Best vietnam war history books according to redditors

Read the Phoenix Program. It isn't just a hazard to express the views. It's a hazard to know someone who expresses the views. These folks know what a social network graph is, they know how to make one, and they are making them.

I agree, Vietnam had project 100k one of the most retarded programs we ever had. There this book about it called Mcnamara's folly. They took the low IQ, the drop-outs, the criminal and the intellectually disabled and decided they would be perfect candidates for fighting a brutal jungle war.

These soldiers couldn't tie their shoe, read, write, some of them had down syndrome and some didn't know the difference between left or right. There's cases where the officers either killed outright or "unintentionally" (through things like heatstroke during training), they couldn't deal with it. Some of the low IQ soldiers would fight back and kill their officers, throw a grenade on them. These soldiers make up nearly 10% on the Vietnam memorial wall. This is why things like the my lai massacre happened when you had inept soldiers with little reasoning skills fighting it.

The author btw is pro-millitary and defends the US government.

Except that few did anything heroic. Instead, they suffered far higher death rates than average I.Q. soldiers, and got normal soldiers killed around them as well.

"Many military men, including William Westmoreland, the commanding general in Vietnam, viewed McNamara’s program as a disaster. Because many of the substandard men were incompetent in combat, they endangered not only themselves but their comrades as well. Their death toll was appallingly high."
https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Folly-Low-IQ-Troops-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B0108H60MG

"The low IQ soldiers were incompetent in combat, putting themselves and their comrades in danger. Inevitably, their death toll was appallingly high."
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/11/01/mcnamaras-morons-vietnam-was-war-for-profit-american-lives-be-damned/

Here what I've picked up
On War by Clausewitz

MCDP 1 Warfighting

FMFRP 12-18 Mao Tse-tung on Guerrilla Warfare

FMFRP 12-13 Maneuver in War

On Grand Strategy

The Art of War by Baron De Jomini

Just and Unjust Wars (apparently it's on the Commandant's reading list too)

Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle

Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla

Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare

Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat

Deep Maneuver: Historical Case Studies of Maneuver in Large-Scale Combat Operations (Volume 5)

JP-1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States

DoD Law of War Manual

The Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns

The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics and Training after Vietnam

Strategy: A History

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media

The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World

MCTP 3-01C Machine Guns and Machine Gun Gunnery

Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 1: Invasion – Insurgency – Civil War, 2003-2006

The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011

Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq

The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy

Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime

This is all I can name off the top of my head right now

Here is a great book about the Vietnam War. It's full of testimonies - from presidents to young soldiers - everyone giving their unique view on the war. I was doing research for a screenplay and this was really one of the best books I found.

He did a lot of things! I know when he graduated from officer school he was a 2nd Lt in the South Vietnamese Marines where he saw a lot of heavy combat around the coast, especially the Da Nang area. He was part of the "sea wolves" battalion. It was pretty hard to get many combat operation stories from him, because he really hated talking about it (understandably) so I'm not sure of the exact nature of what he did when he took part in front line combat. All he'd tell me is that he'd be in units that went out for up to a month at a time fighting in the jungles. He was wounded 3 times in the field, the 3rd time being from a mortar or a rocket that showered him with a ton of shrapnel, some of which lodged right by his spinal cord and caused him to have to walk with a cane for the rest of his life (you see him with the cane in the 2nd picture). He still managed to get a silver star after this for some actions he took during an engagement with VC forces (I'll have to find the citation somewhere, don't have it on me at the moment).

Eventually he got promoted to Lt. Col and placed in a position as the District Chief of Di An district, which is about 15 km outside of Saigon. In wartime, the district was like a county, and the district chief was the administrative and the military head of the district. This part of his life was easier for me to find out about because there were some books written about it, one of which featured him pretty prominently as a character. There's a picture of him with Haponski (the author of the first book) I'll have to find. He took part in the Phoenix Program, which was a controversial counter-insurgency program. From what I've read, results were overall mixed but my grandfather's district was the absolute most successful by the end of the program (Per John Cook's book). Interestingly, the program's success in his district became pretty apparent when he was targeted for assassination at one point since he was deemed a pretty big enemy of the Viet Cong (the Northern-sympathizing insurgency). Col Haponski gave a small summary of his time knowing my grandfather at this random site I found via google.

