Most personal accounts are scattered through the many topical sections of this bibliography. What you will find here is only a few that did not seem to fit well into any of those topical sections, plus collections of oral histories.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum has a Oral History Project that has compiled an extensive collection of oral history interviews of people who were involved in, or dealt with, the Kennedy administration. Some of these are available online. See Oral History Project for a list of all interviews, with links for those that are available online.
Oral histories for many important figures of the 1960s have been collected by the LBJ Presidential Library. Some of these have been placed online at an Oral History Collection Web page at the LBJ Presidential Library. Far more of them have been placed online in the Lyndon B. Johnson Oral History collection at the Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia. If you are hoping to find online an oral history not specifically mentioned in the listing below, check the Lyndon B. Johnson Oral History collection first; its holdings are by far the most complete. But if you actually go to the reading room at the LBJ Presidential Library, you will find a more complete collection than either of the ones online. Some of the interestings ones available online, by U.S. military men, are:
General Phillip Davidson, part 1, part 2. Davidson was MACV J-2 (head of military intelligence in Vietnam) from 1967 to 1969.
John Michael Dunn. Dunn, a colonel, went to Vietnam in 1963 as an assistant to Ambassador Lodge.
Lieutenant General Julian Ewell. General Ewell commanded the 9th Division from February 1968 to March 1969, then II Field Force from April 1969 to April 1970.
Daniel O. Graham, part 1, part 2,
General Paul D. Harkins. Commander of MACV, 1962-1964.
Jonathan F. Ladd, part 1, part 2. Ladd went to Vietnam in June 1962, served briefly as the G-3 adviser for III Corps, then became the division adviser for the ARVN 21st Division, in the southern half of the Mekong Delta (south of the Bassac). The countryside was "pretty well controlled by the Viet Cong" at that time. He commanded 5th Special Forces from June 1967 to June 1968.
General Curtis LeMay, Air Force Chief of Staff, 1961-1965, and an advocate of more intense bombing.
General Lyman Lemnizter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1960-1962. He also has some comments on the First Indochina war.
General John P. McConnell, Air Force Chief of Staff, 1965-1969.
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, part 1 (notable for his comment that the United States made too much effort to distinguish military from civilian targets in the bombing of North Vietnam; "I feel that any resource of any country, including food and manpower, which helps them to prosecute the war, is a proper target."), part 2.
Charles A. Morris An intelligence officer who served his first tour 1964-1965, as an intelligence adviser initially in I Corps, then in III Corps. He returned to Vietnam in June 1967 to be Chief of Intelligence Production for MACV J-2.
General Maxwell D. Taylor, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
General William C. Westmoreland, part 1, part 2
General Earle G. Wheeler, part 1, part 2
General Samuel T. Williams, part 1, part 2
In several other sections of this bibliography, I have placed links to some of the more interesting of the oral histories from the collections of the LBJ Library that are relevant to those sections:
The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training has been placed online as part of the American Memory project of the Library of Congress.
The Oral History Project of the Vietnam Center, at Texas Tech University, has compiled quite a lot of interviews, and is continuing to do more. The interview transcripts are placed online. Many individual oral histories in this collection are listed in various sections of this bibliography. For a listing of available interviews, and information about how to become a participant, see The Oral History Project.
The Dean Rusk Oral History Program at the University of Georgia has not only multiple oral histories of Secretary of State Rusk, but also oral histories of various other people.
The West Point Center for Oral History has placed online a large number of oral history interviews, mostly US Army veterans but also some other Americans and some Vietnamese.
The U.S. Army War College and the Military History Institute associated with it have had a variety of oral history programs over the years, including the Senior Officers Debriefing Program, the Senior Officers Oral History Program, Project 82-2, and Project 87-17. Oral histories done by the Chaplain Corps, under a "History of the Chaplains" program, have also been deposited in the Military History Institute. An impressive number of oral histories from these various programs are, or at least once were, online in the Army Heritage Collection Online. A reorganization of that web site invalidated the previous links, and I have not yet managed to find new links for most of these oral histories.
There are a few of these oral histories that can currently be accessed through the Army Heritage and Education Center.
LTG Jack V. Mackmull, oral history interview conducted 1986, U.S. Army Military History Institute Senior Officer Oral History Program. Mackmull, an aviation officer, went to Vietnam for his first tour in September 1964 (p. 157- ), assigned initially to ACTIV; after 3 or 4 months, he shifted to command the 13th Aviation Battalion. He began his second tour in December 1968 (p. 220- ), commanding the 164th Combat Aviation Group at Can Tho. In mid-1969 he became Senior Advisor for the 44th Special Tactical Zone (p. 246- ). In July 1972 he became commander of the 1st Aviation Brigade (p. 274-). I believe he also had a TDY at some point.
If anyone can find currently valid links for these, please inform me.
Major Joel Earl Andrews, oral history interview conducted 1972. 62 pp. Most of this (pp. (3-40) is devoted to Andrews's quite early (Feb 1962 to Feb 1963) tour in Vietnam, as a chaplain with the 39th Signal Battalion, which was sent to Vietnam with great secrecy to establish communications systems. Based at Tan Son Nhut but with quite a bit of travelling.
