KHE SANH:
SIEGE IN THE CLOUDS:
An Oral History
Eric Hammel
NEw copy. Hardcover with dust jacket. Pacifica Press, 2000. Photographs, 514 pages.
Reprint of the 1989 edition.
From Publishers Weekly: "Early in 1968, the North
Vietnamese began an artillery barrage that continued for
several weeks of Khe Sanh Combat Base in the northwest corner
of South Vietnam. Observers speculated that the siege might
turn into ``another Dienbienphu,'' but the defenders pulled
out in April after suffering heavy casualties, and only the
most hard-headed student of the affair calls it anything but
a Communist victory. The story of the thankless siege is told
in this vivid oral history by nearly 100 articulate survivors,
mostly U.S. Marines, who convey the frustration experienced by
men trained for aggressive mobile warfare, forced for the most
part to huddle inside a crowded perimeter. The siege of Khe Sanh
was a bad scene all around, typified by the ambush/massacre on
February 25 of a platoon-size Marine patrol just outside the
perimeter and the refusal of higher command to intervene for
fear the rescuers would be lost as well."
From
Library Journal: "The 77-day siege of Khe Sanh, where U.S.
Marines were surrounded and shelled by much larger enemy forces,
has become one of the most controversial battles of the Vietnam
War. Military historian Hammel provides another dimension with
this chronological collection of brief oral history accounts by
Marines who were there. Arranged day-by-day, these short pieces
read like diary entries but by different authors, a technique
which soon fragments into a muddled sequence of events, making
it difficult to follow the battle narrative. Nonetheless, the
gritty recollections of the Marines themselves vividly re-create
the atmosphere of desperation and courage and give a chilling
sense of what combat was really like. This effectively complements
Robert Pisor's definitive documentary, The End of
the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh."
This hardcover edition OUT OF PRINT.
$30.00
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