The battle rages on in the jungles of Vietnam.
345344
Get on your feet soldier! It's 1968 and what are you doing? You still playing hide and go seek in the sour kraut fields? This isn't 1942 boy! It's the 60's and there's a new war to be waged! The battlefield is now staged in the dense jungles, destroyed cities, and the twisting rivers of Vietnam. 14 brand new maps send you straight into the deltas, hills, fields, and streets of the Indochina Vietnam Conflict. You'll be fighting the North Vietnam Army in a tense struggle to take back the fallen city of Hue. Hang onto your lunch as you swiftly glide down the Mekong Delta on a PT Boat in Operation Game Warden. And don't forget to look out for the Vietcong's booby traps as you run through the jungles during a secret invasion of Cambodia. Yes soldier, I believe you just might make it out here in Vietnam. But there's lots more than just your common infantry to watch out for! Enemy helicopters patrol the skies while F4 Phantoms litter the ground with napalm, clearing the way for troops. Don't forget about those Vespa Scooters my friend, Charlie just might slip on by without you knowing! So soldier, I think your ready to take on Nam. Fight for the North,South,or even the good old US, your bound to have a great time in the jungle. Just keep an eye out for the M60 machine guns, they'll send you home in a box if you don't watch it!
29216
Wow.  Quite a harrowing story from the Vietnam war.  So well written. I could not stop reading it. I read it straight through. Maybe that is also because one of the people who died and whose story is told in the book was a classmate of mine.  These guys were sitting ducks.  Mistakes were made which cost their lives.  I felt like I knew all of these heroic men by the way the author depicted them and wrote about them. Thank you for this book.
4202636
I recall seeing the news film of Vietnam every night when I was a kid. It was that background war that wouldn't go away but also didn't directly affect me since I didn't have close relatives fighting and dying there as so many others did. I knew what the media and/or the government told us about Vietnam. And over decades since, I've read a few history books to try to get a more comprehensive  perspective on this controversial undeclared war.

When I read the summary of&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Red-Flags/dp/0547564511/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Red Flags</a>, I was immediately interested, and I was rewarded well by this novel. Juris Jurjevics writes straightforwardly and vividly, without undue floridity. His almost journalistic style is all that is required because he is telling an intensely human war story with innate drama. However, that drama isn't evidenced through elaborate, panoramic battle scenes. Rather, RED FLAGS concentrates on a small, mountain post where the American military presence is minimal and basically surrounded by enemies, overt and covert. Most intriguing are the Montagnards, the indigenous people there who are not Vietnamese and who have had their own conflicts with the Viets as long as both have tried to live in the same "country."

Erik Rider, Army special agent, is sent, along with his partner, to a Highland province to bust up in any unofficial way possible, the very profitable Communist drug industry and trade there. "Captain" Rider and Miser arrive at Cheo Reo, where the Americans are clearly outnumbered. They are soon introduced to, among others, the local CIA rep; the commanding officer, Lt. Col. Bennett; and a woman doctor operating a clinic nearby. They also see some grisly results of the various factions' maneuvering and infighting, including badly mutilated bodies of Viets, "Yards," and Westerners. Trying to find ways to complete his mission, Rider realizes that the corruption of the South Vietnamese leaders in the area may thwart him. Spies, deals, money, ethnic loyalties (and disloyalties) all swirl together to make any kind of clear progress virtually impossible. The place is in delicate stalemate. Rider must follow his orders so he and Miser can get back to "civilized" Saigon, but he feels somewhat stymied by the network of personal investments of the people there. For example, the colonel and the doctor are more than friends, and the colonel's future depends on compromise rather than brute force. If he is to have any victories here, they will be small ones.

We know up front that Rider makes it through his Vietnam service because the novel begins with him speaking to a younger woman in the present day. And we know the woman has a connection to Cheo Reo. This reduces some suspense perhaps, but RED FLAGS still tells a compelling, chilling story of the futility of fighting another country's war and of the human toll these "civil" wars take as each side's atrocities and tragedies mount and all sides strive to undermine others through any means including subterfuge, booby traps, and night massacres.

RED FLAGS is highly recommended.
119851
Most academics write of war from high above; diplomatic and political thrusts and parries, troop movements, logistical campaigns, body counts and damage assessments.  In Crucible Vietnam, Albert "Bert" Lawrence combines academic analysis with a trip into the foxhole, and it isn't pretty - but it's true.

