![Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
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Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning
The World Of A Combat Division In Vietnam
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- 45,99 €
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- 45,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
T his BOOK EXAMINES the world confronted by the men of an American combat division during the Vietnam War. Although the unit in question is the 25th Infantry Division, this is not a unit history or standard military chronology. Instead, I try to view all of the major parts of the soldiers' world-including subjects as diverse as climate, living conditions, deadly combat, and morale. The world inhabited by the soldiers of the 25th Division was not theirs alone; the men and women who served with other frontline units in Vietnam will immediately recognize the major landmarks. Using the 25th Division as a focal point, I hope to help the people of today better understand what the Vietnam War was like in fact, not fiction. This work is based on a variety of sources. The documentary foundations come from a great number of 25th Division records generated during the war; the most important of which are the large quarterly Division reports. They, in turn, are complemented by the quarterly reports that came from II Field Force, Vietnam, the Army headquarters for the units operating in the provinces near Saigon. The Center of Military History, Department of the Army, provided these documents to me while I was doing research on the village war in a Vietnamese province. I used this research to write The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Westview Press, 1991), which deals with the political and military struggle waged by both sides in an important part of the 25th Division's area of operations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gripping oral history of the Vietnam War, soldiers of the 25th Division recount the ways the war was actually fought and the psychological pressures they endured. Bergerud ( The Dynamics of Defeat ) divides his material into broad categories such as weapons (``The Tools of the Trade''); medical care, from the wounding of a soldier through his evacuation and treatment; the antipathy between frontline soldiers and support troops, and relations between Vietnamese civilians and American GIs. Raw memories of combat form the core of this impressive book, as the veterans recall their experiences in a viciously hostile environment--ambushes, minefields, friendly fire (``I was more afraid of our firepower,'' says one vet, ``than of the enemy's''). The men also complain about the paucity of experienced NCOs and the crippling officer-rotation system. Only one group of memories is wholly positive: those of comradeship. Photos. History Book Club selection.