One of the most incredible stories I got from him and my grandmother was about their experience in the last days before the collapse of the Southern government. They decided to hold their post and dig in throughout Di An instead of retreating. He told me that they all thought they were probably going to die that night, but the NVA armored divisions went around Di An instead of getting into another bloody battle when the end was so near. The day of the surrender was a pretty significant trauma in his life...in fact I'm pretty sure that was the saddest day of his 82 years of life. This documentary did a pretty good job of summing up the events surrounding that day, but there aren't too many well known books or documentaries I know of that do justice to the immense suffering he and his fellow soldiers experienced after the war.

Honestly, after writing all this, I'm curious and I wonder where I would find official US military documents that might help me figure out more of his story..

Given the ever-escalating use of technology and the limited effectiveness of 'blow everything up', the cost has probably gone up considerably. Fortunately, stuff like drones and withdrawing partially from Afghanistan/Iraq has eased the pressure dramatically on military recruiting so I think things have gotten a lot better re 'moral waivers' and scores.

See also McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, Gregory 2015.

You do realize that the phrase "one shot, one kill" has been around for at least 25 years now, right? Not a single video game can claim to have come up with it first.

As for blue/green skin, there's plenty of that in other Blizzard titles: night elves and draenei from Warcraft, protoss from Starcraft, and I'm sure there's at least something in Diablo as well.

The 135th Assault Helicopter Company was unique in that it was comprised of Royal Australian Navy sailors and US Army soldiers in a joint unit.

The unit operated mainly in the southern part of South Vietnam, in the III/IV Corps Tactical Zones, and often within the Mekong Delta.

The unit enjoyed a great deal of success, with the combination of RAN sailors and US Army soldiers working together solidly as an effective team.

As well as the 135th AHC Association link posted above, here is the story as told by the RAN.

There is also an excellent book about this unit: Get the Bloody Job Done by Steve Eather.

A good book to read is [McNamara's Folly] (https://www.amazon.com/McNamaras-Folly-Low-IQ-Troops-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B0108H60MG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551118791&sr=8-1&keywords=mcnamara%27s+folly+the+use+of+low-iq+troops+in+the+vietnam+war). If you've never really dealt with the mentally disabled it's helpful to think of them in terms of physical capabilities. Asking a mentally disabled person to live independently in a house and take care of it is about like giving a 5'0", 100 pound college girl a job with a jackhammer on a demo crew. If you can't do the job no amount of motivation or punishment will make you able to do the job.

Another analogy is like ordering your dog to do your taxes. Whose fault is it when your taxes don't get done right and on time?

The republican party likes to hold up the image of the welfare queen who could work but she's milking the system out of laziness. Hope that you get someone like this. Most of them aren't. Most of them can't work because there is literally nothing they are capable of doing that holds any value to an employer.

A true story of a mutiny during the Vietnam War:

Resisting Insanity

He talks about remorse and duty; members of his branch openly showing disdain, training, well as, training.

Edit- linked the wrong book.

Edit2- not sure why the downvotes. Oh well.

this book

The Phoenix Program,

Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War,

But my favorite would have to be Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution By Terence McKenna

If you want some great war non-fiction, I am a HUGE fan of a guy Bing West.

West was a former Marine general who served as a Lt in Vietnam, and later worked as a researcher for the Rand Corporation.

A few of his non-fiction books I really liked:

"The March Up". He and another Marine vet, Ray Smith grab themselves an SUV and ride along with 1st Marines on the initial OIF invasion of Iraq. The cool part is, since West has been an infantry Lt, a Vietnam vet, a General, and a former senior staff member under Reagan, West has access to everybody. He has high level connections to get one on one interviews with politicians and Generals and enough combat street cred to pull up a chair with Enlisted Pvts and company grade officers.

 
"The Strongest Tribe" All about the reconstruction effort in Iraq, post invasion, during the occupation/stability ops phase. He pulls no punches. Speaks quite plainly about the mistakes that were made. (Bremmer, Rumsfeld, etc)

 
"The Village" The story of a CAP (Combined Action Platoon) in Vietnam. West's experience with CAP operations is actually the foundation of his understanding of how modern counterinsurgency ops (OIF) should be run. You see the influence in his later works. The idea of a CAP was, patrol through, seek and destroy op with enemy, roll out was NOT effective Counterinsurgency policy. The CAP idea was to take a unit and make them part of the local community. They would live with and among the locals for an extended period of time to secure the area. The village is the tale of a Marine unit living for a year and a half in a Vietnamese village as the local neighbor/police presence, at a cost of half of their member's lives.

