The stories of war and survival told by the Marines that were there "What shines through from this bare-knuckled, furious battle is the core ethos. It comes though loud and clear when you read chapter after chapter in different voices. These Marines had no battlefield prep, no intelligence, no cohesive leadership. What held them together was the Marine spirit. There was nothing else. Wow! What an epic fight!" - Bing West, author of The Last Platoon and The Village "LZ Sitting Duck shows battle from the bottom up. In personal statements it captures the chaos, bravery, confusion, fear, and fighting spirit of Marines of the First Battalion Fourth Marines who fought a fierce hill battle with regular North Vietnamese Army forces in March of 1969. Readers will learn about combat down in the dirt at the very tip of the spearpoint." - Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn and What's It Like To Go To War

The stories of war and survival told by the Marines that were there "What shines through from this bare-knuckled, furious battle is the core ethos. It comes though loud and clear when you read chapter after chapter in different voices. These Marines had no battlefield prep, no intelligence, no cohesive leadership. What held them together was the Marine spirit. There was nothing else. Wow! What an epic fight!" - Bing West, author of The Last Platoon and The Village "LZ Sitting Duck shows battle from the bottom up. In personal statements it captures the chaos, bravery, confusion, fear, and fighting spirit of Marines of the First Battalion Fourth Marines who fought a fierce hill battle with regular North Vietnamese Army forces in March of 1969. Readers will learn about combat down in the dirt at the very tip of the spearpoint." - Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn and What's It Like To Go To War

A poignant memoir that recounts the author's hair-raising--and occasionally hilarious--experiences as a young, not especially gung-ho Marine artilleryman in Vietnam. Gritty and disturbing, Bill Jones' unvarnished narrative probes the lasting physical and emotional wounds of war and offers a combat veteran's wry insight into the influence and relevance of America's long and indecisive misadventure.

Helicopter pilots in Vietnam kidded one another about being nothing but glorified bus drivers. But these “rotor heads” saved thousands of American lives while performing what the Army classified as the most dangerous job it had to offer. One in eighteen did not return home. Tom A. Johnson flew the UH-1 “Iroquois” — better known as the “Huey” — in the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion of the First Air Cavalry Division. From June 1967 through June 1968, he accumulated an astonishing 1,600 flying hours (1,150 combat and 450 noncombat). His battalion was one of the most highly decorated units in the Vietnam War and, as part of the famous First Air Cavalry Division, helped redefine modern warfare. With tremendous flying skill, Johnson survived rescue missions and key battles that included those for Hue and Khe Sanh and operations in the A Shau and Song Re valleys, while many of his comrades did not. His heartfelt and riveting memoir will strike a chord with any soldier who ever flew in the ubiquitous Huey and any reader with an interest in how the Vietnam War was really fought.

Paco Sullivan is the only man in Alpha Company to survive a cataclysmic Viet Cong attack on Fire Base Harriette in Vietnam. Everyone else is annihilated. When a medic finally rescues Paco almost two days later, he is waiting to die, flies and maggots covering his burnt, shattered body. He winds up back in the US with his legs full of pins, daily rations of Librium and Valium, and no sense of what to do next. One evening, on the tail of a rainstorm, he limps off the bus and into the small town of Boone, determined to find a real job and a real bed–but no matter how hard he works, nothing muffles the anguish in his mind and body. Brilliantly and vividly written, Paco’s Story–winner of a National Book Award–plunges you into the violence and casual cruelty of the Vietnam War, and the ghostly aftermath that often dealt the harshest blows.

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.