Mr. Lawrence's description of his survival as an infantry soldier in the jungles of the central highlands of Vietnam in 1967-68, is gritty, graphic, personal, even intimate, and - to a person who was not there - seems true.  Bert was there, and you are there.  You see, hear, and smell the steaming jungles, a shelter half your only porous protection from the endless mud and rain, the constant fear of the sudden and random arrival of death.  He shares what was going on inside his head while bullets whizzed by ("like the crack of a whip") and respected adversaries were doing their best to out-think and kill him with bullet or bayonet, pungi stick or mortar shell.

But his other purpose is to expose the facts.  This book is replete with facts, the number of deaths and injuries, bombs dropped, North Vietnamese Regulars involved in the battles and campaigns.  Mr. Lawrence also produces a surprising, and entertaining, number of pieces of trivia, such as the truth about dogtags, or the fact that "tigers normally give a warning growl and allow the intruder to back off."

Mr. Lawrence offers insights into the Vietnamese, who were both allies and adversaries; a country and a people continuously at war for decades, while the American soldier visited just long enough to kill and be killed.  Their mission was to determine the future of their country, while our soldier's goal was simply to survive.

He compares Vietnam with other wars and conflicts: World Wars I and II, Korea, the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, the Civil War, Iraq and the current war in Afganistan, all the wars our country has faced.  He also points out that, as it is in all wars, most of the U. S. military in Vietnam were not involved in an ongoing direct face-to-face fight for survival with "the enemy."  Bert presents a frontline soldier's perspective on the troops and the command structure at the rear.  When he is finally withdrawn from the active war zone, he finds that in some strange, perverted way, he prefers the simple, pure camaraderie of the infantry company in battle.

I think that Bert's ultimate purpose is to describe the personal crucible that Vietnam was for himself, and many others like him.  Was he a hero?  While I think that he would say "No," read the book and judge for yourself.  Are they all heroes, or are they just victims of the politicians, who are always too ready to place our service members in harm's way?  Did we, the families and friends, war protester or war supporter, treat them right when they returned, if they returned?