Interestingly enough, "pick a neighborhood to secure, find the most tactically defensible building in it, move in for the year" pretty much describes my first OIF deployment.

Yes. The part about setting up a tent and cleaning a weapon was something specifically mentioned in a study conducted by the RAND corporation, they're a think tank that serves the Pentagon.

The part about comprehension and communication probably relates to the high casualty rate suffered by MacNamarra's Morons in Vietnam. They lowered the IQ standard, and the low IQ soldiers had 3x the likelihood of getting killed. I'm not sure how that is corrected for MOS, the low IQ troops would be unlikely to be chosen for relatively safe duties on base, but the stats are pretty striking. Naturally, these poorly qualified soldiers were mixed with regular soldiers, and they endangered those guys. Additionally, they would have contributed to the utter breakdown of discipline at the end of the war.

Wow that explanation sounded extremely similar to the one in Douglas Valentine's The Phooenix Program. Has he ever read this book? If so what did he think?

I've read ALOT of Vietnam novels, most of them having to do with personal accounts rather than a historical overview. 100 Miles of Bad Road, is a very detailed and honest approach to life in Vietnam from the perspective of a soldier in the Armored Cav. The Tet offensive is a massive part of that book, and is IMHO one of the best personal descriptions of Tet from the American perspective.

If you want to learn about the logistics & politics of the Tet offensive, look to the man who planned it in Vo Nguyen Giap. Battle field Vietnam, is amazing for that as well.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Battlefield+Vietnam%3A+Ep+5&oq=Battle&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g9&aql=&gs_nf=1&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.0.35i39j0l9.2819.3693.0.11900.6.6.0.0.0.0.110.359.5j1.6.0.

The only book I've read on Tet is balanced and gives both sides but doesn't really have every piece of information. There are many ways in which Tet was a failure for the NVA and NLF but also many ways it was a victory, so I don't always share the same view as the author in that regard.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tet-Offensive-Concise-History/dp/023112841X/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334852129&sr=8-2-spell\

Edit: Sorry, Here is the Grand Daddy of all Vietnam books. It's literally a hard cover text book and will provide you with all the information you need for an essay; it also has many Diagrams, photos, and art for any visual presentation. I've owned it for a long time and as far as my collection is concerned is the most comprehensive "all encompassing" text on the logistics & politics. If you don't want to pay all that money there is a wonderful thing called a library.
http://www.amazon.com/NAM-The-Vietnam-Experience-1965-75/dp/1566199492/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334852930&sr=1-6

Good Luck!!

I have strong doubt about military action in Syria but Putin's reasoning is fallacious. The argument is: it would be "utter nonsense" for the Syrian Government to use chemical weapons when it was winning its war with rebels...

One empirical example would be the account of the end of WWII in the Pacific given in the documentary - The Fog of War: The Life of Robert McNamara: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fog_of_war/

The US had gained the upper hand on Japan through firebombing of their wooden cities. However Japan wasn't surrendering.

[Digressing - In the book War Crimes in Vietnam there is evidence that Japan sued for peace through back channels months before the US dropped the A bomb] http://www.amazon.com/War-Crimes-Vietnam-Bertrand-Russell/dp/0853450587

The dropping of two atomic bombs facilitated an unconditional surrender without having to invade the island like we have been doing throughout the Pacific Campaign

In other words, we were winning but we used the Atomic Bomb, this is an real example of Putin's reasoning being false. One side of a conflict may escalate even if they are winning because they believe there is some advantage in doing so.

So suck this Putin 8--> o:

Remember American bombs kill children too and there are consequences for that. This is a rock and a hard place decision about military intervention in Syria and I think Obama may be very wrong.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

They Marched Into Sunlight

and

Patriots

Some fled to Canada, some were drafted into non-com positions, and others went into the infantry. Here is the classic book about the hippie experience in Vietnam.

OK- Here is the crash course for learning what SOG was, what they did, and how they did it, written by the few men who actually survived!

There is a FANTASTIC new book called wE few just came out and is fantastic. Manages to intertwine constant humor with suicidal missions. author is legit hilarious at the right times, and somber when things went wrong, 100% top recommend.