Al Arvay, oral history interviews conducted 1973. 13 pp. Arvay, a Catholic chaplain, a Captain, was in Vietnam February 1967 to March 1968, attached to the 23rd Artillery Group, based at Phu Bai.
General Donald V. Bennett, oral history interviews. A 370-page .pdf file made up of numerous sections paginated separately. The very interesting discussion of the Pentagon's handling of the buildup in Vietnam starts on the 216th page of the overall .pdf file. Bennett was a brigadier general in Strategic Plans, crucially involved in the process.
Brigadier General Donald D. Blackburn, oral history interviews conducted in 1983. ix, 387 pp. plus appendices. Much of this oral history is devoted to Blackburn's leadership of Philippine guerrillas during World War II. He was senior adviser for Military Region 5 (the Mekong Delta), 1957-58. Then he commanded 77th Special Forces Group. He commanded SOG from May 1965 to May 1966, and was SACSA from December 1969 to December 1970.
Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Boyle, vol. I, oral history interviews conducted in 1971. A 141-page .pdf file, made up of three sections paginated separately. The second and third are devoted to General Boyle's command of the U.S. advisers in Laos, January 1961 to May 1962. Initially he was sheepdipped as a civilian; soon after his arrival the advisers became openly a Military Assistance Advisory Group.
Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Boyle, vol. II, oral history interviews conducted in 1971. A 114-page .pdf file. Includes a moderate amount of further discussion of General Boyle's tour in Laos.
Major General Charles E. Brown, oral history interview conducted 1985. 47 pp. This oral history is primarily devoted to Vietnam. Brown became Chief of Chaplains in 1962. He thinks (p. 46) that the United States could have finished the Vietnam War in six months.
Alan Carter, "Last Days in Vietnam". Oral history interview conducted under Project 82-2 in 1982. iii, 52 pp. plus appendices. The final evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Carter was Minister and Counselor of Public Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Saigon.
Lt. Gen. Robert E. Coffin, oral history interviews conducted 1981. pp. 281-408 plus appendices. Coffin was deputy chief of Army research and development, 1967-1969. Includes a very interesting account of his visit to Vietnam early in 1968, discussing the preliminary testing of the Cobra gunship, and modifications to it, with users. Also an unsuccessful sonic counter-mortar system.
General James F. Collins, oral history interviews conducted in 1976. A 222-page .pdf file, in multiple sections paginated separately. General Collins was commander in chief, U.S. Army, Pacific, from 1961 to 1964. He discusses various aspects of Vietnam.
Lt. Gen. Charles A. Corcoran, oral history interviews conducted 1975. A 178-page .pdf file made up of three sections paginated separately. Corcoran was Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations, J-3, at MACV May- 1968; MACV Chief of Staff 1968-69; Commander of I Field Force from March or April 1969 to March 1970.
General Michael S. Davison, oral history interviews conducted in 1976. A 256-page .pdf file, of which I believe 248 pages are actual oral history transcript. General Davison among other things was the commander of II Field Force, Vietnam, during the Cambodian Incursion of 1970.
Chaplain John Evans, oral history interviews conducted in 1985. 35 pp. Evans was an Episcopalian chaplain. His Vietnam tour (early 1970s, attached to the 5th Transportation Command based at Danang) begins on p. 12. There were some pretty serious disciplinary problems in the unit.
Lt. Gen. Alva R. Fitch, oral history interviews conducted 1984, vol. I. 130 pp. Accompanied by Vol. II, Appendices, a 188-page .pdf file, the bulk of which is Appendix B, a 157-page autobiography by General Fitch. He was the Army's Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, October 1959 to October 1961, and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, October 1961 to January 1964. He was Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from January 1964 to May 1966. He says that in the spring of 1964, he played a crucial role in persuading the Joint Chiefs that the war in Vietnam was going much worse than they had previously believed. He has some interesting comments on the personnel and functioning of intelligence in this period.
General Paul D. Harkins, oral history interview conducted in 1974. 75 pp. Commander of MACV, 1962-64.
Sergeant Major Theodore G. Huggins, oral history interview. 18 pp. Huggins was in Vietnam as a Sergeant First Class, Feb 1971 to Feb 1972, working at the Religious Retreat Center at Cam Ranh Bay.
General Harold K. Johnson, vol. I, oral history interviews conducted in 1972. A 211-page .pdf file. This covers his early life and career, including World War II (Johnson was in the Bataan Death March), Korea, and service in Europe in the 1950s.
General Harold K. Johnson, vol. II, oral history interviews conducted in 1972 and 1973. A 209-page .pdf file. This starts in 1960, when Johnson became commandant of the Command and General Staff College, and goes through the end of his career in 1968. Includes broad discussion of the way the Defense Department functioned under McNamara, military-civilian relationships, etc.
General Harold K. Johnson, vol. III, oral history interviews conducted in 1973. A 222-page .pdf file. This starts with the Tonkin Gulf incidents of August 1964, which occurred just after Johnson became Army Chief of Staff (and the details of which he does not remember clearly), and goes to the end of his career.