Crucible Vietnam is both readible and informative.  I found myself taken up with the author's personal story from beginning to end.  From his upbringing in the suburbs of America to his building a good life after surviving at the tip of the spear, the story is worth telling, and is told well.
1372709
I have nothing but respect for the men that had to actually fight the war in Nam, this book tells one story and it is a story, like so many others, that tells the reader of the misory of Jungle fighting. Not only did these men have to worry about the enemy, they had so many other things that could end their lives, the writer relates this fact fairly well.
4794350
An absolutely riveting description of life in the Army all the way from new recruit to seasoned combat veteran.  The book is well written and all of the technical terminology is well explained.  Most importantly, it makes the reader realize the strong bonds that combat soldiers develop which enables them to fly into the hellish nightmare over and over day after day to complete the mission and to attempt the rescue of those trapped in inevitable life / death situations.  The cost of freedom is brought to the forefront and although South Viet Nam could not prevail against  the entire communist world in the long run,  the spread of communism went no further along the Pacific Rim.  Experiencing this book will give anyone a clear idea of what jungle combat was like for those who flew into and hopefully back out of the thousands of "hot landing zones"  all over Viet Nam.  Ask just about any male over the age of ten and they .can tell you that a "Huey": is a helicopter  used in Viet Nam, and this book is about the heroes that flew them.
1043285
Great in-depth read on a very important battle of the Vietnam War. It was a brutal battle and Mark Bowden brings you right into the action from Day 1 of the Tet Offensive to the North Vietcong retreat from the city of Hue. As they say, "war is hell" and the battle of Hue is as close to hell one can get. It also shows the heroism and courage of the battle participants but it leaves one with the empty feeling of why were we even in Vietnam in the first place. Mark Bowden is a gifted writer and the quality of his books is exceptional.
1288901
Xin Loi was an interesting read about the Viet Nam war about the men who flew on the helicopters that supported the infantry on the ground.
4264903
This is a worthwhile addition to the Vietnam War genre. I've read stacks of books about soldiers in combat in Vietnam, but this book shows us a different side of the Vietnam War - life in Saigon as a supply officer. The book is a realistic depiction of a young soldier dealing with one strange, new and dangerous situation after another. Some eye-opening events occur. He ends his tour of duty quite a different person than he started it. Definitely worth a read!
2173849
The cat from Hue gives the reader some chuckles as the antics of this alley cat are threaded throughout this 845 page book.  This is the story of our war in Vietnam and is the best book about war I have ever read.  It talks of why the truth is never told about what actually happens on the battlefield much of the time (politics and morale, mostly)particularly when the battles are in reality being lost.  The field reporter is constantly trying to keep out of the way, yet reporting on what is happening on the battlefield.  The reader is right in the thick of battle and is party to the success and failure of events as they unfold.  I read every page of this big book just because it is all most interesting and highly recommended.
3922923
John Prados, a veteran writer of military history, has attempted to write the first detailed scholarly examination of the role of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Vietnam War.  The Trail, dubbed the "Blood Road," was a vital pathway through the jungles of Laos and Cambodia that enabled the North Vietnamese regime to conduct a protracted guerrilla struggle in South Vietnam.  Without the Trail, the indigenous Viet Cong in South Vietnam would have been virtually on their own.  Nor is Prados content just to examine the history of the Trail; rather, he poses the critical question: could the United States have severed the Trail and thereby achieved a military victory in Vietnam?
 There is no doubt that The Blood Trail has historical value.  Prados has pulled together high and low-level accounts from both sides to produce the first real synthesis on this subject.  Unfortunately, far more is promised than is delivered by this book.  One major problem is the over-focus on Washington strategy sessions by Bundy, McNamara, LBJ, et al.  It seems that every book written on the Vietnam War has to detour into the Oval Office, no matter how much this ground has been trampled before. The only germane aspect of these familiar policy debates is the issue of whether the insurgency in Vietnam would be handled with diplomatic or military means.  Prados shows that severing the canal by a variety of military means was the preferred option.
 Although the Americans tried everything from ground attacks, bombing, mining and raiding, they could not sever the Trail.  Thus Prados concludes that, "the truth is that the war fighters lost their gambit".  Well, that's rather obvious Dr. Prados, given that we lost the war.  Unfortunately, by asserting that we couldn't sever the Trail by military means (which actually is not proven, only that the means employed did not work), the author leaves the reader high and dry.  What then should the United States have done about the Trail?  Abandon South Vietnam in 1964?  Negotiate surrender?  How could we have known that interdicting the Trail would fail if we did not try it?  There is nothing worthy of being called a conclusion here.  I also believe that Dr. Prados overstates the effect of severing the Trail in any case.  Even if the US military had successfully interdicted the Trail for say 6-12 months, thereby disrupting the enemy build-up, Hanoi would merely have asked for a temporary cease-fire.  They could then use the period of cease-fire to repair any damage to the Trail.
 I think Prados misses the boat on this one.  The Vietnam War was not an exercise in military logistics, whereby if we had severed the enemy lines of communication their war effort would have collapsed.  Prados has been influenced too heavily by Jomini and Clausewitz, instead of Mao.  First, the enemy would always find a way to get some troops and supplies into South Vietnam, no matter how painful we made this to them.  Even if we stopped 80-90% of the troops and supplies - a real success - the remaining 10-20% would probably be enough to keep a low-level insurgency burning in South Vietnam.  The war was not about logistics, it was about motivation and protracted struggle.  The fact is that as long as Hanoi's leaders remained committed to victory, they could outlast any temporary US military successes. The United States never intended to adopt a large-scale, open-ended defense of South Vietnam for decades on end.  Thus, the Trail was probably not as critical to victory or defeat as Prados makes out.
2726983
simply the best book i have read covering the vietnam conflict whether it be american or french . It reads like a war novel at its best, the difference being this account is fact. The book covers the reasons why,the build up,the complacency and finally the tragedy . One cannot but marvel at the tenacity of both sides aswell as the strength to endure such hardships. Why the americans had the arrogance to think it would be any different for them is disturbing as parralels can again be seen between the vietnam conflict and the current war in iraq.
1572703
Frederick Downs, Jr. was a young Infantry Lieutenant in 1967, sent to Vietnam in what was becoming a gargantuan conflict against the North Vietnamese (with some assistance from the Chinese Communists) and a war which many people later tried to forget. The Vietnam War is one of the most misunderstood, misinterpreted and carelessly evaluated conflicts in American history. Many people (on the right and the left side of the political spectrum) formed opinions about it long before they had all the facts or understood the history of the region- then called French Indochina- which had seen struggles for centuries. The French were the latest "Colonial" power to try and subdue the local rebels- led by insurgent Communists against their European enemies. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 spelled the end of their military commitment- but the beginning of an American involvement which lasted over 20 years (including the first CIA operatives and military advisors sent there from the very late 1940's/mid-late 1950's). Most Americans don't know that the first American casualties in the region came almost a decade before they started seeing the grim battlefield scenes on their T.V. sets, Walter Cronkite's reporting the Gospel for those who didn't know anything about the region and didn't understand why we were there.

