photo of John Shook beside Vietnam Memorial

One Soldier by John H. Shook

Who, or what, was the real enemy in Vietnam? The ever-elusive, jungle-wise Viet Cong and their NVA allies? The oppressive heat and torrential rains? The leeches, mosquitoes, and the jungle itself? Or the army whose regulations made you carry a .45 even though the firing pin was broken? Perhaps, each in their own way, they all were… and John Shook battled them all.

In One Soldier, he recounts his experiences and describes how he faced—and overcame—all the enemies a machine-gunner encountered in the Nam. Straight-from-the-shoulder, Shook tells of search and destroy patrols and night ambushes and slogging through a rice paddy, wondering when the first shot was going to come. You’ll be at his side during bull sessions on getting a “million-dollar” wound that would mean a return to the States and in firefights that turned his M-60 machine gun from a shoulder-numbing burden into a staccato, lead-spewing lifesaver.

Most of all, One Soldier is a story of combat, written in the immediate, gut-wrenching language that men at war resort to: “A burst of automatic rifle fire rips through the hooch inches above my elevated perch. Knowing exactly where my rifle hangs I reach out for it but grasp only air and wooden wall. … The firing in both directions is heavier now. There is yelling on the bridge. It is a black night, a void of vision punctuated by muzzle flashes and the crisscrossing streaks of tracers… Is that your 16?’ I yell. ‘What the f—. Who cares?’… ‘Where was your rifle when this s— started?'”

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Download in mobi format for your Amazon ereader or Fire tablet:

photo of Donald Duncan

The New Legions by Donald Duncan

Epub or Mobi?

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and in one case for Amazon devices. As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send to Kindle program. A great feature of the Send to Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send to Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

So if you are using this ebook on Apple, or Android devices, or in the Send to Kindle program, you can download this epub file below.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to  an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file  in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

 

Reviews

Donald Duncan wanted be the best soldier possible. He was regular Army, then Airborne, then Green Beret.

In Vietnam, he led reconnaissance patrols deep into enemy-held territory to assess the strength of the Viet Cong, the communist guerrillas. He returned home with questions about Vietnam. Did the peasants on the farms in South Vietnam want another foreign power in their country? Were they as anti-communist as Americans, or anti-foreigner? What did their attitudes mean to the success of the intervention of United States in Vietnam? He went even further as you will see. He asked if South Vietnam was really a separate country in the eyes of the Vietnamese.

Read about his patriotism, his courage and his questions.

Editorial Reviews :
“Frequently provocative.” –The Saturday Review.

“Duncan’s merits are obvious. He has written a buoyant work filled with rueful reflections on our past and present errors, but charged with hopes for the future. In relating his impressions of army life he is at his best; some really fine pages describe the counterinsurgency training of the Green Berets; the numerous missions of the Special Forces into Viet Cong-held territory; the shop talk of war-weary soldiers groping to discover a rational explanation for their presence in Vietnam; the almost totally negative reactions of these same soldiers to the South Vietnamese army, government, and people; and the sorry plight in the armed forces of the American Negro, who still suffers from discrimination despite the efforts of his government to eradicate it.

“… There is much of value in The New Legions. Evident on every page is Duncan’s humanity. And the nobility of his cause— the end of the war and the triumph of peace, justice, and integrity throughout the world—is, of course, incontestable. His book is often illuminating and frequently provocative…”
Saturday Review August 12, 1967

 

Book Cover Vietnam 1969

Vietnam 1969 Progress of Pacification, Prospects for Vietnamization by James G. Lowenstein & Richard M. Moose

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to  an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file  in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Editorial Reviews

In their report to the Senate Foreign Relatons Committee in 1969, Lowenstein and Moose wrote about their interviews with the senior political and military leadership in Vietnam and also with villagers in the countryside. They complain in the report of often receiving contradictory answers to the same questions depending on whom they are asking. And they complain that briefings are rarely objective.

“In sum, whether inadvertently or deliberately, briefings do not objectively present the pros and cons but rather emphasize progress and accomplishment. Being briefed in Vietnam is somewhat like being told to buy product X without being told what is wrong with it or why to buy product Y.”

The New York Times called thieir report “a bombshell.”
“They interviewed all the major figures — Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Gen. Creighton Abrams, Vietnamese politicians — but also midlevel officers. They read volumes of field reports and traveled the length of South Vietnam, meeting with village elders.

“Their report, released in a redacted version to the public in early 1970, was a bombshell. The administration’s plans, they wrote, ‘seem to rest on far more ambiguous, confusing and contradictory evidence than pronouncements from Washington and Saigon indicate.’”

“The war, they concluded, ‘appears to be not only far from won but far from over.’”

Marines on Patrol

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Small Unit Action 1966 by Captain Francis J. “Bing” West Jr.

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Grade Level from the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score is 6.2.

The battle scenes are dramatic but are too graphic for middle school readers in our opinion.

And the text of the book is much easier reading than the blurb below:

Vietnam, summer 1966. On a steep mountainside 20 miles inland, a reconnaissance platoon of 18 men holds off hundreds of enemy soldiers for over 12 hours. In a four-day scouting mission near the demilitarized zone, a small patrol ambushes and destroys a Viet Cong base camp. This was the action behind the headlines in Vietnam.

