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Preface
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Preface My interests in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Vietnam War stem from my dad, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran. Although my dad has remained mostly silent about his wartime experiences, he has never shied from declaring his unwavering pride in the Marine Corps. When I was in grade school, sleeping in on Saturday mornings was seldom an option for my sisters and me, as my dad shouted his own Marine Corps boot camp version of “Reveille.” Apparently, eight o’clock was too late to sleep on a Saturday. Socially reserved and humble, my dad is also brutally honest. An alumnus of Texas A&M University once gloated to my dad about the “Corps of Cadets,” the individuals who comprise that institution’s ROTC program. With a stone-faced glare my dad responded, “There is only one Corps.” The adage “Once a Marine, always a Marine” aptly applies to my father. There is a distinct culture deeply engrained in the U.S. Marine Corps and the individuals who hold the title of U.S. Marine. The smallest of all U.S. military branches, the Marine Corps has embraced its image as a rough and tough, loud and proud group of supremely confident riflemen who stand ready to annihilate America’s enemies anytime and anywhere. In his Making the Corps, a masterful look into the culture of the Marine Corps, Thomas Ricks shares an “old Pentagon” joke about the different U.S. military services: “Each service is told to ‘secure’ a building. The Marine Corps wants to destroy it, the Army wants to establish a defensive perimeter, the Navy wants to paint it, and the Air Force wants to lease it for five years.”1 As an adolescent and young adult, I always associated annihilation and destruction with the U.S. Marine xi xii Preface Corps and its band of “leathernecks” and “devil dogs.” As an undergraduate , I wore a U.S. Marine Corps T-shirt with the words “When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight” blazoned across the chest. For much of my life, these images and beliefs stoked my perception of the Marines. When I arrived at Texas Tech University in 2006, the Vietnam War quickly ascended to the top of my list of general topics for a book project . At Texas Tech, I had immediate access to the Vietnam Center and Archive, the largest archive on the Vietnam War outside of the National Archives in Washington, more than a thousand miles from Lubbock, Texas. However, browsing through the millions of pages in the Vietnam Archive still did not yield a specific topic. Moreover, scholars had already meticulously detailed seemingly every military-related aspect of American involvement in Vietnam. After my first academic year at Texas Tech, I had no idea what specific avenue I would take for my research. In the summer of 2007, I traveled through Vietnam as part of the Vietnam Center’s study abroad program. The trip was a life-changing experience . During our three-week tour, we ventured from Hanoi to the country’s southernmost reaches in the Mekong Delta, making numerous stops along the way. I stood on historically significant grounds that had played critical roles in the war. Images from places such as Ap Bac, Khe Sanh, the beaches of Da Nang, and the former presidential palace of South Vietnam will forever be etched into my memory, as will the phone conversation I had with my father from the area he had patrolled during the war. As I gazed across the beautiful and peaceful landscapes of Vietnam , it was hard to imagine that violence, death, and devastation had once permeated these areas. In addition to acclimating myself to the geography, topography, and climate of Vietnam, I also gained a better understanding of the Vietnamese people. Among the dozens of urban and rural areas to which we ventured, the villages offered the most penetrating glimpse into traditional Vietnamese culture and society. The villages were void of the amenities that Americans often take for granted—refrigeration, toilets, air-conditioning, and clean drinking water. Yet I was awestruck by the positive and gracious attitudes of the villagers. Immersed in an environment that most Americans would deem abysmal and otherworldly, the villagers were calm, patient , and most of all happy. I realized firsthand that regardless of adverse [3.81.222.152] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:34 GMT) Preface xiii circumstances, the villagers simply wanted to live peacefully in...