Showing results for "UP" in Vietnam War

This gut-wrenching firsthand account of the war is a classic in the annals of Vietnam literature. "Guns up!" was the battle cry that sent machine gunners racing forward with their M60s to mow down the enemy, hoping that this wasn't the day they would meet their deaths. Marine Johnnie Clark heard...

Most of what the average person knows about the Vietnam War is gleaned from movies, TV dramas, documentaries and autobiographical memoirs. The vast majority of those revolve around the experiences of infantrymen and pilots. What everybody doesn't know is that Less than 20% of the guys in Vietnam were either an infantryman or a pilot. In a war without front lines, anyone with boots on the ground could and did find themselves in mortal danger in the blink of an eye. The forgotten 80% of Vietnam vets have ALL kinds of stories to tell even if they're not always 'war' stories, per se.

My memoir traces the events of my early life from 1962 to 1974 when my family found itself in the epicenter of the Vietnam War. When I was eleven years old my father, then Commander James Stockdale, was shot down and declared "missing in action" in September 1965. The emotional impact of that news devastated me, my mother Sybil Stockdale, and my three brothers, but we struggled to carry on somewhat normal lives.