Patriots The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides

by Appy, Christian G.

• ISBN13: 9780142004494
• ISBN10: 0142004499
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781440626548
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-28
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• More Book Details

Summary

Christian G. Appy’s monumental oral history of the Vietnam War is the first work to probe the war’s path through both the United States and Vietnam. These vivid testimonies of 135 men and women span the entire history of the Vietnam conflict, from its murky origins in the 1940s to the chaotic fall of Saigon in 1975. Sometimes detached and reflective, often raw and emotional, they allow us to see and feel what this war meant to people literally on all sides—Americans and Vietnamese, generals and grunts, policymakers and protesters, guerrillas and CIA operatives, pilots and doctors, artists and journalists, and a variety of ordinary citizens whose lives were swept up in a cataclysm that killed three million people. By turns harrowing, inspiring, and revelatory, Patriotsis not a chronicle of facts and figures but a vivid human history of the war.

Author Biography

Christian G. Appy has taught at both Harvard and MIT, where he was an associate professor of history.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xv
Introductions
Commanders	p. 3
"It turned out the mayor of Danang was a double agent"	p. 3
"With all those choppers they seemed terribly strong"	p. 9
War Heroes	p. 12
"We were babes in arms in every way"	p. 12
"I was stuck in a tunnel for seven day"	p. 15
Paying the Price	p. 20
"They carried me the whole way back to the North"	p. 20
"That sand was probably the only thing that saved me"	p. 21
"All my ancestors are buried here"	p. 25
Where Is Vietnam?	p. 28
"I just thought I was going to Europe"	p. 28
"How can my country be at war and I don't know about it?"	p. 30
Beginnings (1945-64)
"History Is Not Made with Ifs"	p. 35
"These were not ragtag farmers"	p. 38
"The most atrocious conflict in human history"	p. 41
"Deliver Us from Evil"	p. 44
"The doctor who won the war in Indochina"	p. 47
"Tell 'em I'm not French before they lynch me"	p. 50
"If they're making maps, they're preparing for war"	p. 54
"Kick the Tires and Light the Fires"	p. 60
"It was like 'Terry and the Pirates.'"	p. 62
"You could smell the burning flesh"	p. 64
"There was one coup after another"	p. 72
"My cock lost the fight"	p. 76
"The Emperor Has No Clothes"	p. 79
"What's good for Peru is good for Vietnam"	p. 81
"Dissent which contradicted the public optimism was ignored"	p. 83
"Boy, you speak just like an American"	p. 84
"The Vietnamese had their own ideas"	p. 87
"Paradise Island"	p. 90
"We sent them all back with a generous gift package"	p. 90
"She divorced her second husband and waited for me"	p. 94
Escalations (1964-67)
Trails To War	p. 101
"The Truong Son jungle gave us life"	p. 103
"We came home hairless with ghostly white eyes"	p. 105
"I was their wife, their sister, their girlfriend"	p. 106
"You Want Me To Start World War III?"	p. 112
"This was crazy and deceitful policy making"	p. 115
"We could stop this war tomorrow"	p. 118
"He used the f-word more freely than a marine in boot camp"	p. 121
"Take the North Vietnamese city of Vinh hostage"	p. 124
Central Highlands	p. 128
"Man, if we're up against this, it's gonna be a long-ass year"	p. 130
"It approached the vicinity of the spiritual"	p. 135
"Sometimes I operated all night while the staff took turns pedaling the bicycle"	p. 138
From Civil Rights To Antiwar	p. 142
"They said I was guilty of treason and sedition"	p. 143
"When the call is made to free the Mississippi Delta ... I'll be the first one in line"	p. 146
"The Ultimate Protest"	p. 150
"It was like an arrow was shot from Norman's heart"	p. 150
Free-Fire Zone	p. 156
"A goddamn chopper was worth three times more than David"	p. 139
Triage	p. 162
"No draft board ever failed to meet its quotas"	p. 164
"The knife man"	p. 167
"We saved their lives, but what life?"	p. 170
"Being wounded was not considered the worst thing that could happen"	p. 175
Morale Boosters	p. 177
"I got a butterfly right on the butt. So that's my war story"	p. 179
"After they got the funk they went back and reloaded"	p. 184
"An artist can be as important in war as a soldier"	p. 186
"I can't believe the Donut Dollies got us to do that"	p. 188
"Nothing was more essential than our sandals"	p. 190
"I was president of my high school marching band"	p. 195
Air War	p. 200
"I had my notebook right there in the plane"	p. 202
"Good luck and good hunting"	p. 209
"Before I trained as a pilot I had never been in an airplane"	p. 212
"That was the first time I ever saw an American"	p. 215
"What would it be like to hide in a cave day after day for five years?"	p. 217
Prisoners of War (I)	p. 221
"I don't see how you've got a worse place than this"	p. 222
"They tried to make us say, 'Down with President Ho!'"	p. 228
"Friction against the wheel"	p. 231
Cameras, Books, and Guns	p. 238
"Go see what they did to those people with your money"	p. 240
