All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
Hey, welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry, a CW-2 helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
I was born about 200 years ago, 1969.
Welcome to our program.
Today, I'm really excited.
My guest is Mark Liebsen.
He's a writer for the Vietnam Veterans of America magazine, the veteran book reviewer.
I think he writes columns, everything else over there.
He probably cleans out the building on Friday afternoons.
But Mark has been a friend of Veterans Radio.
He knows all about these books that we want to talk about today.
So I'm encouraging you to listen to our program.
We're going to be talking about some really great gifts for the upcoming season for the
veteran in your house or if you're a historian.
Some of these things are going to be really cool for you, too, I think.
So I'm encouraging you, if you do have a book that you'd like to recommend, why don't you
give us a call during the program?
The number is 734-822-1600.
734-822-1600.
Before we start our interview with Mark, let me thank our sponsors because, of course,
we cannot do this program without these wonderful and amazing sponsors that have been supporting
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All right, let's get into our bookstories today.
So as I mentioned before, my guest is Mark Leepson, and Mark is a senior writer for the
VVA Veterans Magazine.
That's a Vietnam Veterans of America.
He's also the arts editor, columnist, and he's also an author of an upcoming book, which
we'll talk about later on.
So Mark has been writing book reviews, I don't know, or I ever would think, but I'll bring
him right on here.
So Mark, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Thanks, Dale.
It's always great.
I've been writing reviews for, you know, as long as you've been a helicopter pilot, like
a good hundred years, you know.
Yeah, we were back when we were flying, you know, Leonardo da Vinci's version of the helicopter
sometimes.
But it's great to have you back on the program, Mark, and I appreciate you coming on.
You know, with the holiday season coming up, I thought this would be kind of an appropriate
topic to talk about because there have been so many just really great books that have
come out over the last year.
Of course, you know, over the time, over time, maybe we could talk about some.
So I'm going to start off by doing one that I did last week.
And this was the book was titled Jeep Show.
And I thought it was really fun.
So yeah, the book is titled Jeep Show.
It's by Robert O'Connor, and it talks about kind of talks about entertainers being sent
up to the front lines during World War II.
And and, you know, not an organized fashion, but usually three people and a driver would
go up as close to the enemy lines as they could get.
They would put on show for the troops out in the field, and then they would skedaddle
back behind the lines.
The the interesting thing I thought about this in addition to the historical perspective
was that some of the names that he had mentioned were that were part of these Jeep shows were
Mickey Rooney, Bert Lancaster, Dick Van Dyke, other entertainers, you know, many who were
not famous yet that did this.
So I would encourage people to check out the Jeep show.
So your turn.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you know, I was just thinking that was that called special services back in World
War II?
Yeah, they were all on shows.
Yeah.
Yeah, they even have a special MOS for it.
Yeah.
My uncle was in special services in Europe.
Yeah.
He was drafted into the army and late sort of late in the war.
And he tells the story that my cousin who was born in February of 45 saved him from
going over and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge because he got an emergency leave because
his daughter was born.
He was about to ship out.
Oh, well, before that.
And anyway, and he was a dancer and choreographer in New York before.
And so when he got there, he missed the Battle of the Bulge.
And he went to the Battle of the Bulge and he was like, oh, my God.
And and did special and put on shows.
Just like you said, they would come up to the front and really, really cool.
Absolutely.
The character in the book got caught in the Battle of the Bulge and, you know, and ended
up, you know, having to, you know, everybody was available at that point.
And so, you know, I gave him a rifle.
He got separated.
He ended up doing all kinds of different duties.
And, you know, he said he had the privilege of meeting, you know, he got to meet Patton.
He got to meet Eisenhower.
He saw Marshall.
He's, you know, I saw all these people and it's a kind of a fictionalized account of
what really occurred.
But yeah, I it's a it's a cool story.
I really enjoyed reading it and then talking to the author.
He's a good guy.
You need to talk to him.
Yeah.
I put it on the list.
So, I think looking over the year, I think the book that stood out the most and you were
right.
There was a good number of really good books dealing with the war and Vietnam War veteran.
And don't forget, that's what I'm specializing in Vietnam War and Vietnam War veterans.
But the one that stood out the most for me was this great history just called the Vietnam
War, a military history by a University of North Texas professor named Jeffrey War.
WRO, W-A-W-R-O.
And you know, there's been a lot of histories of the Vietnam War.
And I was kind of like, oh no, here comes another one.
And you know, it wasn't it wasn't short.
It was good 550 pages, but two two really important things.
One is Professor Warrow is a great writer.
You know, there was nothing stodgy about this history.
So it really helped on a 550 page book if the guy could really write well and you wanted
to read, you know, you wanted to keep going.
And he calls it a military history.
And yes, it is, but he, you know, how could you write a book about history book about
the Vietnam War without considering the politics behind everything?