And you can never go wrong with Secret Commandos, and

Across the Fence

on the ground

SOG

The Dying Place

By Honor Bound: Two Navy SEALs, the Medal of Honor, and a Story of Extraordinary Courage The SEAL Tom Norris was a part of MacvSOG, and his feats are the most amazing from the entire war

whiskey tango foxtrot) RT Alabama had 12 men facing off against over 3000 NVA for an entire day

SOG Chronicles: Volume One

Stryker, Black, Plaster, and Norris have been active in telling the story of SOG for a few decades after it was all declassified in the 90's.

I also bought this book about 30 years ago - bit of a Vietnam War fanboi.

Michael Walzer: Just and Unjust Wars. It's about more than Just War Theory but there is significant attention paid to it as well as the merits of pacifism.

Implementation of the Marine Combined Action Concept in Future Contingencies

Involved evaluation and future implementation proposals of the Marine Combined Action Program, which had squads of Marines live in South Vietnamese hamlets and partner with their Popular Forces to facilitate military training and relationships with locals. There's a great book called The Village that tells the story of one of the squads and gives a good picture of the intent behind the program.

From what I've read this past year I'd choose the following:


Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War - Karl Marlantes-Author

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time - Greg Mortenson-Author, David Oliver Relin-Author

*Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed: A Judicial Indictment Of War On Drugs - James Gray-Author

Although not a documentary, I can't recommend Nam:in the Words of The Men and Women Who Fought There enough. It's a collection of short anecdotes of the time spent in Vietnam - from nurses to Sargents and pilots discussing everything from fond memories to the gangraping of farmers daughters.

I know I am late to the party, but I own and have read all of the books I am about to list. I will be avoiding the books already mentioned, no sense in being redundant! Some are fiction, others non-fiction. Some will come across as quite dated, but that really doesn't take away from the story. I will try to put at least a little blurb down for a description, but the Amazon link will probably tell you way more. Also, I am hoping that I don't screw the links and formatting up! Regardless, here is my list:

Praying For Slack Amazon A Marine Corps tank commander in Vietnam.

Tank Sergeant Amazon Army tank commander in Vietnam.

Kriegspiel Amazon An interesting "what if" that takes place in Germany, politically it is dated but that doesn't take away from the story.

Tin Soldiers Amazon Written by an Army armor officer for what its worth, Saddam is gone and his replacement decides to take on Kuwait. Only an Army Brigade is available to square off with the Iraqi assault.

Iron Tigers Amazon Same author as Tin Soldiers, this time the story has the Americans teaming up with the Iraqis to take on the Saudi military.

Team Yankee Amazon Taking place in the late 80's the Soviets go on the warpath, leaving NATO forces trying to stop their advance before it reaches the Rhine.

Heavy Metal Amazon An Army tank company's battle to Baghdad. I personally did not enjoy this book very much, but it is well written and informative regardless of my own opinion.

Storm on the Horizon Amazon An incredible true tale about the little known battle for Khafji during the first Gulf War. Marine Corps light armor and some Special Forces take on three Iraqi divisions which leads to them being cut off within the city itself.

whch one

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Unjust-Wars-Historical-Illustrations/dp/0465052711

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Unjust-Wars-Michael-Walzer/dp/0465037046

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_and_Unjust_Wars

Where I first read this story:

One Shot - One Kill

When I was in church, my pastor once used his story in a sermon because of how Hathcock had to keep reminding himself that when he was in his right mind, the plan was perfect. That's how he kept from deviating from it. I'm an atheist now, but that's still a damned good life lesson.

Doing is not the only thing that happens. Sometimes intelligence just is the limiting factor. This was established in the Vietnam War.

My preference has always been for Christian Appy's "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides". There's a lot of good material in there-- oral histories from soldiers, civilians, and others involved in the conflict.

They didn't spit on soldiers. That was an urban legend that war-hawks started repeating in the late 70's to push back against a public narrative which had developed as a result of widespread media coverage that the war was a morally bankrupt quagmire. Since then their entire generation has been reliving that movie in the first person. Zero printed reports of spitting occurring at the time exist, and very few printed reports claiming that it occurred exist after the war but before the premiere of that movie. You will surprisingly often hear quotes from the movie repeated verbatim, even by people who were actually deployed.

It was drummed up in the 2004 Presidential campaign to smear John Kerry, a war hero with regrets about our actions in Vietnam, by the campaign of George W Bush.