{"product_id":"unheralded-victory-isbn-9780891418665","title":"Unheralded Victory","description":"Along with a half million other young men, Mark Woodruff put his life on the line to serve his country in Vietnam. Like so many others, he returned home to find himself regarded not as a hero but as a humiliating reminder of the only war the United States ever lost. This Marine, however, is determined to set the record straight. Woodruff never wavers from the cold, hard facts in this riveting book. Battle by battle, Unheralded Victory provides incontrovertible proof that the United States won\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ethis war, from the vaunted 1968 Tet Offensive–in reality a shattering defeat that decimated the Viet Cong–to Linebacker II, the final knockout blow that forced North Vietnam to the table. Make no mistake: our warriors in Vietnam were victorious. It’s time America sat up and took notice.“An inspired–and long-overdue–reexamination of the scoreboard from the much-disputed Southeast Asian war games played by a generation of Americans who served in Vietnam.”\u003cbr\u003e–Dale A. Dye, Captain (Ret.), U.S. Marine Corps \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An informative read that will stir your emotions and keep your interest.”\u003cbr\u003e–Leatherneck \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An extremely useful –and important–book.”\u003cbr\u003e–Marine Corps GazetteMark W. Woodruff enlisted in the Marine Corps in July 1967, serving in Vietnam with Foxtrot Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment from December 1967 to December 1968. After leaving the Marine Corps, he received his B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University in California. He is now a lieutenant commander in the Royal Australian Navy and a psychologist with the Vietnam Veterans Counseling Service in Perth, Australia. He is also the author of Foxtrot Ridge.Two Different Countries,   Many Different Wars\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e      Most Americans seem accustomed to using the term “the Vietnam War” to  describe the period of American involvement there. In so doing, Americans  ignore the centuries of conflict before America became involved and the  decades of continuing conflict after America withdrew in 1973. In fact,  the recorded history of what is now known as “Vietnam” began in 207 B.C.  when a Chinese warlord named Trieu Da established the kingdom of Nam Viet,  extending from the area now known as Da Nang northward to southern China.  In 111 B.C., the Chinese under Han emperor, Wu Ti, laid claim and ruled  for the next thousand years. The separate kingdom of Champa lay to the  south running from Nam Viet to the Mekong Delta.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    While the Chinese dominated the northern kingdom of Nam Viet, the southern  kingdom of Champa was Hindu and influenced by India. Further to the west,  and also on the extreme southern tip, lay another Hindu kingdom, Funan,  conquered by the Mon-Khymer people of the Cambodian empire in the 6th  century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The southern kingdom of Champa was often at war with the northern kingdom  of Nam Viet, but maintained a separate identity until being conquered by  Nam Viet in 1471. Saigon and the Mekong Delta were taken from Cambodia  during   the period 1700–1760. Although nominally ruled by the Le dynasty, this  area, which occupies the rough geographical boundaries known today as  “Vietnam,” continued to be divided, ruled by the Trinh family in the north  and the Nguyen family in the south.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Throughout the 17th century, the animosity between the people of the north  and the people of the south was so great that a long and bloody war   ensued between them. Between 1627 and 1673, the aggressive Trinh emperors  of the north tried seven different times to invade the south, but each  time they were stopped   by the Nguyens’ defenses. The southerners had constructed two 20-foot-high  walls, one of them six miles long and the other twenty miles long at the  point where the coastal plain was at its narrowest: the 17th parallel. In  the late 1700s, the northerners briefly prevailed but a survivor of the  southern family, Nguyen Anh, occupied Saigon and the Mekong Delta. After a  14-year struggle, the southerners seized Hue and Hanoi with French  military aid. In 1802, Nguyen Anh assumed the throne as Emperor Gia Long  of a united Vietnam.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Gia Long’s successors, however, distrusted the French and, more  specifically, their Christianity and, by 1820, they were expelling French  missionaries and imprisoning or executing Vietnamese converts to  Christianity. The French responded militarily and, with Napoleon III on  the French throne, set about establishing French colonial rule. This  French intervention superseded domestic, north-versus-south politics for  over 100 years, commencing in 1847. Although occupied by the Japanese in  World War II, the French quickly reestablished control at the end of the  war. The Communist Viet Minh forces, which had fought against the  Japanese, now turned their attention to the French.