The story is critical to the understanding of grass-roots means of defense. It is extremely helpful in understanding the context of modern warring villages in Asia.

Little has been written about the CAP units in Vietnam. This is an overview of the program and an analysis of civic action/community development projects there.

A collection of oral histories that reveals an aspect of the Vietnam War rarely written about: the select US Marine forces that lived and fought beside their Vietnamese counterparts in an effort to sabotage the Viet Cong infrastructure. Includes b&w photographs.

I was the "Hospital Corspman aka "Doc" in Tom Flynn's Vietnam story. He did complete justice to the soldiers actual experience! The names were changed, but I can testify to the incidents that he wrote about. Once I started reading the book, I couldn't put it down until I finished. Get the book... You won't be disappointed.

John Whitten aka "Doc"

Pacification provides the first comprehensive history of America's "battle for hearts and minds" in Vietnam. More than simply an ideological campaign, pacification, which included the controversial "Phoenix Program," blended military and political approaches for developing a popular base for the Saigon government. It was in many ways the essence of the struggle between North and South Vietnam. The author details the difficulties of planning and implementing pacification efforts and offers a provocative assessment of the program's successes and failures.

"Colonel Metzner's account of the workings of the pacification program at the local level in the provinces, districts and villages of Vietnam fills an important gap in the history of the war there, which is otherwise too dominated by the `soldier's war' which most Americans experienced. He is honest in his frustrations, but also in his recognition that the program did have a major impact in bringing peace and progress to the countryside where most Vietnamese lived. It won the `people's war' against the communists, only to see that the `soldier's war' to which they later turned overwhelmed a Vietnam abandoned by its American protector."--William E. Colby

Depending upon where and when they served, Americans had vastly different experiences in the Vietnam War. Among the more unique experiences were those of the advisors who worked closely with their Vietnamese counterparts, sharing the dangers, privations, local politics, tactical victories, and ultimate defeat as part of the long saga of the Vietnam War. U.S. Marines worked more closely than other advisors with the Vietnamese and were often on their own to deal with the vastly different culture and difficult cause. Despite these obstacles and arduous circumstances, the advisors, called co-vans in Vietnamese, did a credible job amidst a war far from home, upholding the honor of the Corps and infusing their allies with an esprit de corps that made the Vietnamese Marines a potent fighting force.

Other USMC Units In Vietnam

This is one of the few books for which I can vouch personally. I was with "India, 3/3" from September, 1966, to February, 1967. Mike Baronowski, the Marine to whom this Web Site is dedicated, was with this unit when he was KIA in November, 1966. (Tim "CAPVet" Duffie)

Alex Lee commanded the Third Force Reconnaissance Company in Vietnam from 1969 to 19670. Made up of small units of specially trained U. S. Marines, that company conducted long-range patrols deep in Northern I Corps (including the infamous Ashau Valley) to gather intelligence about the North Vietnamese Army. An intelligent effective operator who led by example, Lee was also brash and excruciatingly honest, and in this controversial, no-hold-barred account, he takes the wraps off this select group of courageous and intrepid Marines.

Operating in four-to-eight-man teams, the heroic patrols of Force Recon ventured far into the very backyard of the enemy, using tactics associated more with their adversaries than with the U.S. military.

An elisted man in Vietnam, the author offers a graphic account of his company's battle against the Viet Cong in enemy territory, where a sandbar island in a river became an island of death for the Marines. Original."

"Morning was always a welcome sight to us. It meant two things. The first was that we were still alive. . . ."

In 1967, death was the constant companion of the Marines of Hotel Company, 2/5, as they patrolled the paddy dikes, mud, and mountains of the Arizona Territory southwest of Da Nang. But John Culbertson, and most of the rest of Hotel Company, were the same lean, fighting Marines who had survived the carnage of Operation Tuscaloosa.

Hotel's grunts walked over the enemy, not around him.

In May 1965, the entire 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment--lock, stock, and barrel--embarked for Vietnam.

Captain Alex Lee was there. . . .

Now combat-veteran Marine captain Alex Lee brings to gritty life the full tour of 2/7. From the search-and-destroy missions to the sudden violent ambushes in the hills and valleys west of Qui Nhon, Lee describes how Marines battled monsoons, malaria, and the enemy as they crept through terrain infested with Viet Cong caves and hideouts.

This book is very well written and very factual. It tells the story of those few days in the life of 3rd BN / 26th Marines just as it happened. For most people that have never experienced combat this will open their eyes.

If you hadn't heard anything about the United States Marine Corps, (hard to imagine anyone that hasn't), but only had time to read one book . . . this is the one. The overview and inside scoop on the World's finest.

Marines have fought and died for the United States since the Revolutionary War. "There is a fellowship of valor that links all U.S. Marines, past, present, and future," observes Joseph Alexander, through more than two centuries of battles in the air, on land, and at sea, from their inauspicious genesis as an unimpressive gang of seagoing musketeers to their present standing as the deadliest amphibious force in the world. This common virtue of uncommon valor links proud generations of warriors who have earned the right to wear the eagle, globe, and anchor on their collars and over their hearts...

...and he believes the U.S. set itself up for failure largely by overestimating the military's ability to break the Viet Cong and underestimating the Vietnamese will to fight; lessons that should have been learned by watching the French limp out of Indochina several years before. The Americans, he stresses, were on a blinding anti-Communism crusade, while there was much more at stake for the Vietnamese than political ideology, particularly nationalistic fervor and an insatiable desire to rid themselves of colonialism. Though his book is a fiercely critical analysis, Record attempts to draw important lessons from what he calls the "most strategically reckless American enterprise of the 20th century."

20/20 featured B.G. Burkett and Stolen Valor on Aug. 28, discussing the case of Joe Yandle. The publication of Stolen Valor revealed how Yandle, a convicted murderer who pretended to be a Vietnam vet war hero, fooled "60 Minutes", the Boston Globe, and Gov. William Weld, wangling early release from prison. The episode of Yandle in Stolen Valor is just one of many stories about phony vets fooling major media.