Pretty standard rah-rah military history

books:


	• The Hill Fights: The First Battle of Khe Sanh Edward F. Murphy Presidio Press, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

My brother was there!

My brother recomended this book and said that it "told it like it was" as he was a Marine involved in the action described!

Vietnam Vet Approved!

I bought this book for my father-in-law, who is a Purple Heart winner from the Vietnam War. He loved it so much, he bought five more to give to other Vietnam vets he knows.

for more information click here

Very well written

This is one of the best compilation of personal accounts that I've read on Vietnam. I like how the author chose to present the information and how the author presented the political issues (both inter-branch and Congress) that occured in regards to bases and the M16. I'm surprised by some of the things presented in this book. One of the main surprises was the attitude that several of the NCOs supposedly held towards the junior enlisted men. It always struck me that Marine NCOs were some of the best and didn't hold the superior attitudes that were described in parts of this book.

There were a few things that could have been improved in the book, but they did not detract from the telling of these Marines' stories. The things that I think could have been improved were:

1. A couple of abbreviations were never explained (BLT and the naming of Marine units (i.e. 2/3, is that 2nd battalion, 3rd Marines or something else)).

2. It was nice that the author listed in the Appendix what happened to some of the Marines involved in the Hill Fights after the events in the book. However, I think that he should have included everyone he named within the book. It would have meant a longer list, but it would have been helpful.

Overall, this is a very well written and well informed account of what happened around Khe Sanh.

for more information click here

Pretty standard rah-rah military history

This is a history with a small scope. It does not offer the insight microhistories can provide, nor the understanding that might be found with a wider lens.

Readers can learn something of what it was like for Marines during the battles described in the book. Discussion of why the battle was fought (what did the North Vietnamese choose then and there) is minimal, as is description of what resulted from the fights beyond casualties.

The writing is pretty good, but reading it feels like getting a blow-by-blow description of a bar fight without being told much about combatants or what was at stake.

for more information click here

Excellent, but maps would have helped

A good book, but maps that showed the locations of individual units and the topography would have enhanced the understanding of the battles. When the author talks about ridges, crests and valleys, I found it difficult to visualize who was where. The few maps in the front of the book offer little useful information. And, the type is so small, reading the maps in the paperback edition proved to be a challenge.

reviews: page 1, 2

While the seventy-seven-day siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968 remains one of the most highly publicized clashes of the Vietnam War, scant attention has been paid to the first battle of Khe Sanh, also known as ?the Hill Fights.? Although this harrowing combat in the spring of 1967 provided a grisly preview of the carnage to come at Khe Sanh, few are aware of the significance of the battles, or even their existence. For more than thirty years, virtually the only people who knew about the Hill Fights were the Marines who fought them. Now, for the first time, the full story has been pieced together by acclaimed Vietnam War historian Edward F. Murphy, whose definitive analysis admirably fills this significant gap in Vietnam War literature. Based on first-hand interviews and documentary research, Murphy?s deeply informed narrative history is the only complete account of the battles, their origins, and their aftermath.

The Marines at the isolated Khe Sanh Combat Base were tasked with monitoring the strategically vital Ho Chi Minh trail as it wound through the jungles in nearby Laos. Dominated by high hills on all sides, the combat base had to be screened on foot by the Marine infantrymen while crack, battle-hardened NVA units roamed at will through the high grass and set up elaborate defenses on steep, sun-baked overlooks.

Murphy traces the bitter account of the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh from the outset in 1966, revealing misguided decisions and strategies from above, and capturing the chain of hill battles in stark detail. But the Marines themselves supply the real grist of the story; it is their recollections that vividly re-create the atmosphere of desperation, bravery, and relentless horror that characterized their combat. Often outnumbered and outgunned by a hidden enemy?and with buddies lying dead or wounded beside them?these brave young Americans fought on.

The story of the Marines at Khe Sanh in early 1967 is a microcosm of the Corps?s entire Vietnam War and goes a long way toward explaining why their casualties in Vietnam exceeded, on a Marine-in-combat basis, even the tremendous losses the Leathernecks sustained during their ferocious Pacific island battles of World War II.

The Hill Fights is a damning indictment of those responsible for the lives of these heroic Marines. Ultimately, the high command failed them, their tactics failed them, and their rifles failed them. Only the Marines themselves did not fail. Under fire, trapped in a hell of sudden death meted out by unseen enemies, they fought impossible odds with awesome courage and uncommon valor.

From the Hardcover edition.

for more information click here

hot