Major Harry P. Kissinger, oral history interviews conducted 1973. 37 pp. Kissinger was a chaplain with the 11th Brigade, Americal Division, at the time of the My Lai Massacre. Most of his work as with units further south than Task Force Barker, but he did minister to Charlie Company, the unit that perpetrated the massacre, to some extent. He says nobody in the unit mentioned the massacre to him.
Lt. Col. Saul Koss, oral history interviews conducted in 1985. 27 pp. Koss, a Jewish chaplain, went to Vietnam as a Captain in June 1972 and stayed until February 1, 1973. He was based at Long Binh, Saigon, and Tan Son Nhut, but flew around the country a lot.
General Frederick J. Kroesen, oral history interviews conducted in 1987 under Project 87-17, online in two parts: Volume I (pp i-viii, 1-245, including Kroesen's 1961-62 tour in Thailand (pp. 92-100), his April 1968 to May 1969 tour as commander of the 196th Brigade (Americal Division) (pp. 125-160), his July to November 1971 command of the Americal Division (pp. 170, 176-202), his time as deputy commander of XXIV Corps November 1971 to March 1972, and as commander of First Regional Assistance Command in Vietnam, March to May 1972 (pp. 215-245). He discusses the Easter Offensive of 1972 in some detail. Volume II (pp. i-viii, 246-451, and appendices). Includes continued discussion of his experiences during the Easter Offensive, as commander of First Regional Assistance Command, March to May 1972 (pp. 246-272).
Lt. Gen. Stanely R. Larsen, oral history interviews conducted in 1976. A 285-page .pdf file, made up of multiple sections paginated separately. Larsen's tour in Vietnam, which began in August 1965, is in the fifth section, beginning on the 123d page of the overall .pdf file. Larsen arrived in Vietnam August 1, 1965, and was made commander of Task Force Alpha, a command for the Army forces in II and III Corps. This evolved into I Field Force, controlling only II Corps. Larsen was there until August 1, 1967. He also has some comments on morale and discipline issues in the Army (not limited to Vietnam) later on.
Wolfgang J. Lehmann, "Last Days in Vietnam". Oral history interview conducted under Project 82-2 in 1982. iii, 45 pp. plus appendices. The final collapse and evacuation in 1975. Lehmann was deputy U.S. ambassador in Saigon from March 1974 to April 1975. He was acting ambassador during the evacuation of the Central Highlands in March 1975.
Colonel Francis R. Lewis, oral history interviews conducted 1973. 46 pp. plus appendix. Lewis was the division chaplain for the Americal Division at the time of the My Lai Massacre. This interview starts with My Lai.
Major General Spurgeon H. Neel, Jr., oral history interviews conducted 1985. 195 pp. plus appendices. Neel, an Army surgeon, served two one-year tours in Vietnam, beginning in July 1965 and July 1968.
Colonel William Vincent O'Connor, oral history interviews conducted 1973. 72 pp. O'Connor, a Catholic chaplain, was at Fort Bragg 1962 to 1964, as a teacher at the MATA course and as a chaplain to the Special Forces. He served a tour as a chaplain at MACV from July 1971 to July 1972.
Lieutenant General David E. Ott, oral history interviews conducted in 1979. A 96-page .pdf file, of which 89 pages are actual oral history transcript. In Vietnam, Ott, as a colonel, was initially executive officer of II Field Force Artillery, then became commander of 25th Division artillery in 1967, just before the Battle of Suoi Tre.
General Joseph T. Palastra, Jr., Vol. I, oral history interviews conducted 1996. viii, 288 pp. Palastra served three tours in Vietnam. In the first (pp. 48-80), he was one of a very small group of Army lieutenants who were transferred to CIA, so they could go to Vietnam without being counted in the limited number of U.S. military personnel permitted there under the Geneva Accords of 1954. He was transferred to CIA in April 1955 and arrived in Vietnam around June, where he initially worked for Lou Conein in Saigon. In August he was sent to the Nha Trang area to work at the commando training center at Pu Xuong. He was there until approximately June 1956. The second (April 1964 to Apri 1965, pp. 141-188) he was S3 of the 145th Aviation Battalion, later the 52d Aviation Battalion. Mostly in II Corps. During the third (February 1968 to January 1969, pp. 195-244?) he was with the 4th Infantry Division; initially he commanded B Company, 4th Aviation Battalion, which was not functioning well when he arrived, and beginning in July he commanded the 1/12 Infantry, which was in good shape when he took over. Vol. I covers up through about 1974.
General Joseph T. Palastra, Jr., Vol. II, oral history interviews conducted 1996. pp. i-viii, 289-566 plus appendices. Vol. II contains many of Palastra's thoughts about Vietnam, and his career after Vietnam.
General Bruce Palmer, Jr., oral history interviews conducted mostly in 1976 (pp. 249-284 are an exit interview carried out in 1968 when Palmer finished his tour as Deputy Commanding General, USARV), online in two parts: Front matter and pp. 1-248 (this ends with the 1976 interview's discussion of Palmer's service as Deputy Commanding General, USARV), and pp. 249-533, plus an index of 28 pp.).