"We had this idea that we were king of the fucking hill"	p. 243
"We didn't need a darkroom"	p. 247
"The counterculture was visible everywhere"	p. 250
"He lived to kill. He was like a real Ahab"	p. 253
"Whoever won, the people always lost"	p. 256
"Soul Brothers, what you dying for?"	p. 257
"We would write something and the magazine would ignore it if it wasn't upbeat"	p. 259
Antiwar Escalations	p. 262
"A rather grandiose sense that we were the stars and spear-carriers of history"	p. 265
"It was like Vietnam had somehow come all the way into our living rooms"	p. 268
"What? Meet separately with women?"	p. 274
"They Slept at Our House"	p. 279
"We fought for a separate South Vietnam, but there wasn't any South"	p. 279
The Turning Point (1968-70)
Tet	p. 285
"He asked me for directions to the police station"	p. 288
"Then--boom!--Tet comes along"	p. 290
"You're not safe in those cities"	p. 294
"I was living a double life"	p. 295
"We buried our own men right there"	p. 298
"Attack! Attack! Attack!"	p. 302
Memorial Day 1968	p. 304
"He Was Only 19--Did You Know Him?"	p. 304
From Johnson to Nixon	p. 307
"Our only shot was to help Humphrey break away from Johnson"	p. 309
"Political conversion was the greatest aphrodisiac"	p. 313
"The palace guard"	p. 316
"You had to be pretty stupid to stay out in the countryside"	p. 319
"While we had the power, it turned out they had the will"	p. 321
"A Three-Square-Mile Piece of the United States"	p. 325
"It was like being in a minimum-security prison"	p. 325
Families at War	p. 328
"You will not be welcome here again"	p. 328
"Receiving a letter was a mixed blessing"	p. 330
"They told me I needed to choose between my country and my brother"	p. 332
"A sign this country has grown up will be when there is a memorial erected to the war resisters"	p. 334
"This nice young man from the FBI was here"	p. 340
"I was away from home for twenty-nine years"	p. 341
My Lai	p. 343
"They were butchering people"	p. 346
"The protable free-fire zone"	p. 349
"You Look Like a Gook"	p. 354
"Damn, I'm a gook"	p. 357
"I was thanking God they didn't have air support"	p. 362
"It sure as hell wasn't 'English Only' in Vietnam"	p. 366
"An Acute Lack of Forgetfulness"	p. 371
"Before the war, I was Miss Mary Poppins"	p. 371
"To get their ID cards, the girls had to go to bed with the police"	p. 374
From Cambodia to Kent State	p. 377
"Quitting wasn't heroic"	p. 380
"I think they pictured it as a kind of huge bamboo Pentagon"	p. 382
"As much as we hated the war on April 29, we hated it more on April 30"	p. 384
Endings (1970-75)
The End of the Tunnel	p. 393
"Even the tough guys ... caved in"	p. 397
"Kissinger did not trust anybody fully"	p. 402
"Vietnamization wasn't working any better than Americanization"	p. 407
"We Really Believed..."	p. 413
"God forbid my boss finds out I'm here"	p. 413
"Why should my son die for you country?"	p. 417
"The campus was turning into a celebration of Maoism"	p. 422
"Steve Sherlock, bronze star with a V"	p. 425
Watergate	p. 430
"We're eating our young"	p. 432
"Let's circle the wagons"	p. 436
"The World was Coming to an End"	p. 441
"The whole attitude was, stand back little brother, I'll take care of it"	p. 441
"All this area was Indian country"	p. 445
"I didn't know there was a bad war"	p. 449
"Everybody Thought We'd Won the War"	p. 456
"Reporters just kept writing as if it were Tet '68"	p. 456
Paris	p. 461
"I wouldn't buy a used car from that man"	p. 463
"The longest peace talks in history"	p. 465
"It wasn't a mistake, it was an inexplicable crime"	p. 468
Prisoners of War (II)	p. 470
"I read Anthony Adverse about four times"	p. 471
"The curriculum was designed to 'detoxicate' us"	p. 475
"Americans like conspiracies"	p. 480
"What mushroom do they think we were hatched under last week?"	p. 483
"The government wanted to control the POW/MIA movement"	p. 489
Collapse	p. 493
"There was classified confetti all over the trees"	p. 496
"We could either lose or tie, but not win"	p. 504
"The Merriment was Short-Lived"	p. 508
"The letters remain, but the senders are gone forever"	p. 508
Legacies (1975-)
Missing in Action	p. 515
"We saw so many parents crying for their lost children"	p. 515
"Why do you hate the Vietnamese?"	p. 517
War-Zone Childhoods	p. 520
"I never got there in time to capture an American pilot"	p. 520
"It's not worth my energy to lay blame on anybody"	p. 522
"People just disappeared and you didn't say anything"	p. 526
Silences	p. 529
"I didn't want her to worry, so I lied"	p. 529
"Your real self was only for you"	p. 530
"I just want to know what happened"	p. 532
Souvenirs	p. 534
"They bought Zippos as a kind of birth certificate"	p. 534
Taps	p. 536
"Old geezers ... playing taps on a tape recorder"	p. 538
"I was leading an unpopular war"	p. 539
"The first time I ever encountered the Vietnam War was in Hollywood movies"	p. 540
"You can't talk with people you demonize"	p. 542
"We no longer hate the Americans"	p. 545
"The roof that hasn't been built"	p. 547
"Because love is stronger than enmity"	p. 548
Acknowledgments	p. 551
Index	p. 555
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