terms, as had occurred in Korea. Others thought that a full-fledged war was undesirable, unlikely to achieve victory, and domestically unsustainable. They preferred using limited military means to coerce the Communists into accepting South Vietnam's independence. No one in the U.S. government, however, seemed to have a clear vision of how the crisis might end if the Communist leadership in Hanoi refused to be cowered. Unfortunately, North Vietnam's leaders had no intention of backing down. Although they feared U.S. military intervention, they regarded the reunification of Vietnam under communism as nonnegotiable, and they were prepared to pay a steep price to obtain it. The two nations were thus on a collision course. One, North Vietnam, was advancing aggressively forward toward conquering South Vietnam. The other, the United States, was moving hesitantly and with ambivalence toward a deeper involvement of undetermined proportions to save South Vietnam. Neither antagonist had a firm grasp on a situation that would soon spiral out of control.

A lighthearted story of one man's struggle to define how he intends to make a living. Set in corporate America, Chip leaves his current job in search of a new life at a larger company, complete with a taller ladder to climb and more money. He soon sees that his new career path is not what he envisioned, eventually realizing that he is searching for more than just a bigger paycheck. Chip's new employer offers a host of outrageous situations and entertaining characters: a manipulative, power hungry boss; an out of control Human Resource Manager, bent on social experimentation and empire building; an insane headhunter; a narcissistic CEO; Pocket Protector Diversity Programs; a cloistered IT department; Germ Management memos; desperate interviews; Outplacement Programs; endless chart-making; pointless meetings; corporate strategies gone wrong; acronyms no one understands; and much more. One of Chip's new coworkers, Ted, a jaded veteran, helps Chip find his way while coming to terms with his own retirement.

The main premise The Vietnam Wars is that Vietnam experienced not one but several over-lapping and often inter-dependent wars. This lively new source book chronicles the history of one of the bloodiest and most controversial conflicts of the twentieth century, beginning with the birth of the Vietnamese communist party in 1930 and ending with the triumph of the Vietnamese revolution in 1975. Through a series of short essays, but most especially through the documents themselves, the book illustrates and illuminates both the conflict and the main historical debates about its origins, course and consequences.

As American Protestant denominations established and adapted their positions on the Vietnam War, they used their theological commitments to shape their foreign policy perspectives. Concurrently, those positions encouraged the growth or demise of these churches.

Riveting, novelistic, and startlingly candid, John T. Halliday's combat memoir begins in 1970, when Halliday has just landed in the middle of the Vietnam War, primed to begin his assignment with the 606th Special Operations Squadron. But there's a catch: He's stationed in a kind of no-man's-land. No one on his base flies with ID, patches, or rank. Even as Richard Nixon firmly denies reporters' charges that the United States has forces in Laos, Halliday realizes that from his base in Thailand, he will be flying top-secret, black-ops night missions over the Laotian Ho Chi Minh Trail. A naive yet thoughtful twenty-four-year-old, Halliday was utterly unprepared for the horrors of war. On his first mission, Halliday's C-123 aircraft dodges more than a thousand antiaircraft shells, and that is just the beginning. Nothing is as he expected -- not the operations, not the way his shell-shocked fellow pilots look and act, and certainly not the squadron's daredevil, seat-of-one's-pants approach to piloting. But before long, Halliday has become one of those seasoned and shell-shocked pilots, and finds himself in a desperate search for a way to elude certain death. Using frank, true-to-life dialogue, potent imagery, and classic 1970s song lyrics, Halliday deftly describes the fraught Laotian skies and re-creates his struggle to navigate the frustrating Air Force bureaucracy, the deprivations of a remote base far from home and his young wife, and his fight to preserve his sanity. The resulting nonfiction narrative vividly captures not only the intricate, distorted culture of war but also the essence of the Vietnam veteran's experience of this troubled era. A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to war literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606th's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.