Major General Robert Riis Ploger, oral history interviews conducted 1978. A 349-page .pdf file, made up of numerous sections paginated separately. From September 1965 to August 1967, Ploger was Engineer USARV, Commanding General, 18th Engineer Brigade and U.S. Army Engineer Command (Prov), Vietnam, and Senior Advisor to Chief of Engineers, RVN. Discussion of his Vietnam tour starts on p. 32 of section VII, and runs through the end of section IX.
General William R. Richardson, oral history interviews conducted in 1987. iv, 471 pp. plus appendices. During Richardson's first tour in Vietnam (pp. 141-169), he commanded the 3/39 Infantry (9th Division) Jan-April 1967, based mostly at Rach Kien in Long An province, then was G3 of the 9th Division. During his 1970-71 tour (pp. 178-204), he commmanded the 198th Infantry Brigade (Americal Division) in Quang Ngai July 1970 to March 1971, then was Chief of Staff of the Americal Division until probably about September or October 1971.
Major General Francis L. Sampson, oral history interview. 36 pp. Monsignor Sampson was Deputy Chief of Chaplains 1966-67, Chief of Chaplains 1967-71. The oral history is devoted almost entirely to Vietnam. Sampson had visited there for slightly less than a month every year.
Colonel Leonard F. Stegman, oral history interview. 17 pp. Stegman, a Catholic, was the USARV Chaplain from 1970 to 1971. Remarkable for the statement on p. 12 that the press "cost more lives than the enemy over there". He didn't explain what he meant, and the interviewer didn't ask.
Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr., "Last Days in Vietnam". Oral history interview conducted under Project 82-2 in 1982. v, 71 pp. plus appendices. The final evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Summers was Chief of the Negotiations Division of the U.S. Delegation to the Four-Party Joint Military Commission, July 1974 to April 1975.
General Maxwell D. Taylor, oral history interviews conducted 1973. A 253-page .pdf file made up of several sections paginated separately, without a real table of contents. Some of this is quite interesting. Discussion of Taylor's service with the Kennedy administration begins on the 152d page of the overall file, in Section 4. Section 5 starts with the issue of bombing the North.
Carroll Thorne, oral history interview. 23 pp. Thorne, a Catholic chaplain, went to Vietnam in July 1972 and stayed until March 1973. He was based at the 3d Field Hospital at Tan Son Nhut.
General Volney R. Warner, oral history interviews conducted in 1983. viii, 236 pp. plus appendices. Warner was province senior adviser for Kien Giang province, 1963-1964, and returned very disenchanted with the war. He worked quite a bit on Vietnam as a staff officer in the Pentagon, 1965-1967. He was military assistant to the special assistant to the president on Vietnam affairs, 1967-68. Then he served another Vietnam tour 1969-1970, initially as commander of the 3d Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, then as assisant chief of staff, G-5, II Field Force.
General John K. Waters, vol. III, oral history interviews conducted in 1980. pp. i, 393-580. Waters was commander of USARPAC from 1964 to 1966. He was an advocate of cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail on the ground; he says Sharp opposed this as unnecessary, and the logistics people opposed it as impossible.
Lieutenant General William P. Yarborough, oral history interviews conducted 1975. A 296-page .pdf file made up of several sections paginated separately, without a real table of contents. I have not read this, but it could be interesting. Yarborough commanded the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg from 1961 to about 1965. He was the Army's assistant chief of staff for intelligence in 1967.
Youngstown State University, in Youngstown, Ohio, has an Oral History Program that has placed online a considerable number of oral histories relating to the Vietnam War, mostly rather short, in the Oral History Digital Collection. There are quite a few spelling errors in the transcriptions. A few of the oral histories in this collection are:
Ronald Cartmell, interviewed by Darlene Pavlock, December 6, 1991. O.H. 1476. 28 pp. Cartmell served January to December 1966 with C Company, 2/27 Infantry (Wolfhounds), in the 25th Infantry Division, based at Cu Chi.
Donald E. Curry, interviewed by Darlene Pavlock, December 10, 1991. OH 1479. 19 pp. Curry, an Army lieutenant, was in Vietnam from July 1971 to April 1972, with the 2/8 Cavalry, initially at Bien Hoa, later at Bear Cat. He was battalion S-5 (civil affairs officer) and also assistant S-2 (intelligence). He spent a lot of time training and liaising with Vietnamese forces, especially RF-PF.
"Army Intelligence During the Vietnam War." Thomas E. Fornear, interviewed by John B. Jamieson, July 10, 1989. O.H. 1231. 23 pp. Fornear was in Vietnam from May 1967 to May 1968, serving at an Army Security Agency listening post near Hue, intercepting enemy radio communications. Later he served in Germany. After skimming through this, I wonder about its reliability. Fornear's statements about the incompetence of the U.S. Marines in the Battle of Hue on p. 14 looked dubious to me, and on p. 15 he says "Jane Fonda visited Hanoi while I was in Vietnam and to this day I can't look at her without getting totally enraged." The problem is that Fornear left Vietnam in 1968, and left the Army in 1970. Fonda didn't visit Vietnam until 1972.
