Richard J. Watkins

Written by Bernie Weisz/Historian Pembroke Pines, Florida February 27, 2010 e mail:[email protected] I have studied the Vietnam War in high school, and more intensively in college, but what I learned in academia as opposed to the multiple memoirs of the actual participants are 2 different accounts altogether. J. Richard Watkins shoots from the hips in this catharsis, with this memoir being penned 25 years after the fact. Official accounts of the ground war, our relationship with our allies, the South Vietnamese, the conduct of the way the North Vietnamese fought us, and especially the version of the 1970 Cambodian Incursion do not jive with what Watkins saw threw his 22 year old eyes and related on the pages of "Vietnam: No Regrets". When the reader finishes the last page of this amazing memoir, using Watkins observations, he or she will realize that all U.S. battles with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were "anti-climatic." Watkins wrote throughout "No Regrets" that there were no big battles when expected, especially in Cambodia. The majority of U.S. aggression was motivated by retaliation for a grunt's wounding by enemy sniping, primitive booby traps or ambushes. Our foe was a sneaky, elusive enemy who disappeared under the multiple underground caves the Communists built to avoid confrontation. Watkins writes of exciting small unit actions and ambushes in the sweltering jungle. The reason Watkins wrote about "one big need for revenge" was because of the way the N.V.A foug

1 ספרים במאגר