Interview with Darrell Harrington, an anesthetist and Army veteran of the Vietnam War. In the interview, Harrington describes his experiences while serving as an Army nurse, and includes details on his assignments to Chu Lai, Da Nang, and the 91st Evacuation Hospital in An Khe. Harrington also discusses the treatment of wounded troops and enemy soldiers, relationships between doctors and nurses, general morale problems, and recreational activities. He recalls his return to the States on thirty-day leave as well as post-Vietnam adjustments and his attitudes toward the war.

Interview with Jose Gonzalez, an anesthetist and Army veteran of the Vietnam War. In the interview, Gonzalez describes his experiences while serving as an Army nurse in Vietnam. Gonzalez discusses what life was like during his assignment to the 24th Evacuation Hospital, and includes details concerning relationships between doctors and nurses, morale, American relations with Vietnamese civilians, recreational activities, entertainment, and his Bronze Star award. He also recalls the adjustments that both he and many of his comrades dealt with post-Vietnam, and shares his attitudes toward the war.

Interview with William Dunphy, an anesthetist and Army veteran from the Vietnam War. In the interview, Dunphy describes some of his experiences while serving as an Army nurse during the Vietnam War. Dunphy discusses what it was like working at the Army hospital in Saigon, Vietnam, and includes details that concern general living accommodations, hospital facilities, relationships between doctors and nurses, work schedules, alcohol abuse by military personnel, drug problems, and American relations with Vietnamese civilians. He also recalls post-war adjustments and a rest and recuperation trip to Hawaii.

Interview with Carl Horton, an operating room nurse and Vietnam Army veteran. In the interview, Horton describes his experiences while serving as an Army nurse during the Vietnam War. He goes in depth about his assignments, which include Yokohama, Japan and Dong Tam and Can Tho with the 3rd Surgical Hospital. Horton also discusses living accommodations, hospital facilities, American relations with the South Vietnamese military personnel and civilians, "short time" and out-processing, leisure time, and recreational activities. He also discusses the adjustments that he had to make after the war was over and his continuing work with the Veterans Administration.

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

Book describing military philosophy before and after WWII, with full chapters analyzing how the U.S. Army and Marine Corps engaged in urban warfare during four specific battles: Aachen (October 1944), Manila (February 1945), Seoul (September 1959), and Hue (February 1968). Index starts on page 363.

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 …

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 …

Interview with Howard Charles, a Marine WWII veteran and POW from Partridge, Kansas. Charles discusses growing up in the Great Depression; joining the Marine Corps and training; assignment to the USS Houston (CA-30) at Manila as a heavy machine gunner and events before the war; the Battle of Sunda Strait and sinking of the Houston; capture by the Japanese and being held at Serang, Java; experiences in internment and forced labor at Bicycle Camp in Batavia, Changi Camp in Singapore, various camps along the Burma Railway, and Saigon; liberation; psychological treatment, trauma, and adjusting to civilian life. In appendix is a letter written by Charles to Marcello including additional information for the interview.

Interview with Maj. Gen. Marion E. Carl, a Marine Corps WWII fighter ace and test pilot from Hubbard, Oregon. Carl discusses his education, joining the Marines, flight training, deployment aboard the USS Saratoga at the start of the war, first air-to-air combat, service at Midway and Guadalcanal, return to the States as a squadron commander, flying a promotional circuit and getting married, return to the South Pacific, Rabaul, end of combat flying and work as a test pilot at Patuxent River NAS, jets vs. props, flight injuries, return to fighter units, and service in Taiwan and Vietnam.

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 …

In Beyond the Quagmire, thirteen scholars from across disciplines provide a series of provocative, important, and timely essays on the politics, combatants, and memory of the Vietnam War. The essays pose new questions, offer new answers, and establish important lines of debate regarding social, political, military, and memory studies. Part 1 contains four chapters by scholars who explore the politics of war in the Vietnam era. In Part 2, five contributors offer chapters on Vietnam combatants with analyses of race, gender, environment, and Chinese intervention. Part 3 provides four innovative and timely essays on Vietnam in history and memory.