William H. Lileas, interviewed by James Duffey, May 17, 1975. O.H. 96. 44 pp. Lileas served in the 3d Marine Division, with H Company, 2/26 Marines, in 1967 (perhaps also portions of 1966 and/or 1968?).
Bill Adler, ed., Letters from Vietnam. New York: Dutton, 1967. 212 pp.
Bill Adler, ed., Letters from Vietnam. New York: Presidio (Ballantine), 2003. 245 pp. This is not a reprint of the previous item, but a new collection, containing letters going up to 1973.
Harry S. Ashmore and William C. Baggs, with Elaine H. Burnell, Mission to Hanoi: A Chronicle of Double-Dealing in High Places. New York: Berkley, 1968. Ashmore and Baggs were journalists who travelled to Hanoi, and carried messages between the US State Department and the DRV. Their account of these events is accompanied by a long chronology of the war up to 1968, compiled by Elaine Burnell, and made up almost entirely of passages from statements and documents.
Mark Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There. New York: Morrow, 1981. (There have been questions about the accuracy of some of the stories; see Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley.)
John Balaban, Remembering Heaven's Face: A Moral Witness in Vietnam. New York: Poseidon, 1991. 334 pp. Reissued with a new preface and altered subtitle: Remembering Heaven's Face: A Story of Rescue in Wartime Vietnam. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. 336 pp. Balaban arrived in Vietnam in mid 1967, a conscientious objector who had chosen a two-year tour in Vietnam with International Voluntary Services as his substitute for military service. He was wounded in the Têt Offensive, and is said to have produced a splendid account of his experiences.
Stanley W. Beesley, Vietnam: The Heartland Remembers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Beesley, who had himself served as a Ranger team leader in Vietnam, compiled this oral history by interviewing veterans in Oklahoma.
James Francis Behr, "Vietnam Voices: An Oral History of Eleven Vietnam Veterans." D. Litt. dissertation, Drew University, 2001. AAT 3025591. 239 pp.
John Stevens Berry, Those Gallant Men: On Trial in Vietnam. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1984.
Robert A. Bratt, Four Stars on a Blue Shield: A Year in Vietnam with the Americal Division. n.p.: 1stBooks, 2001. x, 90 pp. (of which pp. 31-51 are illustrations). Bratt, a Captain in the Adjutant General Corps, arrived in Vietnam in August 1968, went to Chu Lai with the 23d Infantry Division (Americal). His first six months he was a Special Services Officer, running R&R, handling visting entertainers, etc. Second six months he headed the Personnel Actions Branch, AG Section, 23d Administration Company. A short, chatty account.
James Carroll, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. Carroll, as a young Catholic priest; opposed the war; his father was an Air Force general working in the Pentagon.
Max Cleland, Strong at the Broken Places: A Personal Story. Lincoln, VA: Chosen Books/Waco, TX: Word Books, 1980. 156 pp. Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Co., 1986. 162 pp. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 2000. 194 pp. This book is devoted more to Cleland's experience after his return from Vietnam, from initial hospitalization for his massive wounds (he was a triple amputee) to his work as head of the Veterans Administration, than to his service in the Army in Vietnam. Long after writing this book, he became US Senator from Georgia.
Max Cleland, with Ben Raines, Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. 259 pp.
Russell H. Coward, A Voice from the Vietnam War. Greenwood, 2004. 216 pp. About 70 pages seem to be devoted to the year Coward was in Saigon, 1969-1970, teaching English to Vietnamese officers.
Charles T. Cross, Born a Foreigner: A Memoir of the American Presence in Asia. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. xvii, 281 pp. Cross was head of CORDS for I Corps 1967-1969.
Marjorie Doughty, Memoirs of an Insignificant Dragon. Atlanta: Allegro Press, 1999. 353 pp. Doughty, the wife of an AID official, arrived in South Vietnam in 1962, bringing her small son. She lived in Saigon while her husband was working in Binh Dinh. She and her son were evacuated as part of the general evacuation of American dependents in 1965. After that she lived in Thailand, with her husband working for AID sometimes in Thailand and sometimes in Vietnam. Her accounts of visits to Vietnam to see him, in Phuoc Long at some point in the early 1970s and in Saigon just before its fall, in April 1975, are interesting.
Joe P. Dunn, Desk Warrior: Memoirs of a Combat REMF. Needham Heights, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing, 1999. xi, 147 pp. Dunn was drafted early in 1969, dropped out of training as an artillery fire direction control officer, and went to Vietnam in November 1969 as an enlisted unattended ground sensor operator. He was assigned to the 199th Brigade, where he became the S-2 clerk typist at Xuan Loc for several months before shifting to work in the sensor program. He considers the sensor program in the 199th to have been fairly worthless, partly due to bad morale and poor performance by the monitoring personnel. His impression was that the sensor program in the 1st Cav, which he had some contact, was worse. A version of the text, differently formatted and paginated from the print published version but apparently the same in content, has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in five parts: Table of Contents and Preface; Chapters 1-2; Chapters 3-5; Chapters 6-7; and Chapters 8-9.
W[illiam] D[aniel] Ehrhart, Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989. 291 pp. A sequel to the author's combat memoir Vietnam-Perkasie.
W[illiam] D[aniel] Ehrhart, Going Back: An Ex-Marine Returns to Vietnam. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1987. 200 pp.
W[illiam] D[aniel] Ehrhart, In the Shadow of Vietnam: Essays, 1977-1991. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1991. 208 pp.
David W. P. Elliott, Vietnamese Days. Pressbooks, 2019. Elliott was involved with the Vietnam War initially while serving in US military intelligence, then as a researcher for the RAND Corporation, and finally as one of the best scholars of the war in American academia. See also the memoir of his wife, Duong Van Mai Elliott.
Frontline Diplomacy: The U.S. Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection. Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 2000. Transcripts of 893 oral histories, mostly of U.S. diplomats, plus some other material, published as a CD-ROM. Quite useful. Oral histories in this collection include George Ball, Ellsworth Bunker, Elbridge Durbrow, Frederick Flott, W. Averell Harriman, U. Alexis Johnson, Paul Kattenberg, Wolfgang J. Lehmann, Francis Terry McNamara, Joseph Mendenhall, Robert H. Miller, Frederick Nolting, Robert Nooter, Rufus C. Phillips, III, Douglas Pike, Walt Rostow, Dean Rusk, Maxwell Taylor, Leonard Unger, and Barry Zorthian.
Bob Greene, Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam. New York: Putnam, 1989. A compilation of letters from veterans, put together by a newspaper columnist who asked in his column for veterans to say whether they had actually been spat upon when they returned to the US, and unleashed an unexpected variety of interesting material.
Keith R. Grimes, Special Operations Weatherman: An Oral Autobiography. Scott AFB, Illinois: Military Airlift Command, United States Air Force, 1978. xxiii, 351 pp. Oral history interviews apparently conducted over a couple of years, beginning April 1974, by John F. Fuller, Air Weather Service historian. Illustrated. Most of the text, as sanitized in 1985 (CIA had requested a bunch of deletions regarding Grimes' service in Laos in 1965) has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in parts: front matter (including the CIA letter requesting deletions) and pp. 1-35 (the preface is missing, although it was not among the deletions requested by the CIA) (pp. 2-35 deal with Laos); pp. 36-85 (Laos); pp. 86-135 (pp. 86-133 deal with Laos; pp. 133-135 begin the discussion of the 1970 Son Tay POW rescue mission); pp. 136-187 (Son Tay); pp. 188-192 (Son Tay); pp. 193-243 (193-226 deal with Son Tay; 227-236 deal with various issues, including but not limited to Grimes' service on NSC staff in the Nixon administration; 237-243 begin the Dominican crisis of 1965); pp. 244-293 (1965 Dominican crisis, continued; Greece 1963; pp. 260-266 deal with Detachment 75; pp. 267-293 begin his 1974-75 tour in Thailand, which included work on Cambodian air supply); pp. 294-343 (Thailand continued, including the Phnom Penh and Saigon evacuations, and the Mayaguez incident; Glossary; Index A-L); pp. 344-351 (Index L-Z).
Thomas R. Hargrove, A Dragon Lives Forever: War and Rice in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, 1969-1991, and Beyond. New York: Ivy, 1994. 472 pp. This book interleaves three types of material: the story of Hargroves' service as a US advisor with particular responsibility for the introduction of miracle rice, in Chuong Thien (a very insecure province), 1969-70; the story of his coming to terms with his Vietnam experience and revisiting Chuong Thien in 1988; and excerpts from the novel he wrote in the 1970s, based on his experiences in Chuong Thien.
Gerald C. Hickey, Window on a War: An Anthropologist in the Vietnam Conflict. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002. xix, 395 pp. An extremely valuable account, by a man who is most famous for his work with the Montagnards, but was also involved with other things during the many years he spent in Vietnam.
Lucy Beam Hoffman, Stories from Vietnam Veterans: Vietnam Veterans of the Upstate of South Carolina. Columbia, SC: Self-published, 2019. 311 pp. Oral history interviews with twelve veterans of various services.
Lawrence Holmberg, Jr., "Descending from the Pass of Clouds: A Vietnam Memoir." Holmberg, an Army photographer, arrived in Vietnam early in 1971 and was assigned to the 221st Signal Company at Long Binh. The text of the unpublished memoir has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in three parts: front matter and pp. 1-39 (training, early part of service in Vietnam), pp. 40-73 (later part of service in Vietnam, some aftermath), and pp. 74-118 (more on the aftermath).
Jon Hovde and Maureen Anderson, Left for Dead: A Second Life After Vietnam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. xv, 191 pp. Hovde lost an arm and a leg when his APC hit an anti-tank mine in 1968. The book appears to be more concerned with his recovery than with his Vietnam service.
Sam James, Servant on the Edge of History: Risking All for the Gospel in War-Ravaged Vietnam. Garland, Texas: Hannibal Books, 2005. James, a Southern Baptist missionary, was in vietnam from November 1962 to April 1975.
