Semper Fi Vietnam

From their early days in 1965 when the order of the day was to drive the insurgent Viet Cong from the villages around Da Nang to the final, dramatic evacuation of Saigon ten years later, Semper Fi—Vietnam relates the whole gutsy, glorious saga of the Marines in Vietnam in stark, riveting detail. Acclimating to their strange new surroundings occupied the Marines’ first few weeks in South Vietnam. . . . Throughout the day, peasants dressed in pajama-like clothing and sporting conical hats worked the paddies behind the heaving water buffalo. . . . If daytime scenes appeared bucolic, the arrival of sunset quickly changed that perception. Gunfire and explosions erupted at dusk. Marines nervously watched bright tracers cut colorful swaths across the night sky. From distant bamboo thickets, mortar shells flew skyward to crash in the paddies. The Marines were learning that the war in South Vietnam was unlike anything for which they’d been trained.

SEMPER FI gives a portrait of a young man and his experiences as an enlisted member of the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Orville Clubb begins at the beginning with his earliest memories and tells the story right through to his discharge after serving overseas. Born into a poor family brought together by World War II, the writer grew to maturity as a young Marine. As with many young men of this era of similar socioeconomic status, joining the military as an enlisted man was an attractive option that offered a new start of life. "This is the story of an American who came from a humble background, who had a great love for his country and who put his life on the line for it. The book explains how the Marine Corps transformed his attitude, self confidence, and personality. It gave him the inspiration to become a successful person and PhD, a degree that is attained by fewer than three per cent of the American population. If you have no military background this book will inspire you, if you have a military background it will bring back memories of your own service, if you are a Marine, 'Semper Fi '." -- Alan J. Zygowicz, Major USMC, Special Agent in Charge, Hong Kong Office, U.S. Secret Service 1996-1999.

Follow a group of young men as they go through Marine Corps boot camp in 1962, at Parris Island, and then to their duty stations and Vietnam. If you want to know what the Corps was really like in the 1960's and those that served during this tumultuous time in history this is the book for you!

The twin fires of Vietnam and the late sixties are raging across America, scorching some, changing all. It is the Summer of Love, 1967. Nick Alexander, skinny and afraid to fight, joins the Marine Corps seeking personal validation. But first, Nick and his best friend Rod West need to survive Vietnam. Nick rescues Lien, a beautiful young Vietnamese woman, from a brutal rape and falls for her. There's one problem: Lien's father hates Americans. Love, war and death challenge Nick to learn the true meaning of Semper Fi as America erupts with war protests and savors free love.

"If you want to know what fighting in Vietnam was like up close and personal, Gary Harlan tells it like it really was. His philosophy borne from those experiences is profound and well worth reading and considering." Frederick W. Smith, CEO FedEx Corporation, USMC '66-'70 A U.S. Army general once remarked, "There are two kinds of people that understand Marines: Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a second-hand opinion." The truth of that statement is what inspired this two-tour Marine sergeant to embark on a journey that began with a cross-country road trip in which he visited the homes of Marines and Navy Corpsmen with whom he had served alongside in combat, and ended back in Vietnam meeting Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers they had fought a half-century earlier. Leaving his rural home in the Ozarks, Gary Harlan drove first to Boston where he attended the Semper Fi Society's annual Marine Corps birthday luncheon. He had the honor of meeting the keynote speaker, General Joseph F. Dunford, the 36th Commandant of the Marine Corps who was currently serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The general asked Harlan what outfit he served with in Vietnam. When Harlan informed him that his first tour was with the 3rd Battalion 1st Marines, the General replied, "3/1 was the first unit I served with." Just as Harlan was about to return to his table, General Dunford said, "I'm proud to have followed in your footsteps." It was a remarkable, if not surreal way to commence the two-month road trip. Harlan expected to meet men, including doctors, lawyers, and successful businessmen, who had "moved on," men for whom the war was no longer particularly relevant. He could not have been more mistaken. Everyone-from the retired prison guard in Arizona to the prominent surgeon in California-was quite adamant about one thing: They considered their service in Vietnam as their proudest achievement. Always Faithful: Returning to Vietnam tells their stories of war and its impact in their own words. It also honors the memory of those who did not make it out alive. One of these men, Staff Sergeant Leonard Hultquist, was killed on Hill 50 during Operation Utah, the first operation of the war in which the Marines engaged the NVA in battle. The chapter devoted to Hultquist contains excerpts of letters he wrote to his wife Nancy, beginning in the spring of 1965 when 3/1 was organized at Camp Pendleton, up to the day the battalion made its amphibious landing in the Quang Ngai Province, and the 37 days leading up to Operation Utah. Staff Sergeant Hultquist's last letter was written on March 5, 1966, the day he was killed. Besides the group of 3/1 Marines and Corpsmen reconciling with their former enemy, their Vietnam trip also included working with the East Meets West Foundation to donate a water purification system to the Mac Dinh Chi School located several miles from Hill 50. Always Faithful is also a platform from which to address issues facing America today. First and foremost, the alarming suicide rate among veterans of the War on Terror. Gary Harlan shares his own history of suicidal thoughts, rage, survivor guilt, divorces, substance abuse, and estrangement, and the path he took to overcome the effects of PTSD. The book concludes with a critical examination of America's two-decade history of endless wars.

While the seventy-seven-day siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968 remains one of the most highly publicized clashes of the Vietnam War, scant attention has been paid to the first battle of Khe Sanh, also known as “the Hill Fights.” Although this harrowing combat in the spring of 1967 provided a grisly preview of the carnage to come at Khe Sanh, few are aware of the significance of the battles, or even their existence. For more than thirty years, virtually the only people who knew about the Hill Fights were the Marines who fought them. Now, for the first time, the full story has been pieced together by acclaimed Vietnam War historian Edward F. Murphy, whose definitive analysis admirably fills this significant gap in Vietnam War literature. Based on first-hand interviews and documentary research, Murphy’s deeply informed narrative history is the only complete account of the battles, their origins, and their aftermath. The Marines at the isolated Khe Sanh Combat Base were tasked with monitoring the strategically vital Ho Chi Minh trail as it wound through the jungles in nearby Laos. Dominated by high hills on all sides, the combat base had to be screened on foot by the Marine infantrymen while crack, battle-hardened NVA units roamed at will through the high grass and set up elaborate defenses on steep, sun-baked overlooks. Murphy traces the bitter account of the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh from the outset in 1966, revealing misguided decisions and strategies from above, and capturing the chain of hill battles in stark detail. But the Marines themselves supply the real grist of the story; it is their recollections that vividly re-create the atmosphere of desperation, bravery, and relentless horror that characterized their combat. Often outnumbered and outgunned by a hidden enemy—and with buddies lying dead or wounded beside them—these brave young Americans fought on. The story of the Marines at Khe Sanh in early 1967 is a microcosm of the Corps’s entire Vietnam War and goes a long way toward explaining why their casualties in Vietnam exceeded, on a Marine-in-combat basis, even the tremendous losses the Leathernecks sustained during their ferocious Pacific island battles of World War II. The Hill Fights is a damning indictment of those responsible for the lives of these heroic Marines. Ultimately, the high command failed them, their tactics failed them, and their rifles failed them. Only the Marines themselves did not fail. Under fire, trapped in a hell of sudden death meted out by unseen enemies, they fought impossible odds with awesome courage and uncommon valor.