From an outspoken feminist, a leader of the Women's Movement in the 1960s and '70s--a candid, wide-ranging and deeply personal memoir that is, as well, an illuminating historical document of a time and a fight for profound societal change. Brenda Feigen has lived many lifetimes within one--lawyer, wife and mother, civil rights activist, politician, Hollywood movie producer--and in each she has faced down the specter of discrimination against women. She describes how at Harvard Law School she fought to change blatantly sexist practices such as Ladies' Days and law-firm interviewing processes; how she waged battles for women as National Vice President of NOW; how, with Gloria Steinem, she founded Ms. and cofounded the National Women's Political Caucus in the early 1970s; how she became director with Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in 1972; and how, in Hollywood, she met obstacles at every turn while fighting for movies with strong, positive roles for women. She describes, as well, the struggles and triumphs of her private life: her marriage (she and her husband were once considered "the perfect feminist couple"); being a (feminist) mother; her relationships with women; her breast cancer. Finally, she chronicles recent advances and losses in the Women's Movement, making clear how far women have come, and how far they have yet to go.

There were no marching bands welcoming home returning troops from Vietnam, no ticker-tape parades for its heroes and no celebrations in Time Square. Instead, returning Vets were confronted with a range of reactions, not the least of which were indifference, silent disapproval, criticism, hostility and even contempt, in some quarters, for their lack of cleverness in not avoiding service in a war zone. Most returning Vietnam warriors were bewildered by the reactions of their fellow countrymen; but, then how could they possibly comprehend the psychological phenomenon which was only beginning to take hold and would later be named the “Vietnam Syndrome”, a phenomenon which, at its extremes, was manifested in a revulsion to all things military? Even those who were proud of the returning servicemen and women were hardly effusive in their praise and greeted them with only muted enthusiasm. Most of these young veterans of an undeclared war had been shaped and molded in their formative years by the patriotic fervor which seized America during World War II and continued for perhaps a decade and a half after V. J. day. But, American society had profoundly changed in the 1960s with a shift in emphasis away from national goals to more individual ones such as civil rights, sexual liberation, pacifism, academic freedom, consciousness raising and a reaction against the excesses of the “military industrial complex”, ironically named by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The cataclysmic cultural revolution of the 1960s collided violently with the more nationalistic goals of containing the spread of international communism and curbing the expansionist policies of the Soviet Union and Red China. Those who actually fought the Vietnam War became collateral victims of a wrenching cultural war, not of their own making; for the core values of these young men and women had, for the most part, not changed. Just as the World War II generation was imbued with traditional values of patriotism, loyalty to one’s comrades, anti-totalitarianism and democratic freedom, most heroes of the Vietnam War were similarly grounded. The major difference is that while the former were celebrated, the latter were largely forgotten. Last Full Measure of Devotion calls upon us to revisit this remarkable generation of military heroes and, at long last, accord them the recognition withheld from them for almost four decades. The 22 individual profiles of Vietnam heroes contained between these covers are meant to be representative of the vast majority of Americans who served with honor in that lonely and beleaguered country on the South China Sea, more than thirty-five years ago.

Yes, another book about the Vietnam War, this time from a perspective not offered by others. This book is an outline of useful and factual information related to our involvement of the Vietnam War. "We Seek No Wider War" is not one of those books for "idiots" or "dummies," nor is it a simplistic cartoonish work with cute bits of "G.I. jargon." "We Seek No Wider War" was written in chronological order, from the little known event involving the USS Constitution in 1845 to until our departure 1975. I have interspaced factual news worthy events with accounts of the death and life of the servicemen and women who served there and have included the names, ages, and hometowns of those killed during a particular event or battle. I have made every attempt to not editorialize our involvement; I will leave that up to you. Rather, I hope this is a compilation of facts and information you can use to further your studies and to ask more involved questions. What I would like to do is generate your interest, answer a few common questions, and bring a little insight in hopes that you will pick up the more extensive readings or research various aspects that interest or affect you. The subject of the Vietnam War will not go away, it is not a fad and it will remain in our collective thoughts for many generations to come.