Michael A. Kukler, Operation Barooom. Gastonia, NC: TPC, 1980. 153 pp. Miscellaneous comments on Vietnam and the war; Kukler became Chief Information Non-Commissioned Officer for MACV in October 1968.
Michael Lee Lanning, ed., Texas Aggies in Vietnam: War Stories. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. 306 pp. Sixty accounts by graduates of Texas A&M University who served in Vietnam.
F. Bruce Lauer, Million Dollar Bronze Star: A Soldier's Story of Corruption and Debauchery in Vietnam. Monument, CO: Tactical 16 Publishing, 2020. xii, 100 pp. Lauer was drafted in 1968, sent to Vietnam in March 1969, and assigned to help run the enlisted men's club system for the Americal Division.
Eric Lee, Saigon to Jerusalem. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992. vii, 200 pp. An oral history of 18 Jewish Vietnam veterans who later emigrated to Israel. (One of the stories, that of William Northrop, is apparently false. See Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley.)
Richard E. Mack, Memoir of a Cold War Soldier. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001. xv, 216 pp. Pp. 112-47 cover Mack's October 1963-October 1964 tour as an adviser to the ARVN 2d Division in I Corps, and pp. 157-179 cover his August 1969 to August 1970 tour (promoted to Colonel just before the end), initially with the 3d Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, later with U.S. Army Headquarters Area Command in Saigon.
Harry Maurer, Strange Ground: Americans in Vietnam, 1945-1975: An Oral History. New York: Henry Holt, 1989. x, 634 pp. (One of the stories, that of Yoshia Chee, is apparently false. See Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley.)
Lt. Col. Robert W. Michel, Ret., ed., Before The Memories Fade : An Anthology of Humorous, Bizarre and Poignant Stories from the Vietnam Era. Authorhouse, 2004. 188 pp.
Chris Morris & Janet Morris, The American Warrior. Stamford, CT: Longmeadow, 1992. xiv, 271 pp. Oral history, part but not all dealing with Vietnam.
Joan Morrison and Robert K. Morrison, eds., From Camelot to Kent State: The Sixties Experience in the Words of those who Lived It. New York: Times Books (Random House), 1987. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xxiv, 355 pp.
Ed Murphy and Zoeann Murphy, Vietnam: Our Father Daughter Journey. New York: Philmark Press, 2006. 103 pp. Ed Murphy was an intelligence analyst with the 4th Infantry Division, 1968-69, later spoke out against the war. Short, extensively illustrated.
Chris Noel with Bill Treadwell, Matter of Survival: The 'War' Jane Never Saw. Boston: Branden, 1987. 200 pp. Chris Noel was an actress who toured US bases in Vietnam.
Reuben & Nancy Noel, Saigon for a Song: The True Story of a Vietnam Gig to Remember. Phoenix: UCS Press, 1987. 260 pp. Two entertainers encounter problems, and the corruption in U.S. military clubs, on a tour of South Vietnam.
Robert Patterson, While They Died: A Memoir. Emmett, Idaho: Patterson Press, 1993. 312 pp. plus an appendix listing U.S. contractors in Vietnam. Patterson, needing a job, went to Vietnam in 1967 and went to work for a major firm, Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E).
Thomas Reilly, Next of Kin: A Brother's Journey to Wartime Vietnam. Washington: Brassey's, 2003. 271 pp. After learning of the death of his brother Ron, serving with the 25th Infantry Division in 1970, Thomas Reilly when to Vietnam to find out how it had happened.
Carl Robinson, The Bite of the Lotus: An Intimate Memoir of the Vietnam War. Melbourne, Australia: Wilkinson Publishing, 2019. 321 pp. Robinson interrupted his undergraduate education to work for a year (mid 1964 to mid 1965) for USOM, under AID, as a deputy provincial representative in Go Cong province, in the Mekong Delta. He returned to the US and finished his degree, then went back to Vietnam in 1966 to the same job in Go Cong (though what had been USOM was then called USAID). In late 1967 he shifted to a job in CORDS headquarters for IV Corps in Can Tho. In February 1968, offended by very destructive government firepower in an area where as far as he could tell there had not actually been many Viet Cong, he resigned and promptly was hired by the Associated Press (AP). He was still with AP in Vietnam in April 1975.
Edward L. Rowny, It Takes One to Tango. Washington, DC: Brassey's US, 1992. xiv, 273 pp. Not much of this memoir deals with Vietnam, but it does include information on Rowny's participation in developing the concept of air cavalry, and on Nixon-Kissinger differences in regard to Vietnam policy.
Al Santoli, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-three American Soldiers Who Fought It. hb New York: Random House, 1981. pb New York: Ballantine, 1982. xviii, 268 pp. Warning: some of the men who told Santoli their stories for this volume, Thomas Bird, Mike Beamon, and Stephen Klinkhammer, apparently either exaggerated their stories significantly, or invented them out of the whole cloth (see Stolen Valor, by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley, for details).
Robert A. Scalapino, From Leavenworth to Lhasa: Living in a Revolutionary Era. Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, 2008. 212 pp. This memoir by a senior Asian scholar who supported the war, while teaching at Berkeley in the 1960s, should be interesting.
