Voices from the Vietnam War

Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans

Xiaobing Li

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780813136578
  9780813125923
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813173863
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du 20ème siècle

The Vietnam War's influence on politics, foreign policy, and subsequent military campaigns is the center of much debate and analysis. But the impact on veterans across the globe, as well as the war's effects on individual lives and communities, is a largely neglected issue. As a consequence of cultural and legal barriers, the oral histories of the Vietnam War currently available in English are predictably one-sided, providing limited insight into the inner workings of the Communist nations that participated in the war. Furthermore, many of these accounts focus on combat experiences rather than the backgrounds, belief systems, and social experiences of interviewees, resulting in an incomplete historiography of the war.

Chinese native Xiaobing Li corrects this oversight in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans. Li spent seven years gathering hundreds of personal accounts from survivors of the war, accounts that span continents, nationalities, and political affiliations. The twenty-two intimate stories in the book feature the experiences of American, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and North and South Vietnamese veterans, representing the views of both anti-Communist and Communist participants, including Chinese officers of the PLA, a Russian missile-training instructor, and a KGB spy. These narratives humanize and contextualize the war's events while shedding light on aspects of the war previously unknown to Western scholars. Providing fresh perspectives on a long-discussed topic, Voices from the Vietnam War offers a thorough and unique understanding of America's longest war.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Maps
• Photographs
• Abbreviations
• Note on Transliteration
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: A Country Divided
• Chapter 1: A Buddhist Soldier Defendsa Catholic Government
• Chapter 2: Surviving the Bloody Jungle
• Chapter 3: Electronic Reconnaissancevs. Guerrillas
• Chapter 4: Communist Regulars from the North
• Chapter 5: People’s War against Americans
• Chapter 6: No Final Victory, No Family Life
• Part Two: Hanoi’s Comrades
• Chapter 7: Russian Missile Officers in Vietnam
• Chapter 8: The Dragon’s Tale
• Chapter 9: Chinese Response to the U.S. Rolling Thunder Campaign
• Chapter 10: Russian Spies in Hanoi
• Part Three: Saigon’s Allies
• Chapter 11: Long Days and Endless Nights
• Chapter 12: And Then They’re Gone . . .Just Like That
• Chapter 13: No John Wayne Movie
• Chapter 14: More Than Meets the Eye
• Part Four: Doctors and Nurses
• Chapter 15: Medevac and Medcap Missions and More
• Chapter 16: Drowning Tears with Laughter
• Chapter 17: Life and Death of an ARVN Doctor
• Chapter 18: A Korean Captain and His Hospital
• Part Five: Logistics Support
• Chapter 19: “Loggie’s” War
• Chapter 20: Support and Survival in Thailand
• Chapter 21: Three Great Escapes
• Chapter 22: Chinese Railroad Engineering Operations
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover