検索キーワード： ベトナム戦争

Of all the military assignments in Vietnam, perhaps none was more challenging than the defense of the Mekong River Delta region. Operating deep within the Viet Cong - controlled Delta, the 9th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army was charged with protecting the area and its population against Communist insurgents and ensuring the success of the South Vietnamese government's pacification program.

In Barren SEAD, award-winning historian James L. Young, Jr., propagates a different theory: Instead of being a sign of what the Air Force was capable of, Linebacker II was a bitter failure that starkly outlined the USAF's limitations. Furthermore, instead of the meddling of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, this defeat was brought about by Air Force leaders' refusal to develop a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) doctrine from 1953-1972.

More than anything, however, Barnes' story is one of loss - of morale lost to alcoholism, teammates lost to friendly fire, missions aborted, and missions endlessly and futilely repeated. And yet against this dark background, Barnes graciously honors the quiet professionals whose service, overshadowed by the outsized story of Vietnam, nonetheless carried the day.

The Vietnam War remains one of the most controversial events in American history, and it bitterly divided the nation, so it's somewhat ironic that the most famous monument commemorating the war is also on one of the most serene spots in the nation’s capital. The famous Vietnam Wall is a place of almost eerie silence where even children cease their chatter. Rising out of the ground like an ancient obelisk, it calls upon its visitors to stop talking and to look and gaze upon the magnitude of America’s great mistake, a war that began in whispers and ended in tears.

In May 1970 aerial photographs revealed what US military intelligence believed was a POW camp near the town of Son Tay, 23 miles west of North Vietnam's capital city. When American officials decided the prisoners were attempting to send signals, they set in motion a daring plan to rescue the more than 60 airmen thought to be held captive. On November 20 a joint group of volunteers from US Army Green Berets and US Air Force Special Operations Forces perfectly executed the raid, only to find the prisoners' quarters empty; the POWs had been moved.

The Vietnam War was fought like a war and it ended with both sides believing that they won. But it was not a war that started with a formal declaration of war. The number of struggles for power that are part of the fabric of Vietnam is almost overwhelming.

In the fall of 1969, Gary Bray landed in South Vietnam as a recently married, freshly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. His assignment was not enviable: leading the platoon whose former members had committed the My Lai massacre--the murder of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians--18 months earlier. In this compelling memoir, he shares his experiences of Vietnam in the direct wake of that terrible event.

Lieutenant Michael Lee Lanning went to Vietnam as an eager young patriot who was confident of surviving the war. After six months in-country, he was promoted at age 23 to company commander, and his sense of duty began to shift from his nation to preserving the lives of the men in Bravo Company.

Kill Me If You Can, You SOB is a judicious, penetrating record of the Vietnam War as experienced by an ordinary soldier. Through diary entries written over three decades ago, we get a rare and illuminating glimpse into one of America's greatest tragedies. Bob Miller's unflinching observations not only expose the harsh realities of war but also provide a long-overdue tribute to the men who fought it.

I watched two point men take 50-caliber machine gun bullets to the head and watched the third being grabbed and taken behind enemy lines. Two of the enemy soldiers, whom we often referred to as gooks, quickly came after me. As I mowed them down with my automatic rifle, I crawled backward, away from the enemy gunfire, using my helmet to push sand in front of me as I went, which made it possible to look behind me. But as I looked back, I realized my safety net was no longer safe.

On March 13, 1971, LT Bart Creed, USN launched from the deck of the USS Ranger in support of Operation Lam Son 719, the ill-fated invasion of Laos by ARVN forces. Shot down while strafing an enemy truck on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, LT Creed lay injured and surrounded by enemy forces. Despite heroic attempts to rescue him, the 25 year-old husband, and father of two young children was never recovered. To this day, his fate remains a mystery.

He was a young American soldier - and the most powerful man in a remote rural District of Vietnam.

In the spring of 1969, First Lieutenant David Donovan arrived in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to work as military advisor with village chiefs and local militia to win the war.

But as he was the highest-ranking person in the entire district, his life there was far more complex than anyone could have imagined.

In 1972 a North Vietnamese offensive of more than 30,000 men and one hundred tanks smashed into South Vietnam and raced to capture Saigon. All that stood in their way was a small band of 6,800 South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers and militiamen, and a handful of American advisors with U.S. air support, guarding An Loc, a town sixty miles north of Saigon and on the main highway to it.

Timely and timeless. This is a soldier's story and war is war, whether it's Bull Run, Ban Me Thuot, or Fallujah. Sent to Vietnam after being drafted, Carl Melcher makes friends with both the black and white members of his company in spite of racial tensions of the times. Naive and young for his nineteen years, he learns harrowing truths about life and death when his optimism proves false.

For over 25 years, award-winning journalist Henry Bradsher reported stories from around the world. In this lively and engaging account, Bradsher recounts episodes from a distinguished career that took him to the Himalayas, the jungles of Bhutan, Kremlin caviar receptions, China's Forbidden City, and the battlefields of Vietnam. Throughout, Bradsher emphasizes the unpredictability of a correspondent's life and the strains, perils, and privileges of standing witness to momentous world events.

In war time, it's dangerous to even want a drink of water. Especially, if you were raised in a butcher shop.And that's what war is: A Butcher Shop.

Authors Robert Toto and Richard Geschke have expanded their horizons of their original book, In Our Duffel Bags, Surviving the Vietnam Era, with a poetic interpretation of life in the army. Tracking their adventures in Germany, Panama and Vietnam, the authors wax the poetic version of what they found in their duffel bags looking deeper into the fast changing times of the Vietnam era. With Shadows of Combat the listener will sense the history of what took place in this crucial time in American history.

Nathaniel Tripp grew up fatherless in a house full of women, and he arrived in Vietnam as a just-promoted second lieutenant in the summer of 1968 with no memory of a man's example to guide and sustain him. The father missing from Tripp's life had gone off to war as well, in the navy in World War II, but the terrors were too much for him, he disgraced himself, and after the war ended he could not bring himself to return to his wife and young son.

In War for the Hell of It, Cobleigh shares his perspectives in a deeply personal account of a fighter pilot's life, one filled with moral ambiguity and military absurdities offset by the undeniable thrill of flying a fighter plane. With well-crafted prose that puts you into his Phantom's cockpit, Cobleigh vividly recounts the unexplainable loss of his wingman, the useless missions he flew, the need to trust his reflexes, eyesight, aggressiveness, and his survival instincts in the heat of combat.

Trauma and Tenacity in Vietnam: A Surgeon's Story captures the defining period in the medical life of Capt. Sheldon Kushner, MD, while stationed in Vinh Long, Vietnam, from 1968-69. Through letters, reel-to-reel tape recordings, slides, and the personal interviews that recounted his experience, the story of a young surgeon is revealed.