Overview

When the 160 men of Charlie Company (4th Battalion/47th Infantry Regiment/9th Infantry Division) were drafted by the US Army in May 1966, they were part of the wave of conscription that would swell the American military to eighty thousand combat troops in Vietnam by the height of the war in 1968. In the spring of 1966 the war was still popular, and the draftees of Charlie Company saw their service as a rite of passage. But by December 1967, when the company returned home, only thirty men were not casualties-and they were among the first veterans of the war to be spit on and harassed by war protesters as they arrived back home. In The Boys of '67, Andrew Wiest, the award-winning author of Vietnam's Forgotten Army and The Vietnam War 1956-1975, examines the experiences of a company from the only division in the Vietnam era to train and deploy together in similar fashion to World War II's famous 101st Airborne Division. Wiest interviewed more than fifty officers and enlisted men who served with Charlie Company, including the surviving platoon leaders and both of the company's commanders. In addition, he interviewed fifteen family members of Charlie Company veterans, including wives, children, parents, and siblings. Wiest also had access to personal papers, collections of letters, a diary, an abundance of newspaper clippings, training notebooks, field manuals, condolence letters, and photographs from before, during, and after the conflict. As Wiest shows, the fighting that Charlie Company saw in 1967 was nearly as bloody as many of the better publicized battles, including the infamous battles of the Ia Drang Valley and Hamburger Hill. As a result, many of the surviving members of Charlie Company came home with what the military now recognizes as post-traumatic stress disorder-a diagnosis that was not recognized until the late 1970s and was not widely treated until the 1980s. Only recently, after more than forty years, have many members of Charlie Company achieved any real and sustained relief from their suffering.

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9781482946499

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The Boys of '67delivers the unvarnished truth about the men's experiences from the chaos of combat to the challenges they have faced reintegrating into society. -- Toy Soldier & Model Figure magazine Wiest concentrates on the human side of the conflict...[He] spent three years interviewing sixty-one officers and men of Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry. He tells their stories well and emphatically. -- Vietnam Veterans of America The Boys of '67 follows a single infantry company in a single year of the Vietnam War...It is a story of men who routinely put their lives into each other's hands. It is a story of fear and heroism, of waste, confusion, boredom-and their impact on those who return home. Wiest's empathy and perception make the book as emotionally compelling as it is intellectually penetrating, impossible to read with a detached mind or dry eyes. -- Dennis Showalter, author of Hitler's Panzers This is a story of men at war in the tradition of A Band of Brothers. It is a remarkable book written by a master storyteller and meticulous historian...I cannot recommend it strongly enough, particularly for fellow Vietnam veterans and their families, military historians, and anyone interested in what American soldiers went through in the Vietnam War. -- James H. Willbanks, PhD, Vietnam veteran and author of Abandoning Vietnam In the final analysis, this book is a superb story of a US Army company in combat...The Boys of '67 is simply a story about war, the things men do in war, and the things war does to them. The saga of the American soldier remains an important story that deserves to be told. Readers are in Wiest's debt for making Charlie Company's story accessible to the American public. -- Colonel Cole C. Kingseed, USA (Ret.), Army Magazine A powerful account of conflict, Andy Wiest's The Boys of '67 provides what is all too rare: a 'face of battle' account that is at once scholarly and well written, perceptive and engaging. -- Jeremy Black, author of War Since 1945 The Boys of '67 is an exceptionally well-researched and well-told story of an exceptional US Army infantry company in Vietnam...Andrew Wiest sheds light and understanding on the human and psychological dimension of war and the aftermath of war. It is a story of courage, comradeship, tribulation, suffering, and perseverance. -- Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty This is a compelling and intimate look at one unit's wartime experience, filled with loss, excitement, humor, and pain that readers of wartime memoirs will especially want to share. -- Library Journal Wiest spent three years interviewing sixty-one officers and men of Charlie Company, Fourth Battalion, Forty-Seventh Infantry. He tells their stories well and empathically, especially those of the dozen or so men whose lives he examines closely before, during, and after their service in the nation's most controversial overseas war. -- Publishers Weekly Wiest's use of personal interviews and letters home puts a personal touch on the book. I felt a growing sense of attachment to the men of Charlie Company as the book progressed, felt a sense of their heartache when their brothers died, and I sympathized for many of them who struggled with PTSD following the war. Wiest addresses the ugliness and humanity of war but also the loving bonds that are created between men who experience war together and the indelible marks it leaves on their minds. -- Armchair General Vietnam has been the subject of countless books: this is one of the best. Exhaustively researched and expertly written, it allows us a glimpse of the intense bonds of comradeship forged by soldiers in the white heat of combat. -- BBC History Magazine A powerful Vietnam testimony that's a 'must' for any military collection! -- Midwest Book Review Thoughtful and richly detailed, this outstanding account of the early phase of the war in Vietnam takes us into the forbidding Mekong River Delta with the men of Charlie Company to witness their harrowing firefights and their fleeting victories, to appreciate the singular combat experience haunting their dreams and those of their country. -- Hugh Ambrose, New York Times bestselling author of The Pacific

Author Information

Andrew Wiest, PhD, is professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi and also the founding director of the Center for the Study of War and Society. He was born in Chicago but raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. After attending the University of Southern Mississippi, Dr. Wiest went on to receive his PhD from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1990. Specializing in the study of World War I and Vietnam, Dr. Wiest has served as a visiting senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in the United Kingdom and as a visiting professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy in the United States Air Force Air War College. Since 1992 he has been active in international education, leading a study abroad program on World War II to London and Normandy each summer and developing the award-winning Vietnam Study Abroad Program. Dr. Wiest has published more than a dozen books on various topics, including Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN, which won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award; America and the Vietnam War; Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land; and Passchendaele and the Royal Navy. Additionally Dr. Wiest has appeared in and consulted on several historical documentaries for the History Channel, Granada Television, PBS, the BBC, and Lucasfilm. He lives in Hattiesburg with his family. William Hughes is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. A professor of political science at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, he received his doctorate in American politics from the University of California at Davis. He has done voice-over work for radio and film and is also an accomplished jazz guitarist.

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