William S. Shepard, Consular Tales. Xlibris. 182 pp. One chapter of this book discusses Shepard's several tours in Vietnam as a U.S. consular officer and diplomat. His first was from 1966 to 1967; the last was in 1973, as a liaison with the ICCS. Anti-Communist in tone.
Howard R. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire: An American in Vietnam, 1952-1991. McLean, VA: Brassey's, 1992. Simpson was a USIA war correspondent at Dien Bien Phu, and later a press advisor to Ngo Dinh Diem and to Nguyen Khanh.
Harry Spiller, Death Angel: A Vietnam Memoir of a Bearer of Death Messages to Families. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992. Spiller served in Vietnam in 1965 with the 4th Marines. Later he had a job as a Marine recruiter, in which job he also had to inform families of Marines killed in action.
Harry Spiller, Vietnam: Angel of Death. Southeast Missouri State University, 2002. 186 pp. Presumably a retitled version of the previous item.
Harry Spiller, Scars of Vietnam: Personal Accounts by Veterans and their Families. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994. 240 pp.
Ron Steinman, The Soldiers' Story: Vietnam in Their Own Words. New York: TV Books, 1999. 367 pp. Steinman was NBC bureau chief in Saigon 1966-1968.
Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober, Let Us Begin Anew: An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. xiii, 540 pp.
Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, The Kennedy Presidency: An Oral History of the Era. Washingon, DC: Brassey's, 2003. I belive this is a revised edition of the item above.
Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober, Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. xi, 576 pp. pb 1996.
Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2003. I believe this is a revised edition of the item above.
Michael Takiff, Brave Men, Gentle Heroes: American Fathers and Sons in World War II and Vietnam. New York: Morrow (HarperCollins), 2003. 560 pp.
Peter Tauber, The Sunshine Soldiers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971. The adventures in military training of a man who had joined the Army Reserves in order to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam.
Dennis Thatcher, Cut on Six Sides. Quincy, OH: Thatcher Farms Publishing, 1999. 192 pp. Thatcher describes service 1970-71 at FSB Fuller (by that time mainly an ARVN post, with just a few Americans), as an electronic warfare specialist monitoring sensors. The "Prolog" describing the beginning of Lam Son 719 (pp. 3-6) is not believable.
Michael E. Tolle, A Spear-Carrier in Vietnam: Memoir of an American Civilian in Country, 1967 and 1970-1972. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. vii, 193 pp. Tolle spent two years, 1970-72, as a junior member of the Agency for International Development (AID) staff: a year in Lam Dong (a relatively quiet province in II Corps) and a year in Saigon. He had previousy spent a few months in Vietnam in 1967, as a volunteer with a Protestant missionary organization in I and II Corps.
Jack Tumidajski, Quadalajara: The Utopia That Once Was. Brundage Publishing, 2005. 394 pp. I am not sure how much of this book deals with Tumidajski's 1968-69 tour at Qui Nhon as a clerk with the 1st Logistical Command.
George M. Watson, Voices from the Rear: Vietnam 1969-1970. n.p.: Xlibris, 2001. 322 pp. Watson was drafted after having completed his first year of graduate school. He arrived in Vietnam in June 1969, was sent to the 101st Airborne Division, and because of his educational background was assigned to the Personnel Records Branch of the 101st Administration Company. He was at Bien Hoa until late November, then shifted to Phu Bai.
Daniel C. Webster, The Pucker Factor: One Noncombatant's Vietnam Memoirs. Bloomington, IN: 1stBooks, 2003. xi, 301 pp. Webster arrived in Vietnam, a 35-year-old SP5, in August 1967 with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 20th Engineering Brigade, which was stationed at Bien Hoa. After about 5 months he was transferred to the 13th Combat Assault Helicopter Battalion, at Can Tho, in which he served as information specialist and photographer, later as intelligence sergeant. Then he was sent to Soc Trang to be the intelligence sergeant for the 336th Combat Assault Helicopter Company; later his job there was changed to perimeter sergeant. He was there until early 1969.
Jim Wilson, The Sons of Bardstown: 25 Years of Vietnam in an American Town. New York: Crown, June 1994. Battery C, 138th Artillery, Kentucky National Guard, made up almost entirely of men from Bardstown, Kentucky, suffered 45 casualties on June 19, 1969, at Fire Base Tomahawk. This oral history covers the effect on and reactions in this small town.
Gordon S. Wise, Letters from Vietnam. Minneapolis, 1971. vi, 145 pp. Wise had died in 1970.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has a very extensive collection of oral histories of people who had been associated with President Kennedy. There is a list on an Oral History Interviews Web page at the JFK Presidential Library, but the actual texts have not been placed online.
Large collections of oral histories from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations are available on microfilm. See listing under Microfilmed Document Collections.
The Veterans' Oral History Project, under the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. A huge number of oral history interviews. Most are available online as video or audio. For a minority of them (but I think that is still in the thousands), there is a written transcript.
Copyright © 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised May 25, 2023.