A compilation of fifteen real-life stories that speak of what it means to go to war, to sacrifice, to wait, to hope, to mourn, to remember, to live on when those you love are gone.

Like no other war, the Vietnam War was marked by the involvement of the mass media. The war exploded daily on the evening news and weekly in the magazines; reports of drug-dulled GIs and a place called My Lai made rich copy that seared an impression in American minds about U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Robert Flynn was himself in Vietnam as a war correspondent, but his contemporaneous account of the two months he spent with Golf Company, Fifth Marines, reports a facet of the war that went largely unreported by the mass media. Golf Company was composed of CUPP teams--a Marine squad and attached Navy corpsmen in the Combined Unit Pacification Program. CUPP teams were stationed in remote Vietnamese villes, tiny hamlets whose civilians the CUPP teams trained and assisted in protecting their homes from the Viet Cong. The men of Golf Company were without the backup of other U.S. forces; they had no barbed wire or bunkers and day and night had to move every few hours to avoid being pinned down. As pacification teams, they worked with villagers on a one-to-one basis, helping improve gardens and livestock, providing medical care, and putting in such facilities as community houses and water wells. It was a personal war; CUPP soldiers got to know and had to know the individuals of the villes, because an outsider or unease in the ville could mean Viet Cong were in the area. Upon his return from Vietnam in 1971, the author wrote this account of his experiences with Golf Company, in their firefights and in their quiet moments, and his impressions of the men and their work. In the context of the early 1970s, the resulting manuscript was not the kind of copy sought by any faction in the Vietnam crisis going on at home. It has been published without the polish of hindsight, and in its original, unrevised form, it provides a clear window to the villes and booby-trapped jungles and the conversations and impressions they evoked.

Eighteen nurses who served in the United States military nurse corps during the Vietnam War present their personal accounts in this book. They represent all military branches and both genders. They served in the theater of combat, in the United States, and in countries allied with the U.S. They served in front line hospitals, hospital ships, large medical centers and small clinics. They speak of caring for casualties during a conflict filled with controversy--and of patriotism, of the nursing profession, of travel and the adventure of friendship and love.

A compelling account of the personal experiences of groups who were affected by World War II, both on and off the battlefields. Personal Perspectives: World War II brings to life the experiences of specific segments of soldiers and civilians as they were affected by the conflict, capturing special characteristics of each group and the unique ways they experienced the war. Twelve essays written by top international scholars portray what it was really like to experience the war for groups ranging from marines, naval aviators, and liberators of concentration camps to prisoners of war, refugees, and women in factories. Of interest to both students and nonexperts, the book tells the stories of Japanese Americans forced into internment camps and African Americans who experienced intense discrimination, the call to activism, and opportunity in the armed forces. It offers the perspectives of Navajo "code talkers," diplomats like U.S. ambassador to Poland Anthony J. Biddle, who fled his post to avoid death, and scientists who worked on the Manhattan project, thereby introducing the most destructive form of warfare known to humanity.

Donald Anderson, a former U.S. Air Force officer, has compiled a haunting anthology of personal essays and short memoirs that span more than 100 years of warfare. Alvord White Clements—himself a veteran of the Second World War—introduces his grandfather Isaac N. Clements’s Civil War memoir; the novelist Paul West writes of his father, a British veteran of World War I, as well as of his own boyhood recollections of the London Blitz. John Wolfe details the life-changing and life-threatening injuries he sustained in Vietnam and the hallucinations he experienced afterward. Second Gulf War veteran Jason Armagost traces his journey to Iraq through the history of literature and the books he brought with him to the war zone. The thirteen essays in When War Becomes Personal tell the enduring truths of battle, stripping away much of the romance, myth, and fantasy. Soldiers more than anyone know what they are capable of destroying; when they write about war, they are trying to preserve the world.

"John McCain's ... history of Americans at war, told through the personal accounts of thirteen remarkable soldiers who fought in major military conflicts from the Revolutionary War of 1776 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan"--Amazon.com.

"In three days the number of so-called 'volunteers' reached over three hundred men. Very quickly they organized us into military units. Just like that I became a North Korean soldier and was on the way to some unknown place." -- from the book South Korean Lee Young Ho was seventeen years old when he was forced to serve in the North Korean People's Army during the first year of the Korean War. After a few months, he deserted the NKPA and returned to Seoul where he joined the South Korean Marine Corps. Ho's experience is only one of the many compelling accounts found in Voices from the Korean War. Unique in gathering war stories from veterans from all sides of the Korean War -- American, South Korean, North Korean, and Chinese -- this volume creates a vivid and multidimensional portrait of the three-year-long conflict told by those who experienced the ground war firsthand. Richard Peters and Xiaobing Li include a significant introduction that provides a concise history of the Korean conflict, as well as a geographical and a political backdrop for the soldiers' personal stories.