This page provides recommendations of various web sites, books, and films that I have found both interesting, useful, educational and even entertaining in my search for information about the Vietnam War. If you would like to recommend other resources, please contact me.
Dr. Claude DeShazo was 3/1's battalion surgeon (and my boss) during my time with 3rd Battalion, and Chuck Latting was Mike Company Commander, the first company to which I was assigned after I completed Field Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton. Claude and Chuck have collaborated to publish a book, Once a Marine, about the wartime and post war experiences of ordinary enlisted Marines (and incidentally about their own experiences). It's a volume that is well worth adding to any 3/1 library.Dr. DeShazo was no "rear area" surgeon, but accompanied 3/1 Marines on several operations, including Operation Texas, in which 99 Marines were killed and 212 wounded. Among the dead was HN Gary "Howdy" Hann of 3/1 Kilo Company, the only corpsman killed during Dr. DeShazo's tour.
Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Oral Histories from Dien Bien Phu to the Fall of Saigon, by Jan K. Herman, is the first book to cover the full range of activity of U.S. Navy hospital corpsmen, nurses, and doctors, from the earliest days of American activity in Vietnam, when the Navy evacuated French soldiers after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, to the withdrawal of the last Americans from Vietnam in 1974.
Jan K. Herman is the official historian of the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Medicine. Previously, he has written books and created films about the experiences of Navy medical personnel in the days before the Second World War, during the Second World War, and in Korea. Navy Medicine in Vietnam was published in November, 2007, and is available through most book sellers.
Douglas Karr, a U.S. Navy Veteran, is Veteran Advocate & Outreach coordinator for the Mesothelioma & Asbestos Awareness Center. In an e-mail, Doug described his organization and its work: "As you may know, mesothelioma cancer is caused by previous exposure to asbestos. Countless veterans were exposed to asbestos while aboard naval ships, while repairing military vehicles and aircraft, and while residing in aging military housing.
"Troops currently serving in Iraq* are also at risk of asbestos exposure, making this a very timely health and safety issue for veterans and all members of the military community. In addition to featuring information about asbestos exposure and the health consequences for veterans, we also provide content on a number of other veteran issues, including PTSD, addiction, and more."
* Afghanistan has no laws concerning the importation and use of asbestos, so it can be assumed that anyone serving in that country is at risk for asbestos-related illness.
Aphrodite Matsakis, PhD, writes clearly about the causes of Post-Traumetic Stress Disorder (PTSD), about the challenges facing any PTSD victim, and most importantly offers practical advice about how to deal with the impact of PTSD. I Can't Get Over It — A Handbook for Trauma Survivors applies to trauma survivors in general, but has an excellent chapter on combat survivors in particular. Vietnam Wives — Facing the Challenges of Life With Veterans Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress requires no further explanation, nor does another of her books, Back from the Front — Combat Trauma, Love, and the Family.
For years after my experiences in the Vietnam War, I spent both waking and sleeping hours trying to figure just what the hell happened there, and why:
How did the United States become so intimately involved in the political intrigues of what had been French Indochina? Why, from my first day in Vietnam, did I feel like my Marine battalion was part of an occupation force rather than a liberating army? Why did the world's greatest military power fail to beat what we thought of as a third-rate military power? Was it necessary for me to almost lose my right leg, joining more than 153,000 other wounded Americans (not to mention the debilitating psychological trauma I suffered, and still suffer)? Why did almost 59,000 Americans die in Vietnam, joining in death a thousand troops of allied nations, more than a million Vietnamese soldiers, and even more Vietnamese civilians from both North and South Vietnam?
Finally, I have some answers, from the following excellent books:
• Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman wrote about Vietnam (and earlier turning points of history) from the perspective of folly in The March of Folly — From Troy to Vietnam. The last half of the book (which can stand on its own) is about the Vietnam War.
The first half shows how willful ignorance, hubris, incompetence, and greed brought about the fall of Troy, the failure of the Papacy to prevent the rise of Protestantism, and the loss by Great Britain of its American colonies. In the second half of the book, Tuchman carefully documents how American presidents from Truman through Nixon led the United States deeper and deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam despite authoritative advice that the war could not be won, and indeed was not even necessary.
The March of Folly is not military history, but social/political history, an important book that illustrates through thorough solid scholarship how the men who have manipulated armies have throughout history been far less competetent, and less humane, than the armies themselves.
• Journalist David Halberstam illustrates in detail how the decisions were made in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led to the war, focusing on a period from 1960 to 1965 but also covering earlier and later years up to the publication year of the book.
The Democratic party was still haunted by claims that it had 'lost China' to Communists, and did not want to be said to have also lost Vietnam.
The McCarthy era had rid the government of experts in Vietnam and surrounding Far-East countries Early studies called for close to a million US troops in order to completely defeat the Viet Cong, but it would be impossible to convince Congress or the US public to deploy that many soldiers.
Declarations of war, and excessive shows of force, including bombing too close to China or too many US troops might have triggered the entry of Chinese ground forces into the war, and greater Soviet involvement (and perhaps repair the growing Sino-Soviet rift).
Some war games showed that a gradual escalation by the United States could be evenly matched by North Vietnam: every year 200,000 North Vietnamese came of drafting age and potentially could be sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to replace any losses against the US: the US would be "fighting the birthrate".
LBJ's belief that too much attention given to the war effort would jeopardize his Great Society domestic programs.
The effects of strategic bombing: most people wrongly believed that North Vietnam prized its industrial base so much it would not risk its destruction by US air power and would negotiate peace after experiencing some limited bombing, but others saw that even in World War II strategic bombing united the victim population against the aggressor and did little to hinder industrial output.
The Domino Theory rationales are mentioned as simplistic.
After placing a few thousand Americans in harm's way, it became politically easier to send hundreds of thousands over with the promise that with enough numbers they could protect themselves, and that to abandon Vietnam now would mean the earlier investment in money and blood would be thrown away.
The book shows that the gradual escalation chosen allowed the LBJ Administration to initially avoid negative publicity and criticism from Congress as well as to avoid a direct war against the Chinese, but simultaneously removed the possibility of either victory or withdrawal.
From the web site of the Virtual Vietnam Archive: "The mission of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University is to support and encourage research and education regarding all aspects of the American Vietnam experience; promoting a greater understanding of this experience and the peoples and cultures of Southeast Asia. Its functions are threefold: collection and preservation of pertinent source material; education through exhibits, classroom instruction, educational programs, and publications; and encouragement of scholarly research through exchanges, publishing of noteworthy research, symposia, and financial support."
The Vietnam War Bibliography is an exhaustive listing of books and other documents related to all aspects of the First and Second Vietnam Wars. It has been developed by Ed Moise, an historian at South Carolina's Clemson University. He himself has written extensively about the history of Vietnam.
Of special interest to Marine veterans of Vietnam is another of Mr. Moise's web pages, Vietnam War Bibliography: U.S. Marine Corps Publications and Documents. This annotated list of official histories and other publications concerns the Marine Corps experience in South Vietnam, and includes many links to on-line documents. One book that is listed (but is not, unfortunately, available on the Internet) is U.S. Marines in Vietnam — 1966 by Jack Shulimson. It is probably the best single official source of detailed information about 3/1's Vietnam period, and is surprisingly honest in its assessments of the Marine Corp's victories and failures in Vietnam.
On 8 March 1966, the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes published an article about Operation Utah. The story includes photographs taken during the operation.