Patriots : the Vietnam War remembered from all sides / Christian G. Appy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Appy, Christian G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Genre:

Personal narratives.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 574 pages : maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Viking, 2003.

Summary:

In this monumental oral history, Appy has created the first work to probe the war's path through both the United States and Vietnam. Intellectually illuminating and emotionally overwhelming, "Patriots" allows readers to see and feel what this war really meant to people on all sides.

Contents:

Commanders 3

"It turned out the mayor of Danang was a double agent" / Bernard Trainor 3

"With all those choppers they seemed terribly strong" / Dang Vu Hiep 9

War Heroes 12

"We were babes in arms in every way" / Roger Donlon 12

"I was stuck in a tunnel for seven day" / Tran Thi Gung 15

Paying the Price 20

"They carried me the whole way back to the North" / Ta Quang Thinh 20

"That sand was probably the only thing that saved me" / George Watkins 21

"All my ancestors are buried here" / Phan Xuan Sinh 25

Where Is Vietnam? 28

"I just thought I was going to Europe" / Jo Collins 28

"How can my country be at war and I don't know about it?" / Deirdre English 30

Part 2 Beginnings (1945-64)

"History Is Not Made with Ifs" 35

"These were not ragtag farmers" / Henry Prunier 38

"The most atrocious conflict in human history" / Vo Nguyen Giap 41

"Deliver Us from Evil" 44

"The doctor who won the war in Indochina" / Daniel Redmond 47

"Tell 'em I'm not French before they lynch me" / Rufus Phillips 50

"If they're making maps, they're preparing for war" / Ngo Vinh Long 54

"Kick the Tires and Light the Fires" 60

"It was like 'Terry and the Pirates.'" / Richard Olsen 62

"You could smell the burning flesh" / Malcolm Browne 64

"There was one coup after another" / Le Lieu Browne 72

"My cock lost the fight" / Paul Hare 76

"The Emperor Has No Clothes" 79

"What's good for Peru is good for Vietnam" / Paul Kattenburg 81

"Dissent which contradicted the public optimism was ignored" / Evelyn Colbert 83

"Boy, you speak just like an American" / Chester Cooper 84

"The Vietnamese had their own ideas" / Sergel Khrushchev 87

"Paradise Island" 90

"We sent them all back with a generous gift package" / John Singlaub 90

"She divorced her second husband and waited for me" / Luyen Nguyen 94

Part 3 Escalations (1964-67)

Trails To War 101

"The Truong Son jungle gave us life" / Vu Thi Vinh 103

"We came home hairless with ghostly white eyes" / Nguyen Thi Kim Chuy, Helen Tennant 105

"I was their wife, their sister, their girlfriend" / Hegelheimer 106

"You Want Me To Start World War III?" 112

"This was crazy and deceitful policy making" / James Thomson 115

"We could stop this war tomorrow" / Seth Tillman 118

"He used the f-word more freely than a marine in boot camp" / Charles Cooper (I) 121

"Take the North Vietnamese city of Vinh hostage" / Walt Whitman Rostow 124

Central Highlands 128

"Man, if we're up against this, it's gonna be a long-ass year" / Dennis Deal 130

"It approached the vicinity of the spiritual" / Ward Just 135

"Sometimes I operated all night while the staff took turns pedaling the bicycle" / Le Cao Dai 138

From Civil Rights To Antiwar 142

"They said I was guilty of treason and sedition" / Julian Bond 143

"When the call is made to free the Mississippi Delta ... I'll be the first one in line" / General Baker Jr. 146

"The Ultimate Protest" 150

"It was like an arrow was shot from Norman's heart" / Anne Morrison Welsh 150

Free-Fire Zone 156

"A goddamn chopper was worth three times more than David" / Jim Soular 139

Triage 162

"No draft board ever failed to meet its quotas" / James Lafferty 164

"The knife man" / David M. Smith 167

"We saved their lives, but what life?" / Sylvia Lutz Holland 170

"Being wounded was not considered the worst thing that could happen" / Chi Nguyen 175