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Weapons captured by the Communist Chinese in Korea began to flow to the  Viet Minh in the early 1950s. The French and their Vietnamese allies  fought a seesaw battle with the Viet Minh forces. In France itself, the  French Communist Party was a major political force committed to the  support of the Viet Minh. America, concerned about the Soviet threat to  Europe and keen to have a strong, non-Communist France, increasingly  financed the French effort but stayed out of direct involvement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The French eventually tired of the struggle, disheartened by their defeat  in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which took place deep in the north of the  country. A cease-fire was signed in Geneva in 1954, establishing the 17th  parallel, that same narrow stretch of coastal plain where the Nguyens had  built their defensive walls and previously fought the northerners, as the  border separating the southern Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and the  northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Elections were  scheduled to be held in two years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    While the French had tired of the struggle and no longer backed the fight,  the Communists, too, had suffered massively in their battles. Nikita  Khrushchev’s memoirs make it clear that the Communist troops were at the  point of exhaustion and needed the cease-fire in order to regroup and  rebuild. Even their own official history, written in 1970, makes reference  to the fact that the Communists were not then strong enough to seize the  whole of Vietnam.2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ho Chi Minh’s government was installed in North Vietnam, while the  government of one-time emperor (1925–1945) Bao Dai was installed in South  Vietnam. While it is often said that Ho Chi Minh could have won an  election in 1954, when South Vietnam was in chaos and he was riding a  crest of popularity from having ousted the French, the situation changed  quickly. Within a few weeks, 850,000 people fled from North Vietnam to  South Vietnam, most of them Catholics and small landowners fearful of the  Communists. Only some 80,000 people went to the North, almost all of them  guerrilla cadres who had fought the French.3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The actual effect of this massive population shift was never tested at the  polls. The elections were not held. South Vietnam, which had not signed  the Geneva Accords, did not believe the Communists in North Vietnam would  allow a fair election. In January 1957, the International Control  Commission (ICC), comprising observers from India, Poland, and Canada,  agreed with this perception, reporting that neither South nor North  Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement. With the French gone, a  return to the traditional power struggle between north and south had begun  again. At the 15th Meeting of the Party’s Central Committee in May of  1959, North Vietnam formally decided to take up arms against the  government of South Vietnam.4\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The war against South Vietnam was fought by the Hanoi-backed,  southern-born Viet Cong as well as directly by the North Vietnamese Army  itself. The goals of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam were parallel but not  identical. The Viet Cong sought to achieve power in South Vietnam; the  North Vietnamese sought to annex the South and “unify” Vietnam. Viet Cong  Minister of Justice, Truong Nhu Tang, summed up the Southern viewpoint by  saying that historically “. . . there were substantial economic, social,  and cultural distinctions between North and South (let alone the ethnic  minority regions) that argue for a regional rather than a centralized  approach to unity.” But North Vietnam, despite its protestations at the  time, sought to have both North and South Vietnam ruled under the North  Vietnamese flag. The two forces’ “marriage of convenience” would last only  briefly; but, while it did, they would mount savage attacks on South  Vietnam.5\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Unlike the French previously, the United States in the 1960s did not seek  colonies or an empire. Rather, the United States was committed to backing  any nation that opposed Communism. The Korean War was still fresh in  American memories and only an uneasy truce had stopped the fighting there.  Soviet tanks had crushed the Hungarian revolution only five years before  and now sat poised to launch an attack against western Europe. Tensions in  Europe were at their peak. Within months these tensions would result in  building the Berlin Wall dividing Communist East from democratic West.  With this backdrop of global military confrontation between the  superpowers, President John F. Kennedy viewed the situation in South  Vietnam with increasing concern as spring turned to summer in 1961.[quote]--Joseph L. Galloway, co-author of We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young Foreword by James L. Jones, supreme allied commander, Europe","brand":"Presidio Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300135915749,"sku":"NP9780891418665","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780891418665.jpg?v=1767743248","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/unheralded-victory-isbn-9780891418665","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}