The Vietnam War's influence on politics, foreign policy, and subsequent military campaigns is the center of much debate and analysis. But the impact on veterans across the globe, as well as the war's effects on individual lives and communities, is a largely neglected issue. As a consequence of cultural and legal barriers, the oral histories of the Vietnam War currently available in English are predictably one-sided, providing limited insight into the inner workings of the Communist nations that participated in the war. Furthermore, many of these accounts focus on combat experiences rather than the backgrounds, belief systems, and social experiences of interviewees, resulting in an incomplete historiography of the war. Chinese native Xiaobing Li corrects this oversight in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans. Li spent seven years gathering hundreds of personal accounts from survivors of the war, accounts that span continents, nationalities, and political affiliations. The twenty-two intimate stories in the book feature the experiences of American, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and North and South Vietnamese veterans, representing the views of both anti-Communist and Communist participants, including Chinese officers of the PLA, a Russian missile-training instructor, and a KGB spy. These narratives humanize and contextualize the war's events while shedding light on aspects of the war previously unknown to Western scholars. Providing fresh perspectives on a long-discussed topic, Voices from the Vietnam War offers a thorough and unique understanding of America's longest war.

Arranged chronologically and in counterpoint, this unique book samples all conceivable forms of oral and written documentation to illuminate the United States' involvement in its longest and most divisive war. From foot soldiers to generals, politicians to protesters, hawks and doves, their attitudes and experiences are graphically revealed.

Explains the unique events and practices that shaped the Vietnam War, bringing together the stories of people who experienced it firsthand, as told in their own voices. Reprint.

Unsure whether they would be greeted as traitors or heroes, POWs returning from Vietnam responded by holding tight to their chosen motto, "Return with Honor." "We're giving the American people what they want and badly need--heroes," said a Vietnam jungle POW. "I feel it's our responsibility, our duty to help them where possible shed the idea this war was a waste, useless, as unpopular as it may have been." In the first book to explore the entire range of memoirs, biographies, and group histories published since America's Vietnam POWs returned home, Craig Howes explores the development of a collective history. He describes how these captives drew upon their national heritage to compose a unified, common story while still in prison, and how individual POWs have responded to this Official Story. Examining what racial, cultural, and political assumptions support this shared Official Story, Howes places the POWs' experiences squarely in the center of American history, and within those larger clashes of opinion and belief which characterized the nation's response to the Vietnam War. The result is an engrossing study of what these captivity narratives can tell us about the POWs, their captors, and America's Vietnam legacy.

This volume honors those who experienced the Vietnam War through striking portraits and personal accounts of the conflict and its repercussions. This book offers a uniquely human perspective on the Vietnam War through portraits and stories of American veterans, southern Vietnamese veterans, and civilians. The surreal imagery of Thomas Sanders’ photography encourages the viewer to take a closer look at those who experienced the war. These images are paired with the individuals’ haunting, inspirational, and sometimes comical stories of the war. Set in a surreal jungle environment, the portraits evoke the sense of darkness and uncertainty felt by those who experienced the war. Some portrait subjects hold objects that evoke their time of service: the common cigarette pack smoked by the vets while in the jungle; a homemade grenade made by the northern Vietnamese; and the “order to report” document that changed many a life.

Voices of the Vietnam War is an oral history told by the soldiers who fought, and others who were impacted by the fighting halfway around the world, most especially the wives and siblings who waited at home. This book listens to two people who were against the war and had to take their own philosophical stand, often against their own families and friends. The book features chapters personally written by three military veterans. Two wives tell the story of how they waited at home while their husbands fought in Vietnam, relying on letters and television news for information.Decorated combat officer David Christian is the strongest voice in the book, describing his unit's war experiences and then detailing the loss of his brother Doug to Agent Orange-linked cancer. Christian became a leading advocate for veterans' disability pensions and helped gain government approval for Agent Orange benefits.Vietnam War veteran Terry Nau wrote and edited this book, his fifth on the subject. He interviewed soldiers from his artillery unit, high school friends who went to war, and also convinced acquaintances to tell their own story in their own words.

This book provides an oral history of women who served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War. It follows the trajectory of eight women’s lives from their decision to become nurses, to surgical and evacuation hospitals in Vietnam, and then home to face the consequences of war on their personal and professional lives. It documents their lived experience in Vietnam and explores the memories and personal stories of nurses who treated injured American soldiers, Vietnamese civilians, and the enemy. Their voices reveal the physical and emotional challenges, trauma, contradictions, and lingering effects of war on their lives. Women in the U.S. Army in Vietnam feared the enemy but also sexual violence and harassment: the experiences this book documents also shed light on the extent of historical sexual abuse in the military.