Books

There were no homecoming parades for the million men and women who served in the longest war America ever fought…the only war it has ever lost. This is a book about 65 of those nearly forgotten men who soldiered in the late 1960s in a gook-hunting, dirt-eating, dog-soldiering infantry unit called Charlie Company.

What happened at the Battle of Ông Thanh and why did it take such an ill-fated turn? In this brutal, yet compelling narrative, Jim Shelton, former operations officer of the 2-28 Infantry, pulls no punches. Mistakes are chronicled as are the many courageous deeds of the young officers and men of the Black Lions on that fateful day.

This book stands as an excellent history of the Black Lions over the past one hundred years, from the Philippine Insurrection through the Vietnam War, and includes their historic role in the Battle of Cantigny in World War I.

volunteered for the Army and was sent to Vietnam in January 1967, armed with an M-14 rifle and American Express traveler’s checks. But the latter soon proved particularly pointless as the private first class found himself in the thick of two pivotal, fiercely fought Big Red One operations, going head-to-head against crack Viet cong and NVA troops in the notorious Iron Triangle and along the treacherous Cambodian border near Tay Ninh.

Great men and women should be written about as examples to others. If the reader absorbs just a fraction of their qualities, good comes from it. That is what author Jane Menetrey believed when she realized she had married a truly great man, Army General Louis C. Menetrey.

We began writing our story several years back simply as a legacy for our two sons. But, with the war in Iraq & Afghanistan and soldiers returning from combat, we realized that there are many others who have lived or are now living our experience as well.

This story starts with my induction and the ship ride to South Vietnam. Our arrival at Lai Khe base camp. Home of the 1st Infantry Division, The Big Red One, Delta 2nd and 28th Infantry known as the Black Lions. The ambush of the Black Lions on October 17, 1967. Other battles that happened from this date until my return home.

Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Maraniss (When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi) intertwines two compelling narratives to capture the Vietnam War at home and on the battlefield as well as, if not better than, any book yet written. The first narrative follows the soldiers of the army battalion the Black Lions, 61 of whom died in an ambush by North Vietnamese on October 17, 1967.

Beginning with a nighttime apparition and ending with death in the jungles of Vietnam, Turncoat tells the story of Anthony Arnold, a young American Army officer who comes home from two years in Vietnam to find himself embroiled in mysterious reports of a ‘turncoat’ – an American soldier who has gone over to fight for the other side(referred to in continual rumors at the time as a ‘White Cong’).

Authenticity of living and fighting with an armored calvary unit, plus a keen understanding of the problems and principles of military leadership ar the hall marks of Ringed in Steel.

James Carl Nelson’s book is a great contribution to AEF history. He has done an incredible amount of research in order to convey the experience of one group of doughboys…and to tell their story through their own words.….He reminds us that these long-forgotten battles of ninety years ago were as hard fought as any before or since, and that our country was well served by the young men who fought them. Get this book. It puts a very human face on the experience of Americans on the Western Front.”—Dr. Paul Herbert, executive director of the Cantigny First Division Foundation.

Then A Soldier portrays the social and cultural pressures that led a Jewish boy from the Bronx of the early 1960s to become a career Army officer, and, when his country was at war, to seek out a combat assignment. It is the story of a young man setting out to prove that Jews could be good soldiers as he simultaneously embarks on an uncommon assimilation strategy to enter the WASP establishment.The book describes a time and place in American society that no longer exist— when ancestry and religion could determine what school you attended, the zip codes in which you could live, and to an extent, the professions you could enter. The book explains how these influences and a growing awareness of the history of the Holocaust combined to encourage the author’s entry to ROTC in college, and from there, the decision to make the Army a career.Then A Soldier is the story of the most important year of the author’s life— a year in combat in which he discovers that he is an Everyman-soldier, no more afraid and no less effective in combat than other soldiers. It is the story of a young man testing himself and finding a new dimension of his makeup.