An autobiographical account by Captain Winifred Quick Collins of her early life, the integration of women into the United States Navy, her Navy career, and her accomplishments in the service. The book focuses on Captain Collins's experience as a woman in a predominantly male division of the US military, as well as the history of women in the Navy. Includes a forward Arleigh Burke

David R. “Buff” Honodel was a cocky young man with an inflated self-image when he arrived in 1969 at his base in Udorn, Thailand. His war was not in Vietnam; it was a secret one in the skies of a neighboring country almost unknown in America, attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail that fed soldiers and supplies from North Vietnam into the South. Stateside he learned the art of flying the F-4, but in combat, the bomb-loaded fighter handled differently, targets shot back, and people suffered. Inert training ordnance was replaced by lethal weapons. In the air, a routine day mission turned into an unexpected duel with a deadly adversary. Complacency during a long night mission escorting a gunship almost led to death. A best friend died just before New Year’s. A RF-4 crashed into the base late in Buff’s tour of duty. The reader will experience Buff’s war from the cockpit of a supersonic F-4D Phantom II, doing 5-G pullouts after dropping six 500-pound bombs on trucks hidden beneath triple jungle canopy. These were well defended by a skillful, elusive, determined enemy firing back with 37mm anti-aircraft fire and tracers in the sky. The man who left the States …

Phantom in the Sky is the story of a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the back seat of the supersonic Phantom jet during the Vietnam War—a unique, tactical perspective of the “guy in back,” or GIB, absent from other published aviation accounts. During the time of Terry L. Thorsen’s service from 1966 to 1970, the RIO played an integral part in enemy aircraft interception and ordnance delivery. In Navy and Marine F-4 Phantom jets, the RIO was a second pair of eyes for the pilot, in charge of communications and navigation, and great to have during emergencies. Thorsen endured the tough Platoon Leaders Course at Quantico and barely earned a commission. He underwent aviation and intercept training while suffering airsickness issues—and still earned his wings. Thorsen joined the oldest and most decorated squadron in the Marine Corps, the VMFA-232 Red Devils in southern California, as it prepared for deployment to Vietnam. In combat, Thorsen felt angst when he saw the sky darken around him from anti-aircraft artillery explosions high above the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On his first close air support mission in support of ground troops (the majority of his Marine aviation missions), he witnessed tracers whiz by his …

Anshel Brusilow was born in 1928 and raised in Philadelphia by musical Russian Jewish parents in a neighborhood where practicing your instrument was as normal as hanging out the laundry. By the time he was sixteen, he was appearing as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also met Pierre Monteux at sixteen, when Monteux accepted him into his summer conducting school. Under George Szell, Brusilow was associate concertmaster at the Cleveland Orchestra until Ormandy snatched him away to make him concertmaster in Philadelphia, where he remained from 1959 to 1966. Ormandy and Brusilow had a father-son relationship, but Brusilow could not resist conducting, to Ormandy's great displeasure. By the time he was forty, Brusilow had sold his violin and formed his own chamber orchestra in Philadelphia with more than a hundred performances per year. For three years he was conductor of the Dallas Symphony, until he went on to shape the orchestral programs at Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas. Brusilow played with or conducted many top-tier classical musicians, and he has opinions about each and every one. He also made many recordings. Co-written with Robin Underdahl, his memoir is a fascinating and unique view of American …

Chaplain James D. Johnson broke all the rules to be with his men. He chose to accompany them, unarmed, on their daily combat operations, a decision made against the recommendations of his superiors. During what would be the final days for some, he offered his ministry not from a pulpit but on the battlefields--in hot landing zones and rice paddies, in hospitals, aboard ship, and knee-deep in mud. He even found time for baptisms in the muddy Mekong River. "You've never really lived until you've almost died," writes Johnson, one of the youngest army chaplains at the time. Through his compelling narration, he takes us into the hearts of frightened young boys and the minds of experienced men. In Combat Chaplain, we live for eight and one-half months with Johnson as he serves in the field with a small unit numbering 350 men. The physical price can be counted with numbers--ninety-six killed and over nine hundred wounded. Only those who paid it can understand the spiritual and psychological price, in a war that raised many difficult moral issues. "It placed my soul in the lost and found department for awhile," Johnson writes. Also provided here is an in-depth look at …

Interview with Larry S. Hilliard, army veteran and nurse from Kerens, Texas. This interview looks into his experiences as a nurse in Vietnam, 1970-71. Topics include: assignment to 18th surgical Hospital, Quang Tri; his typical workday; off-duty recreation; treatment of combat casualties; equipment and blood shortages; drug problems; morale; communications with his family; leave policies; work with Vietnamese civilians; treating enemy POWs; “short-time”; lasting effects of Vietnam experience.

