Hard Core

Review Written by Bernie Weisz, Historian, Vietnam War Pembroke Pines, Florida Contact: [email protected] April 9, 2011 Title of Review: Vietnam: The First War Brought into U.S. Living Rooms, Won On The Battlefields And Lost Lacking Public And Political Support! I have personally read countless memoirs of soldiers, sailors and aviator's accounts of their travails during their participation in Vietnam Conflict. However Bud Yost's "Hard Core" is one particular chronicle that is so outstanding, uncommon and extraordinary that one might find it hard to believe that Mr. Yost is not writing a work of fiction! Mr. Yost never intended to write this book, letting his outlandish experiences of what he witnessed in Vietnam go with him to the grave. Reminding himself of the peacenik antiwar demonstrations, the sell out of South Vietnam, and the unpopularity of the draft towards the end of the 1960's, he wondered who in their right mind would want to read a book about Vietnam? Attending a Vietnam Reunion in 2006, he met comrades and friends he hadn't seen in over forty years. Yost mentioned that he was contemplating doing just that to one of his reunion friends but also voiced his reticence. What finally changed his mind was a quote by his old friend Morgan Massaker, who sagely told Yost the clincher: "Hell, they are still writing and publishing books about the Peloponnesian Wars and every war ever since. Get it written!" History owes Mr. Massaker a debt for this, as this book is a true gem! As the title of this review suggested, Vietnam was the first war delivered into American living rooms via the television on a nightly basis. However, unlike W.W. I, II and Korea, this was the first war that seriously lacked public support and caused mass political upheaval. Between violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King's assassinations, Lyndon B. Johnson refusing to run for reelection and Walter Cronkite claiming that victory in Vietnam was unattainable, America's will to win this conflict certainly had to be called into question! But it didn't start that way for Bud Yost, who enthusiastically volunteered for the Navy at age 16 in 1961. When the Navy found out his age, he received a minority discharge, and immediately enlisted in the Army. Thus in 1962 Bud Yost embarked on a twenty year career serving as a paratrooper and Ranger, going from a Private to a Major, and by the time he retired from the Army in 1981, he had the unc

שנה

2007

שפה

English

הוצאה

RoseDog Books

מהדורות

1

עמודים

122

ISBN

9780805987102

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata