Walking Wounded Vietnam 5

"The best Vietnam War novels yet for this age range." -- Kirkus Reviews Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck were best friends. So when one of them was drafted into the Vietnam War, the others signed up, too. They promised to watch out for one another. They pledged to come home together.Now, that pledge has been broken. One of the four has been killed in action. And the remaining three are the only men alive who know the awful truth about their friend's death.Each is left to deal with their secret in his own way. One of them will accompany his friend's body home to Boston. One of them will defy orders in an act of protest. And one of them will decide it's up to him to single-handedly win the war.In the end, Vietnam may claim more than their lives. As the war grinds on, their very souls are at stake. And their shattered friendship will prove either their salvation... or their ruin.

Four best friends. Four ways to serve their country. Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck are best friends for life. So when one of the teens is drafted into the Vietnam War, the others sign up, too. Although they each serve in a different branch, they are fighting the war together -- and they promise to do all they can to come home together.Rudi is perhaps the most concerned about whether or not he'll be able to keep that promise. After all -- and he'd be the first to admit this -- he's not the most capable guy. He's not smart like Beck, or brave like Ivan. He lacks the strength of Morris's moral convictions.But once Rudi is pulled kicking and screaming into the Marines, he at last finds something he's good at: following orders. Will that be enough to keep him alive? And if he does survive the war, will his best friends even recognize him on the other side?

A gripping account of PTSD, and a stark reminder that, for many, wars go on long after the last shot is fired. In the shadows of army life is a world where friends become monsters, where kindness twists into assault, and where self-loathing and despair become constant companions. Whether you know it by old names like “soldier’s heart,” “shell shock,” or “combat fatigue,” post-traumatic stress disorder has left deep and silent wounds throughout history in the ranks of fighting forces. Among the Walking Wounded tells one veteran’s experience of PTSD through an intimate personal account, as visceral as it is blunt. In a courageous story of descent and triumph, it tackles the stigma of PTSD head-on and brings an enduring message of struggle and hope for wounded Canadian veterans. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about Canadian veterans and the dark war they face long after their combat service is ended.

The wry and heart-wrenching memoir of a young doctor’s year behind the frontlines in Vietnam. Assigned to the marine camp at Phu Bai, Dr. John A. Parrish confronted all manner of medical trauma, quickly shedding the naïveté of a new medical intern. With this memoir, he crafts a haunting, humane portrait of one man’s agonizing confrontation with war. With a wife and two children awaiting his return home, the young physician lives through the most turbulent and formative year of his life—and finds himself molded into a true doctor by the raw tragedy of the battlefield. His endless work is punctuated only by the arrival of the next helicopter bearing more casualties, and the stark announcements: “12 litter-borne wounded, 20 ambulatory wounded, and 5 dead.” 12, 20 & 5 is an intimate and unique look at the effects of war that Library Journal calls “an autobiographical M*A*S*H* . . . phenomenal.”

"The best Vietnam War novels yet for this age range." -- Kirkus Reviews Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck are best friends for life. So when one of the teens is drafted into the Vietnam War, the others sign up, too. Although they each serve in a different branch, they are fighting the war together -- and they promise to do all they can to come home together.Of the four, it's Beck that has the most to lose. He's the smart one of the bunch, and he could be -- SHOULD be -- going to college. His parents certainly think so. But he has a pact to honor, and so Beck enlists in the US Air Force.As their tours of duty near completion and the war itself spirals further out of control, the four best friends are at last on a collision course. Will they all survive long enough to be reunited?

From the author of Primary Colors, “a remarkably sensitive story of a generation” (The New York Times Book Review): The critically acclaimed true story of five Marines who fought together in a bloody battle during the Vietnam War, barely escaping with their lives, and of what happened when they came home. In 1981, while the country was celebrating the end of the Iran hostage crisis, an unemployed Vietnam veteran named Gary Cooper went berserk with a gun, angry over the jubilant welcome the hostages received in contrast to his own homecoming from Vietnam, and was killed in a fight with police. In what has been called “the most eloquent work of nonfiction to emerge from Vietnam since Michael Herr’s Dispatches” (The New York Times), Joe Klein tells Cooper’s story, as well as the stories of four of the other vets in Cooper’s platoon. The story begins with an ambush and a grisly battle in the Que Son Valley in 1967, but Payback is less about remembering the war and more about examining its long-term effects on the grunts who fought it. Klein fills in the next fifteen years of these Marines’ lives after they return home, with “the sort of fine and private detail one ordinarily finds only in fiction” (People). The experiences of these five men capture the struggles of a whole generation of Vietnam veterans and their families. Klein’s “near-hypnotic” account (Daily News, New York) is, to this day, both a remarkable piece of reporting and “some of the most vivid, harrowing, and emotionally honest writing to come out of Vietnam” (The Washington Post Book World).

Shot down and wounded in action, Craig Roberts survived against fantastic odds in the sultry jungles of Vietnam, receiving ten decorations. His memoir is a story of extraordinary challenges met for honor, freedom, and the Corps. Reissue.

“It’s not easy to stay alive with a $1,000 bounty on your head.” In 1967, a bullet cost thirteen cents, and no one gave Uncle Sam a bigger bang for his buck than the 5th Marine Regiment Sniper Platoon. So feared were these lethal marksmen that the Viet Cong offered huge rewards for killing them. Now noted Vietnam author John J. Culbertson, a former 5th Marine sniper himself, presents the riveting true stories of young Americans who fought with bolt rifles and bounties on their heads during the fiercest combat of the war, from 1967 through the desperate Tet battle for Hue in early ’68. In spotter/shooter pairs, sniper teams accompanied battle-hardened Marine rifle companies like the 2/5 on patrols and combat missions. Whether fighting their way out of a Viet Cong “kill zone” or battling superior numbers of NVA crack troops, the sniper teams were at the cutting edge in the art of jungle warfare, showing the patience, stealth, combat marksmanship, and raw courage that made the unit the most decorated regimental sniper platoon in the Vietnam War. Harrowing and unforgettable, these accounts pay tribute to the heroes who made the greatest sacrifice of all–and leave no doubt that among 5th Marine snipers uncommon valor was truly a common virtue.