Boys of ’67

Dr Andrew Wiest is Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi and is also the founding director of the Center for the Study of War and Society. After attending the University of Southern Mississippi for his undergraduate and masters degrees, Dr Wiest went on to receive his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1990. Specializing in the study of World War I and Vietnam, he has served as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy in the United States Air Force Air War College. Since 1992 Dr Wiest has been active in international education, developing the award-winning Vietnam Study Abroad Program.A widely published author, Wiest’s titles include Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York University), which won the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Award; America and the Vietnam War (Routledge); Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land (Osprey); and Passchendaele and the Royal Navy (Greenwood Press). Additionally Dr Wiest has appeared in and consulted on several historical documentaries for the History Channel, Granada Television, PBS, the BBC, and for Lucasfilm. Wiest lives in Hattiesburg with his wife Jill and their three children Abigail, Luke and Wyatt.

• Preface: Meeting CharlieIntroduction: The Need for CharliePrelude: Losing the Best We HadChapter 1: Who Was Charlie?Chapter 2: TrainingChapter 3: To Vietnam and into the Rung SatChapter 4: Into BattleChapter 5: The Day Everything ChangedChapter 6: The Steady Drumbeat of WarChapter 7: Charlie Transformed, Battlefield Coda, and the Freedom BirdChapter 8: Home From WarGlossaryThe Men of Charlie Company BibliographyAcknowledgements DedicationIndex

"Thoughtful and richly detailed, this outstanding account ... takes us into the forbidding Mekong River Delta with the men of Charlie Company, to witness their harrowing firefights and their fleeting victories." Hugh Ambrose, author of The Pacific "compelling... a fine blend of military and social history, sympathetic, well-written but analytically rigorous." Professor Gary Sheffield, BBC History Magazine Best Books of the Year 2012 "The Boys of '67 is an exceptionally well researched and well told story of a US Army infantry company in Vietnam. Charlie Company trained together, fought together, and bled together. Andrew Weist sheds light and understanding on the human and psychological dimension of war and the aftermath ... It is a story of courage, comradeship, tribulation, suffering, and perseverance." Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty "The Boys of '67 ... is a story of men who routinely put their lives into each others' 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: The Lightning Attacks that Revolutionized Warfare "A powerful account of conflict, Andrew 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 "This is a story of men at war in the tradition of Band of Brothers. It is a remarkable book written by a master storyteller and meticulous historian. Professor Wiest effectively demonstrates in extremely personal terms the impact of the war, both good and bad, on the soldiers who did the fighting, while also very eloquently addressing the cost of the war on those left behind at home. 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 and The Battle of An Loc "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." Col Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret. Despite that melancholy feel this is a book that I can thoroughly recommend. It gives a valuable insight into the life of the ordinary soldier early in the American involvement in Vietnam, and includes a fascinating series of post-war biographies, tracing the often difficult struggles of many of the survivors to adapt to their post-war lives. - History of War