Cu Chi, (body bag), Shit-hook (Chinook helicopter), dink (Vietnamese slang for a G.I.), slope (G.I. slang for a Vietnamese), hose (kill), boom-boom (what's done in a tapioca mill, or whorehouse), Mike-Juliet (marijuana), pogey bait, DO-28, C-2A, L Zed (Aussie for landing zone), rat-turds (oak leaf clusters), thousand yard stare, Samozaryadnyi karabin (Soviet rifle), guerre a outrance (French war to the end--the viewpoint of the North): these and the 10,000 others in this dictionary are the words of the Vietnam era. They were spoken by ground pounders in the boonies and by peaceniks on U.S. campuses, by hawks, doves, Victor Charlies and hoi chanhs, Chinese advisors and the Muong people of the Central Highlands. The period covered is primarily 1963-1975, but there are terms included from as early as 1945 and as late as 1987.

Includes both fiction and nonfiction showing the American viewpoint of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

A look at how combat, culture, and military tradition influenced soldiers’ language in Vietnam from the award-winning, USA Today–bestselling author. The slang, or unique vocabulary, of the soldiers and marines serving in Vietnam, was a mishmash of words and phrases whose origins reached back to the Korean War, World War II, and even earlier. Additionally, it was influenced by the United States’ rapidly changing protest culture, ideological and poetical doctrine, ethical and cultural conflicts, racialism, and drug culture. This “slanguage” was rendered even more complex by the Pidgin Vietnamese-English spoken by Americans and Vietnamese alike. But perhaps most importantly, it reflected the soldiers’ actual daily lives, played out in the jungles, swamps, and hills of Vietnam.

In 2014, the US marks the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the basis for the Johnson administration’s escalation of American military involvement in Southeast Asia and war against North Vietnam. Vietnam War Slang outlines the context behind the slang used by members of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. Troops facing and inflicting death display a high degree of linguistic creativity. Vietnam was the last American war fought by an army with conscripts, and their involuntary participation in the war added a dimension to the language. War has always been an incubator for slang; it is brutal, and brutality demands a vocabulary to describe what we don’t encounter in peacetime civilian life. Furthermore, such language serves to create an intense bond between comrades in the armed forces, helping them to support the heavy burdens of war. The troops in Vietnam faced the usual demands of war, as well as several that were unique to Vietnam – a murky political basis for the war, widespread corruption in the ruling government, untraditional guerilla warfare, an unpredictable civilian population in Vietnam, and a growing lack of popular support for the war back in the US. For all these reasons, the language of those who fought in Vietnam was a vivid reflection of life in wartime. Vietnam War Slang lays out the definitive record of the lexicon of Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. Assuming no prior knowledge, it presents around 2000 headwords, with each entry divided into sections giving parts of speech, definitions, glosses, the countries of origin, dates of earliest known citations, and citations. It will be an essential resource for Vietnam veterans and their families, students and readers of history, and anyone interested in the principles underpinning the development of slang.

Learn how the United States ended up fighting for twenty years in a remote country on the other side of the world. The Vietnam War was as much a part of the tumultuous Sixties as Flower Power and the Civil Rights Movement. Five US presidents were convinced that American troops could end a war in the small, divided country of Vietnam and stop Communism from spreading in Southeast Asia. But they were wrong, and the result was the death of 58,000 American troops. Presenting all sides of a complicated and tragic chapter in recent history, Jim O'Connor explains why the US got involved, what the human cost was, and how defeat in Vietnam left a lasting scar on America.

Interviews the men and women who served in the Vietnam War, the war that tore America apart.

"To Bear Any Burden is necessary to understand the most significant aspect of the Indochina wars: the human one." —Tran Van Dinh, author of Blue Dragon White Tiger: A Tet Story "At least this reader would like to spend hours if not days talking to each of the people within these pages." —Jack Reynolds, Network Correspondent, NBC " . . . remarkable insight into the human aspect of the war." —Library Journal The 48 American and Asian veterans, refugees, and officials who speak in this book come from widely divergent backgrounds. In their narratives we hear them reliving crucial moments in the preparation, execution, and aftermath of war. It is a riveting, eyewitness account of the war and also reclaims from this tragic continuum larger patterns of courage and dedication.