Interview with Richard Craig Warren, a paratrooper/weapons specialist in the US Army during the Vietnam War. He describes his time in the service, some of his most dangerous missions, and adjusting to life coming home as a disabled vet.

Assigned as the senior medical advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in I Corps, an area close to the DMZ, James G. Van Straten traveled extensively and interacted with military officers and non-commissioned officers, peasant-class farmers, Buddhist bonzes, shopkeepers, scribes, physicians, nurses, the mentally ill, and even political operatives. He sent his wife daily letters from July 1966 through June 1967, describing in impressive detail his experiences, and those letters became the primary source for his memoir. The author is grateful that his wife retained all the letters he wrote to her and their children during the year they were apart. The author describes with great clarity and poignancy the anguish among the survivors when an American cargo plane in bad weather lands short of the Da Nang Air Base runway on Christmas Eve and crashes into a Vietnamese coastal village, killing more than 100 people and destroying their village; the heart-wrenching pleadings of a teenage girl that her shrapnel-ravaged leg not be amputated; and the anger of an American helicopter pilot who made repeated trips into a hot landing zone to evacuate the wounded, only to have the Vietnamese insist that the dead be given a …

Interview with Aletha Barsanti regarding her experiences as the wife of U. S. Army General Olinto Barsanti. They married in 1942. She remembers their courtship in San Antonio; their assignments in Europe, Japan, and Washington, D.C.; raising their children; his activities in the Korean War; his promotion to general; military protocol for the wives of general officers; and his one-year tour in the Vietnam War as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died in May 1973.

As an intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, Fred L. Edwards, Jr., was instructed to visit every major ground unit in the country to search for intelligence sources—long range patrols, boats, electronic surveillance, and agent operations. “Edwards found time to keep a journal, an extremely well-written, sharply observed report of his adventures. Along with contemporary postscripts and a helpful historical chronology, that journal is a significant improvement on most Vietnam memoirs. It is the record of a Marine’s on-the-job education.”—Proceedings

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone. When Joann Puffer Kotcher left for Vietnam in 1966, she was fresh out of the University of Michigan with a year of teaching, and a year as an American Red Cross Donut Dolly in Korea. All she wanted was to go someplace exciting. In Vietnam, she visited troops from the Central Highlands to the Mekong Delta, from the South China Sea to the Cambodian border. At four duty stations, she set up recreation centers and made mobile visits wherever commanders requested. That included Special Forces Teams in remote combat zone jungles. She brought reminders of home, thoughts of a sister or the girl next door. Officers asked her to take risks because they believed her visits to the front lines were important to the men. Every Vietnam veteran who meets her thinks of her as a brother-at-arms. Donut Dolly is …

Interview with Sharon "Tommie" Acierno, Vietnam War veteran, as part of the Tarrant County War Veterans Oral History Project. The interview includes Acierno's personal experiences about childhood, dropping out of high school and enlisting in the U.S. Army, basic and clerical training, working as drill sergeant at Ft. McClellan, struggling with alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder, and working with the Vietnam Veterans of America group. Acierno also discusses her coming out experience, volunteering for assignment to Vietnam, her clerical duties with a logistics unit at Long Binh, the camaraderie among gay and straight troops, her experiences with apathetic citizens and antiwar protesters upon return to the U.S., deciding to leave the Army and relocate to Dallas, her experience in the Veterans Administration psychiatric ward, and her opinions regarding the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy and the treatment of women in the military generally. The interview includes an appendix with photographs.

This novel of the Vietnam War examines the effects of prolonged stress on individuals and groups. The narrative, which is told from the points of view of four widely different characters, follows an infantry company through three days and two nights of combat on a small island off the coast of the northern I Corps military region. The story's principal themes are the loss of communication that contributes to and is caused by the background of chaos that arises from combat; the effect of brutal warfare on the individual spirit; and the way groups reorganize themselves to cope with the confusion of the battlefield. The thesis includes an explication of the novel, explaining some of the technical details of its production.