I mean, the most political of political wars ever, you know, the big decisions by everybody
going back, you know, to Truman and Eisenhower and including especially Kennedy, Johnson,
Nixon, you know, almost the entire strategy was almost based on politics, you know, on
winning the next election, what they had to do, how they had to, you know, feed, put
out the image of being strong on communism against communism.
But anyway, so I thought he wove together the politics and, you know, the war on the
ground and in the air really well.
So I'm putting that on the top of my list.
As far as nonfiction, as far as history is concerned, it's called just simply the Vietnam
War.
And I've noticed that it's got another guy.
My review is going to be in the January, sorry, in the November, December issue of the veteran,
which is coming out next week.
But you know, because we're bi-monthly, a lot of other reviews have appeared or several
others and they've all been great and the book is selling well, especially for history.
So I'm going to put that on the top of the list.
The Vietnam, just the Vietnam War by Professor Jeffrey Wawaraw.
W-A-W-R-O.
Okay.
Did you learn anything new from the book?
You know, I don't know that I learned.
I learned a few things.
You know, I've studied and read and written about this war for 40 years now.
And I think what I learned from him reinforced what I knew to a great degree.
And also, I think that for those who haven't read the history of the war in detail, this
would be a great book to start with.
It's very accessible, like I said.
It's very readable.
It's not, you know, and it's not a political book, even though it's talking about this
political war.
He does take his stands on criticizing, you know, American politicians, generals, but
he also is not easy on the other side.
I mean, you'll read a lot of stuff about Lays Juan, for instance, and Le Duc Tho, to a lesser
extent, Ho Chi Minh, and the other top leadership in North Vietnam that's not exactly, you know,
favorable.
So, I would say that I learned little bits here and there, but mostly, and he did a hell
of a lot of research, including in Hanoi and in England.
You know, he went to England, spent a lot of time in the British Museum Archives because
the Brits had, if they didn't have relations, they did have a lot of correspondence going
back and forth between their foreign office and the other side on the Vietnam War, you
know.
So, and he did go into Vietnamese archives, but I like that perspective, you know, where
you're getting sort of an outside view of it, but also someone who's got information from
the inside as far as the other side is concerned.
So, I'm putting that on the top of the list.
That sounds really interesting.
Yeah.
Let's see.
I'll put that one over there.
I'll put that one over in the 500 page books over there, which is kind of cool.
One of the ones I wanted to talk about was one that you also had reviewed, and we borrowed
it here on Veterans Radio and actually played it.
And that was the one called The Women, which is a national bestseller out there.
It's by Kirsten Anna, and it's sort of a, and I have it listed here also with another
book about army nurses that were in Vietnam.
And to me, it's sort of a story of Diane Carlson Evans with her book Healing Wounds.
This, I don't know, it was one, you know, like you said, it was one of the books that
I picked up and I just couldn't put it down.
It was, you know, just, it's the story of a young woman who, for whatever reason, decides
that she's going to join the military and wants to be a nurse and wants to go to Vietnam.
And what she does there is she's a great, you know, great nurse, a great, I don't know,
a great military person.
And then it talks about her struggles when she got home.
And it's, you know, and everybody kind of thinks, okay, well, you know, it's always
the infantry guy that comes home and they're the ones that struggle.
Well, I think the nurses were probably exposed to more gore and damage and anything than
anybody in the field was.
And I just, I really enjoyed your interview on this.
And the book is just, it's a must read, I think, for men and women.
It doesn't even, if you're not in the military, it's, I think it's a must read.
100% I agree with you.
And I first heard about the book from Diane, Diane and Carlson Evans.
She alerted me to the book.
I knew of Kristen Hannah's work.
She's a, she writes really romance novels, bestsellers.
And Diane, Kristen to her credit, you know, read Diane's book, like you said, Healing
Wounds, which was really terrific book.
It came out during the pandemic in 2020 and it didn't get as much publicity as it should
have.
But it's, it's out there and it's, it's also a good seller.
But talk about Beth Sardale.
I mean, the first printing of the women was one million copies.
And it immediately, this was back in February of this year.
And it went right to number one, stayed around number one bestselling book, you know, for
weeks, if not months, it's still on the bestseller list.
It's really hit a nerve.
It really does illuminate the, what the women nurses went through in the Vietnam War and
after of course, her Frankie, the lead character, her trials and tribulations after are almost
worse than the mud and the blood that she was into in the Vietnam War.
So it's a great story.
Kristen Hannah is nothing if not a great storyteller.
And like you said, it's a good companion piece to Diane Carlson Evans, his memoir, Healing
Moons and also, you know, the first really good eye opening memoir of a Vietnam War nurse.
And that was Linda van de Venters, Home Before Morning.
You know, Linda, yeah, I mean, it's, yeah.