Frederick Downs went there bravely, volunteering and eager to lead men in combat- an experience he'd never had and wanted to learn for himself. He quickly learned what General William Tecumseh Sherman knew a century before during the Civil War-"War is Hell." Downs was severely wounded shortly before he was to scheduled leave the region, the victim of a "Bouncing Betty" land mine which blew off much of his left arm and left scars around his upper body. Downs was one of the lucky ones- he came home, received rehabilitative treatment at Fitzsimmon's Army Hospital in Denver and tried to live a normal life again. Many of his buddies weren't so lucky; they arrived at Dover Air Force Base in flag-draped coffins.

Downs artfully describes the day to day tasks, exploits and maneuvers of an Infantry platoon sent to root out the Vietcong in the heavily overgrown jungle areas of Vietnam. His deft descriptions of their marches, the challenges of the terrain, the weather, dealing with a people who didn't know them or speak their language reveals much about what these men had to deal with every day for their length of service. Of course, many troops had been drafted- and were there because they didn't have a choice. Downs was there because he wanted to serve his country- an honorable offering by a true patriot. The fact that he paid dearly for his involvement is not lost on the reader- you can feel every step he takes, every tunnel they try to explore to kill enemy troops, each foot of the hazardous trails they hiked- which were sometimes littered with mines- one of which almost killed him.

Downs has done a great service not only for his country- but for citizens everywhere who are still trying to understand this bitter conflict, one of America's "forgotten wars". He deserves every accolade and deep respect from all of us. As the main character in the movie "Forrest Gump" said - "I think some of America's finest men fought in that war..." Downs was one of them. I highly recommend his book to anyone trying to learn what it was really like to fight in that epic struggle- and what that period of American history was all about.

-Gene Pisasale
Author of "The Forgotten Star" an historical novel of the War of 1812 and true-life mysteries surrounding an American icon- the Star-Spangled Banner, dedicated to all our Veterans, especially those who fought in the 'forgotten wars' of Korea and Vietnam
2018247
A lot of people love this old book, and I'm no exception.  It's definitely worth your time to read this. This puts you in the jungles of Vietnam where a squad of men can discreetly take on the VC and NVA in the enemy's own backyard.  Discipline, brotherhood, team, all as it should be.  It keeps me re-examining my own level of preparedness and pushes me to do common things uncommonly well, and be ready to stand corrected and improve.
4785133
The book is intense, the action, the casualties, and told in a very straightforward manner. Without American leadership, airpower, and courage this battle would have been another footnote in south Vietnam's inability to hold the line. The war would have ended that much sooner without American intervention. The book is packed with factual information and I recommend it.
915680
The experiences Sgt. Eaton went through in Vietnam is a good read for anyone interested in what it was like for the guys who fought down in the Delta, the southern most part of Vietnam known as IV Corps.  Although the beginning of the book isn't to well written it does get better as it goes along.  Although I believe his story is a true experience it seems to my thinking anyway that some of the incidents and attitude toward killing the VC he had described were maybe just a tad exaggerated.  Is the reason I gave it a four star rather than five.  But I do recommend this book to anyone wanting to read more about combat in Vietnam.  .
1666117
A gripping and disturbing first-person account of combat in Vietnam. Gripping due to the intensity of the constant battles with the Viet Cong and NVA - as well as within the Marine Corps company.  Disturbing in the picture it paints of an incompetent command structure, the internal and dangerous conflict among the Marines and fear based on the knowing that the only way home is via a metal coffin or a hospital.