From routine night raids to full-scale assaults, Small Unit Action in Vietnam presents a compelling perspective on the courage, dedication and patriotic enthusiasm of U.S. Marines in the early stages of the war.

Originally published as a strategic training manual, this remarkable and moving document is an authentic eyewitness account of nine separate actions at the company and battalion level. Most books look at the broad picture of the war. Small Unit Action in Vietnam sharpens the focus to show the individual battles as they were actually fought. Captain West’s book describes with taut precision the lightning judgments, tactical decisions and moments of bravery of individual soldiers fighting a deadly enemy in an overwhelmingly hostile environment.

Through his vivid descriptions—of the rugged terrain, the movements of the units, the use of support troops and artillery, the ruses and psychological ploys so crucial in defeating a brilliant, determined and resourceful foe—we experience with stunning clarity the challenges of combat on the front.

cover of Nemesis

Nemesis: Truman and Johnson in the Coils of War in Asia by Robert J. Donovan

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle for Amazon device.


As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and does not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to  an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file  in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

A Review from The New York Times

“Readable and at times even exciting” —The New York Times

Presidents Embattled by Drew Middleton, The New York Times, November 4, 1984
(Drew Middleton was the military correspondent of The New York Times.)

NEMESIS: Truman and Johnson in the Coils of War in Asia. By Robert J. Donovan. Illustrated. 216 pp.

Robert J. Donovan tackled an awesome task in this analysis of two American Presidents’ actions and reactions to two of the most agonizing political-military crises ever to beset the Republic. The result is a closely reasoned, well-researched commentary on troubles that convulsed the United States for a quarter of a century.

Mr. Donovan has presented in alternate sections descriptions of the military and political events that cost more than 100,000 American lives and dominated American politics. The reader is asked to move from the Yalu River to the councils of the Democratic Party leadership, and from the jungles of South Vietnam to the groves of academe where opposition to the fighting in those jungles flourished. Mr. Donovan’s success in making the book readable and at times even exciting is a tribute to his skill. Inevitably longer, more detailed comparative analyses of these situations will be published one day. But until they appear, ”Nemesis” should serve as a standard.

Two themes run through it. The first is that neither Truman’s Administration nor Johnson’s anticipated the endless complications, domestic and foreign, that would arise from the deployment of United States forces on the Asian mainland. Governments, democratic or otherwise, seldom do understand the consequences of such actions.

The second theme, which I wish Mr. Donovan had explored more fully, is the impact of recent history on policy making. The decisions about Korea by President Truman and his cabinet were affected strongly by what today would be called the Munich syndrome – a bitter memory of the surrender by Great Britain and France to Hitler’s demands at the Munich meeting of 1938. Ironically, the capitulation at Munich was partly inspired by British and French leaders’ memories of the millions of their compatriots who were killed or wounded during World War I. But Truman saw any failure to respond to the North Koreans’ attack on South Korea in 1950 as another Munich.

That attitude continued to affect Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson in the form of the ”domino theory” when they considered what to do about the slow disintegration of Vietnam after the French were defeated there in the 1950’s. They believed that the loss of South Vietnam would lead to the falling of other ”dominoes” in Asia. And the result is that the United States now suffers in the conduct of international affairs from the inhibiting influence of our loss in Vietnam.

Mr. Donovan, a seasoned reporter on politics who has written a highly praised two-volume biography of Truman, excels in recounting the criticism that fell on Truman and Johnson during their war years. Still vivid in public memory is the wave of criticism of Johnson, the Vietnam War and, in many cases, the entire American political and social system that broke over the White House in the 1960’s. But many will have forgotten the storm of abuse that burst on the White House after the dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command in Korea, abuse that included demands for Truman’s impeachment.

Mr. Donovan pays perhaps too much attention to the political ramifications of the two wars and, in my view, not enough to the military events and decisions that aroused these political responses. For instance, I would have welcomed a more thorough examination of the refusal by the White House to recognize that North Vietnam and not the Viet Cong was the enemy in the Vietnam War, and to consider plans for early attacks on Haiphong and Hanoi. One reason heard at the time was that such bombing would invite intervention by China. But at the time China was caught up in the opening of the Cultural Revolution and many experts believe it would have been unable to intervene effectively.

Mr. Donovan’s discussion of the later American air attacks on North Vietnam is balanced and makes the point, too often dismissed at the time, that in that predominantly agricultural economy there was really nothing much to bomb save key communications. North Vietnam wasn’t Germany.
Effective surprise by the enemies marred the American military performance in both wars and these surprises had a great impact on American politics. The Chinese attack on MacArthur’s forces in North Korea led to a major American military defeat – all the more grievous for public opinion in this country because it closely followed the successful American landings at Inchon harbor in North Korea. About 300,000 Chinese fell on the American and South Korean forces and MacArthur, who had been talking about getting the boys home by Christmas, faced what he called an entirely new war.

POLITICALLY, the Tet offensive in 1968 was the turning point of the Vietnam War, as Mr. Donovan illustrates. Although, as we now know, eventually both the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were defeated with heavy casualties in this offensive, the raid on the United States Embassy in Saigon gave the impression that the United States was losing the war in military terms.

Truman emerges from these pages as by far the more balanced and effective war leader – one who, of course, knew something of war at first hand. Johnson, on the contrary, seems volatile and uncertain, a consummate politician who in the end failed to understand the impact of war on politics.