Much of the history written about the Vietnam War overlooks the U.S. Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons. These CAPs lived in the Vietnamese villages, with the difficult and dangerous mission of defending the villages from both the National Liberation Front guerrillas and the soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. The CAPs also worked to improve living conditions by helping the people with projects, such as building schools, bridges, and irrigation systems for their fields. In War in the Villages, Ted Easterling examines how well the CAPs performed as a counterinsurgency method, how the Marines adjusted to life in the Vietnamese villages, and how they worked to accomplish their mission. The CAPs generally performed their counterinsurgency role well, but they were hampered by factors beyond their control. Most important was the conflict between the Army and the Marine Corps over an appropriate strategy for the Vietnam War, along with weakness of the government of the Republic of South Vietnam and the strategic and the tactical ability of the North Vietnamese Army. War in the Villages helps to explain how and why this potential was realized and squandered. Marines who served in the CAPs served honorably in difficult circumstances. Most of these …

Interview with William "Jake" Wehrell, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran and Air America Pilot conducted for the Air America Oral History Project. He discusses his childhood and education in New Jersey and Central College; decision to enlist in the Marine Corps during the Korean War; experiences while stationed at El Toro, California, Japan, Cherry Point, NC, Parris Island, SC, and Beaufort, SC, and aboard an aircraft carrier; decision to join Air America; experiences while stationed in Taiwan, Bangkok, Saigon, and Phnom Penh; opinions on the Vietnam War and Air America’s role in it.

Interview with David Vo, a resident of Calera, Oklahoma. Vo discusses his upbringing in Vietnam, his father's work as an officer in the South Vietnamese military, the Vietnam War, escaping on a boat and coming to the United States, getting his degree in automotive industrial technology at Cal State University, starting a family, and his perspective regarding his homeland.

Interview with Benjamin Bình-Thiên Phạm Lương, a chef from Dallas, Texas who studied at the Culinary Institute of America. Benjamin discusses the background of his Vietnamese parents, the Vietnam War, politics, his father's education in the United States, and his own personal journey to becoming a chef.

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.

Bound collection of photocopied letters written 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 life in Vietnam as well as topics that his family has written to him about.

Transcript of recorded letters sent by Captain Edward P. Jaeger (Ed) to his parents while stationed in South Vietnam as part of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He discusses both personal and military topics including a chronicle of his departure for Vietnam; description of Vietnamese village life and culture; assignment to the 17th Field Hospital at An Khe; physical description of facilities at 17th Field Hospital; his responsibilities as medical supply officer; descriptions of and comments about unit personnel; problems in procuring medical supplies; problems with drunkenness among personnel; enemy mortar attacks; discipline problems; his institution of reforms in the medical supply operations; effects of constant changeovers in unit command; remodeling of the Officer's Club; leisure time and recreational activities; racial tensions; comments about U S domestic politics; personal financial matters; planning for a leave in Hawaii with his wife, Elizabeth, and parents; drug problems among personnel; comments about the anti-war movement in the States; description of Cam Ranh Bay and the military facilities there; medical supplies and black marketeering; description of the medical depot supply system; future civilian employment plans; transfer to Qui Nhon to the 67th Evacuation Hospital; comments about the Paris peace negotiations for ending the war; …

Interview with Tony Coalson, a Army Vietnam veteran and Air America pilot from Oxford-Anniston, Alabama. Coalson discusses his early interest in aviation, education and ROTC at Auburn University, becoming an Army helicopter pilot, deployment to Vietnam, missions in II Corps, return to the US and becoming an Air America pilot, returning to Vietnam, the nature of Air America and their missions, and flying into Laos and Cambodia. In appendix are several photos of Coalson during his career, mentions of him in related literature, and a letter addressed to him by a fellow chopper pilot.

Transcript of an interview with Charles Leroy "Lee" Smith, U.S. Air Force veteran and private pilot. Smith recounts his experiences at the University of Alabama and in the US Air Force, Flight School at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX, and Basic Training in Mississippi. He speaks of his assignments in Keflavik, Iceland, Red Bluff, CA, and NORAD Sector as Captain in electronics and communications. He was Certified for the F-102 at Perrin Air Force Base, Sherman, TX. He tells of his experiences while assigned to combat squadron in Saigon during Vietnam War, and his life after Vietnam era and his work experiences flying world-wide for businesses and the private sector, particularly as pilot for Frank Sinatra.