Vietnam War Biography

Eighteen-year-old Marine recruit William V. Taylor, Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real but entirely surreal nightmare. Now, after more than 50 years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit—and often horrific—detail.

Amity Whitford dared to stake her own claim on the endless plains of Western Kansas. She built her homestead, Dove's Nest, with her bare hands. But the ravages of the sun and drying winds took their toll.

Patrick J. Buchanan, bestselling author and senior advisor to Richard Nixon, tells the definitive story of Nixon's resurrection from the political graveyard and his rise to the presidency. After suffering stinging defeats in the 1960 presidential election against John F. Kennedy, and in the 1962...

When the US Army went to war in South Vietnam in 1965, the general consensus was that counterinsurgency was an infantryman's war; if there were any role at all for armored forces, it would be strictly to support the infantry. However, from the time the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment arrived in country in September 1966, troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment demonstrated the fallacy of this assumption.

In the late summer of 1942, more than 10,000 members of the First Marine Division held a tenuous toehold on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. As American marines battled Japanese forces for control of the island, they were joined by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis. Only one of two civilian reporters to land and stay with the marines, Tregaskis’ notebook captured the daily and nightly terrors faced by American forces in one of World War II’s most legendary battles - and it served as the premise for his best-selling book Guadalcanal Diary.

During basic training in the army, it was common practice for the recruits to exercise and march to the cadence of popular songs of the time to keep the trainees in sync. It also took the trainees' minds off the exercise—sometimes strenuous—that they were engaged in, and a five-mile forced march before breakfast was tolerated with little grumbling. Although the cadence was always the same, the words were often changed to reflect the reality of military duty. At the time, the words of the Coasters's hit song "Poison Ivy" were adapted to fit the life of a grunt in Vietnam.

More than half a century after the Vietnam War, a riveting, true story emerges. The author embarks on a journey to bridge the silent gap between himself and his estranged father, whose memories of the war are deeply buried. This quest for understanding leads him to a close-knit brotherhood of Marine combat veterans who become the voice for the untold stories, filling the void left by his father's unspoken past.

On November 18, 1967, Private First Class Davis' artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At 21 years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body. Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated.

Almost half a century ago, a young reporter from Germany arrived in still-glamorous Saigon to cover the Vietnam War over a period of five years. In this memoir he now tells the story of how he fell in love with the Vietnamese people. He praises the beauty, elegance and feistiness of their women. He describes blood-curdling Communist atrocities and fierce combat scenes he had witnessed. He introduces a striking array of characters: heroes, villains, statesmen and spooks, hilarious eccentrics, street urchins and orphans herding water buffalos.

An American Combat Bird Dog Pilot is a compelling look at the life and times of a member of the Silent Generation. Mike Leonard’s story chronicles not only his breathtaking combat adventures, but the unforeseen perils that nearly sidetracked him during his time as an international sales executive. This spellbinding narrative paints a vivid portrait of a man, as the Chinese proverb clearly states, "living in interesting times".

This audiobook does not explore the religious aspects of war. Your very belief is tested in combat, you must kill your enemy, or your enemy will kill you - that is the simple, hard cold fact. Because in my humble opinion, War is hell on Earth. Evil roams freely in War, and it will kill you, one way or another, with its evil intent. This audiobook is about war. It tells my experiences of the paths I took as a United States Marine in Vietnam. The mouths of many soldiers will say the same - the same soldiers who had shared my paths with the experiences of my many paths in life.

The rise of Adolf Hitler, America’s Great Depression in the heartland, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American life following World War II, the Korean War, America’s development of atomic weapons in the Cold War age, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Mariel boatlift. Captain Allen Brady not only witnessed all of these events but actually participated in them, in many instances as a US Naval Aviator.

The story of the indomitable American POWs who endured "Alcatraz," the Hanoi prison camp where North Vietnam locked up its most dangerous and subversive prisoners, and the wives who fought to bring them home. As these men suffered in Hanoi, their wives launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the POW/MIA movement. When the survivors finally returned, one would receive the Medal of Honor, another became a U.S. Senator, and a third still serves in Congress.

The experience of the Vietnam War is almost impossible to grasp - the fear, smell, pain, and camaraderie. Boys were turned into men, men were transformed into soldiers, and then from soldiers to warriors. These warriors had wives who shared in their transformations. Some marriages were strengthened, while for others men and their families were left emotionally and spiritually battered. Focusing in on a singular company’s experience of war and its eventual homecoming, Andrew Wiest discusses the shared experience of combat and both the darkness and resiliency of war’s aftermath.

You are with the author when he ejects from his burning Navy jet onto a karst ridge near Hanoi. What follows in this meticulously researched memoir is an account of one of the most implausible and heroic rescues of the air-war - and the aftermath. The events immediately following his rescue carry the author to a secret base in Laos and then to a makeshift hospital in Saigon. The larger story, however, is of the author’s complex relationship with Vietnam. It begins in Saigon, where he completes high school and comes to love the Vietnamese people.

While serving as a crew chief aboard a US Air Force Rescue helicopter, Airman First Class William A. Robinson was shot down and captured in Ha Tinh Province, North Vietnam, on September 20, 1965. After a brief stint at the "Hanoi Hilton", Robinson endured 2,703 days in multiple North Vietnamese prison camps, including the notorious Briarpatch and various compounds at Cu Loc, known by the inmates as the Zoo.

Mike lived by the marine sniper mantra: One shot, one kill. During his time in the jungles of Vietnam, Mike was confronted with having to hunt and kill the enemy and being hunted in return. Now, for the first time, Marine veteran and debut author, Phil Lenser, guides listeners through Mike’s extraordinary final mission.

Magnet Ass and the Stone-Cold Truck Hunters is a Vietnam war memoir about Captain Alan "Magnet Ass" Milacek, the "man who flew his plane on one wing". It is a war story. But it is also not a war story. It has everything to do with a white-hot mission over the Plain of Jars in 1970, for which 10 men earned The Mackay Trophy, one of history's most coveted aviation awards.

Captured by Love shares the real love stories of 20 Vietnam War POWs. Some had wives who started a movement that changed American foreign policy. Others came home and had to start over, while five single men met the loves of their lives. Despite their unique differences, all these couples have been happily married 40 to 65 years. Former POW Lee Ellis and love expert Greg Godek take you on a dramatic journey of faithfulness, passion, excitement, resilience, and practical love lessons from these couples.

The Gunner and the Grunt is written in the voices of two soldiers who fought in the same battles as members of the same recon unit but from different angles. Michael Kelley, the "Gunner," was flying in an armed helicopter above the jungle providing suppressive fire support, while Peter Burbank, the "Grunt," was down in the jungle on foot patrol involved in fire fights with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops. The book follows these two Boston boys from army training through deployment to the war zone and the shock of first combat missions.