Morale Boosters 177

"I got a butterfly right on the butt. So that's my war story" / Bobbie Keith 179

"After they got the funk they went back and reloaded" / James Brown 184

"An artist can be as important in war as a soldier" / Quach Van Phong 186

"I can't believe the Donut Dollies got us to do that" / Nancy Smoyer 188

"Nothing was more essential than our sandals" / Vu Hy Thieu 190

"I was president of my high school marching band" / Joe Mcdonald 195

Air War 200

"I had my notebook right there in the plane" / Jonathan Schell, Harlan S. 202

"Good luck and good hunting" / Pinkerton Jr. 209

"Before I trained as a pilot I had never been in an airplane" / Luu Huy Chao 212

"That was the first time I ever saw an American" / Nguyen Quang Sang 215

"What would it be like to hide in a cave day after day for five years?" / Fred Branfman 217

Prisoners of War (I) 221

"I don't see how you've got a worse place than this" / Porter Halyburton 222

"They tried to make us say, 'Down with President Ho!'" / Truong My Hoa 228

"Friction against the wheel" / Randy Kehler 231

Cameras, Books, and Guns 238

"Go see what they did to those people with your money" / Philip Jones Griffiths (I) 240

"We had this idea that we were king of the fucking hill" / Larry Heinemann 243

"We didn't need a darkroom" / Duong Thanh Phong 247

"The counterculture was visible everywhere" / Joan Holden 250

"He lived to kill. He was like a real Ahab" / Oliver Stone 253

"Whoever won, the people always lost" / Nguyen Duy 256

"Soul Brothers, what you dying for?" / Yusef Komunyakaa 257

"We would write something and the magazine would ignore it if it wasn't upbeat" / H. D. S. Greenway 259

Antiwar Escalations 262

"A rather grandiose sense that we were the stars and spear-carriers of history" / Todd Gitlin 265

"It was like Vietnam had somehow come all the way into our living rooms" / Tom Engelhardt 268

"What? Meet separately with women?" / Vivian Rothstein 274

"They Slept at Our House" 279

"We fought for a separate South Vietnam, but there wasn't any South" / Paul Warnke 279

Part 4 The Turning Point (1968-70)

Tet 285

"He asked me for directions to the police station" / Tran Van Tan 288

"Then

boom!

Tet comes along" / Barry Zorthian 290

"You're not safe in those cities" / Philip Jones Griffiths (II) 294

"I was living a double life" / Nguyen Qui Duc 295

"We buried our own men right there" / Bob Gabriel 298

"Attack! Attack! Attack!" / Tuan Van Ban 302

Memorial Day 1968 304

"He Was Only 19

Did You Know Him?" / Clark Dougan 304

From Johnson to Nixon 307

"Our only shot was to help Humphrey break away from Johnson" / John Gilligan 309

"Political conversion was the greatest aphrodisiac" / Peter Kuznick 313

"The palace guard" / J. Shaeffer 316

"You had to be pretty stupid to stay out in the countryside" / Samuel Huntington 319

"While we had the power, it turned out they had the will" / Douglas Kinnard 321

"A Three-Square-Mile Piece of the United States" 325

"It was like being in a minimum-security prison" / Tom O'Hara 325

Families at War 328

"You will not be welcome here again" / John Douglas Marshall 328

"Receiving a letter was a mixed blessing" / Huynh Phuong Dong 330

"They told me I needed to choose between my country and my brother" / Richard Houser 332

"A sign this country has grown up will be when there is a memorial erected to the war resisters" / Nathan Houser 334

"This nice young man from the FBI was here" / Suzie Scott 340

"I was away from home for twenty-nine years" / Lam Van Lich 341

My Lai 343

"They were butchering people" / Larry Colburn 346

"The protable free-fire zone" / Michael Bernhardt 349

"You Look Like a Gook" 354

"Damn, I'm a gook" / Vincent Okamoto 357

"I was thanking God they didn't have air support" / Wayne Smith 362

"It sure as hell wasn't 'English Only' in Vietnam" / Charley Trujillo 366

"An Acute Lack of Forgetfulness" 371

"Before the war, I was Miss Mary Poppins" / Gloria Emerson 371

"To get their ID cards, the girls had to go to bed with the police" / Nguyen Ngoc Luong 374

