Death and Suffering at First Hand: Youth Shock Brigades during the Vietnam War (1950––1975)

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franççois Guillemot
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War

This article aims to comprehend the physical suffering that occurs when bodies face the experiences of war and death, or the "decay of bodies," as we call it, in particular on the Hồ Chíí Minh Trail. The study focuses on a specific group of so-called wartime volunteers, the Youth Shock Brigades [Thanh Niêên Xung Phong], established in July 1950 and mainly composed of young girls and women between 13 and 22 years old, who were often sent to the front line. The objective is to investigate these young people's tragic fate, caught between barbarism and heroism, by stressing how their sacrifices were, and have been, entrenched in individual bodies and collective memory. Confronted with an official historiography that is positivist and "male," the singular history of those young women is crucial to our understanding of the mechanisms of the thirty-year-old war led by the Lao Động Party.

Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War

2003 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 152
Author(s):  
Lawrence D. Freedman ◽  
Henry Kissinger
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War

A Testament to a Dying Vision of America

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-295
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Musiał
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
History Of ◽  
National League ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The U.S

This article is a review of The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home (2019) by Heath Hardage Lee. The book presents a popular history of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, an organisation that advocated for the rights of American prisoners of war captured by North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

scholarly journals The Invisible Burden of the Vietnam War: From the Memoirs of a Soviet Officer

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey Lyamzin
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Reproductive System ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Health It ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Human Reproductive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
The Vietnam War

This article publishes and analyses an interview with Lieutenant Colonel V. V. Skoryak, a Soviet military specialist who took part in the Vietnam War for eleven months in 1970. The interview describes little-known facts about military advisers’ stay in the country, when they mostly stayed far away from the frontline and dealt with the preparation and maintenance of the S‑75 high-altitude air defence systems. Special attention is paid to the everyday life of the advisers and their legal status, which helps reveal new aspects of the “everyday history” of war. Skoryak speaks about the ideological, moral, and psychological preparedness of the Soviet people to fulfil their “international duty”, which, according to him, was internally motivated. He also analyses post-traumatic syndromes in Soviet military men: it was especially frequent and profound in the early stages of the conflict. Additionally, the interview contains information about the medical care provided to the participants of the conflict and the consequences for their health. It puts forward some ideas about how the chemical weapons used by the Americans affected the human reproductive system. The interview provides an emotional assessment of the war and their place in the biography of a Soviet officer.

“The Most Important Human Salvage Operation in the History of Our Country”

Rough Draft ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 128-156
Author(s):  
Amy J. Rutenberg
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Military Service ◽  
National Guard ◽  
Conscientious Objector ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Minority Men

Chapter six argues that in working to avoid the draft, men during the Vietnam War did not behave terribly differently from men during World War II or the Korean War. Rather, it was the context of their actions that changed. This chapter affirms that the historical conditions of the Vietnam War, particularly the advent of draft counseling, made it easier for men to engage in draft avoidance behavior. But it also argues that the military manpower policies of the previous decades influenced their choices. Because policies and practices privileged men with the resources to attend college, gain admittance to the National Guard or Reserves, find sympathetic doctors, or write reasoned belief statements in conscientious objector applications, white, middle-class men were the most successful at avoiding the draft. For them, military service was a decision more than a fait accompli. Working-class and minority men had fewer tools for draft avoidance.

The Anticommunist Việt-Cộng

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phuong Tran Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Resistance Movement

This chapter resurrects the infamous history of shadowy US-based anti-communist insurgent forces modelled on Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters.” Often disparaged as the quintessential “bad refugee” that brought the Vietnam War to America, as evidenced by the unsolved murders of several Vietnamese journalists suspected of communist ties, the members of the “resistance movement” were actually being “good refugees” as defined by the secret Cold War policies of the Reagan Administration.

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