Interview with Dick Hooper, veteran army nurse from Mount Zion, Illinois. The interview recounts his experiences as a nurse and anesthetist in Vietnam, 1969-70. His civilian and military educations are covered, as well as his experiences with the 18th Surgical Hospital at Camp Evans, Quang Tri City, battle casualties, social life, and relations with the Vietnamese. Also included are his personal thoughts about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Interview with Larry Canfield, a veteran army nurse from Pennsylvania. This interview contains his experiences as an army nurse in Vietnam. It includes his assignment to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital, 935th Medical Detachment, Long Binh. Living conditions, morale problems, recreation, medical treatment of enemy POWs, and racial problems are discussed.

Edited transcript of an interview with cousins Sam Adams and Al Bishop who discuss growing up in Center Point, Sam's time serving the marines (including Vietnam), Al's teaching and coaching high school students before working in insurance, and their families. Copies of photos are included at the end of the transcript.

Interview with Richard Craig Warren, a paratrooper/weapons specialist in the US Army during the Vietnam War. He describes his time in the service, some of his most dangerous missions, and adjusting to life coming home as a disabled vet.

Transcript of recorded letters sent by Captain Edward P. Jaeger (Ed) to his wife, Elizabeth Jaeger (Libby) while stationed in South Vietnam as part of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He discusses both personal and military topics including plans for having children; future personal financial planning; racial tensions and Black Power activities; shopping for civilian consumer goods; renovation of the Officer's Club; physicians’ negative attitudes about serving in Vietnam; procurement of medical supplies; holiday celebrations; planning for a post-Vietnam cross- country vacation in the U.S. and Canada; personnel problems; comments about various senior officers; procurement of captured enemy equipment for use as trading items and gifts; comments about the Paris peace negotiations for ending the war; planning for a leave in Hawaii with his wife and parents; personnel morale problems; discipline problems among enlisted personnel; preparation for leaving Vietnam and the Army; comments about student unrest and anti-war demonstrations in the U.S.

This booklet is the sixth chapter of a training course developed for Air Force Reserve personnel about the state of defense in the United States during the Cold War. This chapter discusses how the principles of insurgency and counterinsurgency "have been applied, and are being applied, in actual practice in some specific campaigns since World War Two" (p. 1). It includes background information, analysis, review questions, and a list of suggested readings for further study.

Interview with Robert E. Davis, a radio operator/communications specialist for the United States Air Force in the Vietnam War. He answers questions about and describes life as a soldier in Vietnam.

Interview with Kelly Bramlett, U.S. Army veteran (2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, Texas National Guard) and a member of the "Lost Battalion," concerning his experiences as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II. Bramlett discusses the fall of Java and his capture, Bicycle Camp in Batavia (1942), Changi Prison Camp in Singapore (1942), building the Burma-Thailand Death Railway (1942-1944), Kanchanaburi, Thailand (1944), Saigon, French Indo-China (1944-1945), and his liberation.

Interview with Donald Davis Kaiser, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War, originally from Yoakum, Texas. Kaiser answers many questions regarding his training in the United States, to which he recalls that basic training was very difficult and miserable. The interview goes on to discuss his time while overseas in Vietnam including combat during the Tet Offensive in early 1968.

Interview with Seldon D. Reese, a Navy veteran and survivor of the sinking of the USS Houston, concerning his experiences as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II. Reese talks about the sinking of the USS Houston (1942), capture and imprisonment at Serang, Java, Bicycle Camp, Batavia (1942), Changi Prison Camp, Singapore (1942), building the Burma-Thailand Death Railway (1942-44), Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and American air raids (1944), Saigon and Da Lat, French Indo-China (1944-45), and his liberation.

The materials of war, defined as what soldiers carry into battle and off the battlefield, have much to offer as a means of identifying and analyzing the culture of those combatants. The Vietnam War is extremely rich in culture when considered against the changing political and social climate of the United States during the 1960s and 70s. Determining the meaning of the materials carried by Vietnam War soldiers can help identify why a soldier is fighting, what the soldier’s fears are, explain certain actions or inactions in a given situation, or describe the values and moral beliefs that governed that soldier’s conduct. “Carry,” as a word, often refers to something physical that can be seen, touched, smelled, or heard, but there is also the mental material, which does not exist in the physical space, that soldiers collect in their experiences prior to, during, and after battle. War changes the individual soldier, and by analyzing what he or she took (both physical and mental), attempts at self-preservation or defense mechanisms to harden the body and mind from the harsh realities of war are revealed. In the same respect, what the soldiers brought home is also a means of preservation; preserving those …