From Cambodia to Kent State 377

"Quitting wasn't heroic" / Anthony Lake 380

"I think they pictured it as a kind of huge bamboo Pentagon" / A. J. Langguth 382

"As much as we hated the war on April 29, we hated it more on April 30" / Tom Grace 384

Part 5 Endings (1970-75)

The End of the Tunnel 393

"Even the tough guys ...

caved in" / Alexander M. Haig Jr. 397

"Kissinger did not trust anybody fully" / Morton Halperin 402

"Vietnamization wasn't working any better than Americanization" / Judith Coburn 407

"We Really Believed..." 413

"God forbid my boss finds out I'm here" / Beverly Gologorsky 413

"Why should my son die for you country?" / Nguyen Ngoc Bich 417

"The campus was turning into a celebration of Maoism" / Chalmers Johnson 422

"Steve Sherlock, bronze star with a V" / Steve Sherlock 425

Watergate 430

"We're eating our young" / Daniel Ellsberg 432

"Let's circle the wagons" / Egil "Bud" Krogh 436

"The World was Coming to an End" 441

"The whole attitude was, stand back little brother, I'll take care of it" / Frank Maguire 441

"All this area was Indian country" / Charles Cooper (II) 445

"I didn't know there was a bad war" / George Evans 449

"Everybody Thought We'd Won the War" 456

"Reporters just kept writing as if it were Tet '68" / Charles Hill 456

Paris 461

"I wouldn't buy a used car from that man" / Daniel Davidson 463

"The longest peace talks in history" / Nguyen Thi Binh 465

"It wasn't a mistake, it was an inexplicable crime" / Nguyen Khac Huynh 468

Prisoners of War (II) 470

"I read Anthony Adverse about four times" / Jay Scarborough 471

"The curriculum was designed to 'detoxicate' us" / Tran Ngoc Chau 475

"Americans like conspiracies" / John Mccain 480

"What mushroom do they think we were hatched under last week?" / Patty Hopper Sr., Earl Hopper Sr. 483

"The government wanted to control the POW/MIA movement" / Gloria Coppin 489

Collapse 493

"There was classified confetti all over the trees" / Frank Snepp 496

"We could either lose or tie, but not win" / Truong Tran 504

"The Merriment was Short-Lived" 508

"The letters remain, but the senders are gone forever" / Le Minh Khue 508

Part 6 Legacies (1975-)

Missing in Action 515

"We saw so many parents crying for their lost children" / Tran Van Ban 515

"Why do you hate the Vietnamese?" / Tom Corey 517

War-Zone Childhoods 520

"I never got there in time to capture an American pilot" / Tran Luong 520

"It's not worth my energy to lay blame on anybody" / Bong Macdoran 522

"People just disappeared and you didn't say anything" / Loung Ung 526

Silences 529

"I didn't want her to worry, so I lied" / Toshio Whelchel 529

"Your real self was only for you" / R. Huynh 530

"I just want to know what happened" / Jayne Stancavage 532

Souvenirs 534

"They bought Zippos as a kind of birth certificate" / Hoang Van Thiet 534

Taps 536

"Old geezers ... playing taps on a tape recorder" / Leroy V. Quintana 538

"I was leading an unpopular war" / William Westmoreland 539

"The first time I ever encountered the Vietnam War was in Hollywood movies" / Thai Dao 540

"You can't talk with people you demonize" / Tim O'Brien 542

"We no longer hate the Americans" / Huu Ngoc 545

"The roof that hasn't been built" / Wayne Karlin 547

"Because love is stronger than enmity" / Duong Tuong 548.

Notes:

Includes index.

Local Notes:

Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Sheldon Hackney.

ISBN:

067003214X

OCLC:

50606515