And, and you know, that, that brings me to another book, but Home Before Morning, you
haven't.
It's, it's, it's, it's a book that I'm a writer is, I don't laugh, I'll cry.
Oh, that was, that was my next, my next suggestion.
Yeah.
So Linda's daughter, Molly Stilman, wrote a memoir called If I Don't Laugh, I'll Cry.
And boy, is it really good.
I mean, Molly was a little girl when her, when her mom came home and she grew up and
Linda, of course, just like Diana and just like virtually all the other nurses over there
had PTSD, you know, like you said, even the guys who were in the thick of things did not
see as much of, you know, of mud and blood close up as the nurses did, you're not in
a daily basis, but almost on a daily basis.
I, if you remember in, in the women, Frankie's first day, first day at the evac hospital,
she's in it.
And he's, you know, you know, ankle deep in it because of, you know, guys are coming
in and triage and helicopter from the helicopter medivacs.
So and then, so Molly's book tells her mother's story.
Actually, she does it.
It's great about in there about, about Linda writing the book, how she came to write it,
there was action to the book.
And then of course, people might probably know Linda got sick and she died at a fairly
young age.
And it was really, really tough on, on Molly.
Of course, her daughter and Linda's husband, and she goes over that.
But I say that for anybody who has read Linda's book, this one is a must too.
If I don't laugh, I'll cry.
And you know, part of it is because they had such a great sense of humor, even, even though
Linda was going through hell physically.
And so yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because that was going to be my next one to
mentioning conjunction with the, with the women.
And I feel fortunate that I knew Linda Van Van Her through my work at Vietnam Veterans
of America.
And she was a wonderful person, a great nurse.
She's a nurse.
She went into nursing after she came home.
So did Diane Evans and their, you know, their nurses, you know, nurses, they're giving people
and they're caring people.
And of course, we, all of us who served in the Vietnam War owe a great debt to them and
the doctors.
Right.
Absolutely.
I think so.
The next one I want to talk to is I saw this little ad in the VBA magazine one time and
it's called in the shadows of Vietnam.
It's a, it's a book about Father Phillips, uh, Saloas.
That's why he's for Salwa.
I don't pronounce it correctly.
Thank you, Mark.
And it was written by two of his, his friends, Julian and, uh, I don't know where it's, where
do you go?
Julian Anyot, AYOTTE and Paul Carancy.
And I just thought this story was great.
It's about Father Phil who was in the infantry in Vietnam and received a Silver Star for
what he did.
And it was one of those stories where if he kind of made this promise that if I survive,
you know, I'll do whatever you tell me to do, God, I promise.
And, uh, God told me to go to the seminary and I kind of went from there, but he's always
been involved with veterans issues over the last 60 years, like many of us.
And, uh, it was a wonderful interview that I did with him back in the spring.
And he's just, you know, he's one of those people that you could just listen to on and
on and on because he's always saying the right thing and he's always encouraging and he's
always, you know, wanting to know what he can do to help.
And that's what he's been doing his whole life.
Yeah.
Luckily enough too, I've known Father Phil for a long time.
You know, he's been VVAs national chaplain all these years, decades.
He's a great man, a great man of God.
And like you said, he went through hell in Vietnam and made a battlefield promise.
God, if I get through this, I'm going to go into the clergy.
And he did.
And so, yeah, I mean, he's a great guy and that's a good, that's a good tale of his
life, that book right there.
I think you can, you know, because the first part of the book, of course, is his experiences
in Vietnam.
And the brief part of it is that he crawled out across a battlefield and was dragging,
you know, a wounded person back more than one.
And so, you know, he received a silver star, which is, you know, you got to do a lot to
get one of those.
And yeah, he was cool.
So anyway, the book is in the shadow of Vietnam.
I really encourage people to get that if they get the opportunity.
So where are we going next?
I have a list, but I need to.
Let me talk about two books real quick, both of which are, you know, I never know the
term graphic novel, you know, like a comic book, but they are, they are not, they're
novelizations.
They're both true stories, but they're not not not fictionalized through drawing and
writing.
And one of them is called Drafted by a guy named Rick Parker, which tells the story of
how he was drafted into the army when he was, you know, flunked out of college in 1966.
In basic training.
And then he was chosen for OCS, even though he was drafted, he went to OCS, came to artillery,
and he wound up in White Sands, New Mexico, dealing with nuclear, you know, bombs or nuclear
warheads and that kind of stuff.
And so, Rick Parker is a great graphic artist.
He worked at Marvel for 15 years.
He did the drawing of all the Beavis and Butthead graphic novels.
And his book is just great.
I know, you know, it's like he has a great story to tell.
A lot of things happen, including death and the Vietnam War, even though he never left
the United States, you know, accident and different stuff like that.
But and he draws so well and he remembers stuff.
I just say that anybody who went through basic training, whether they were drafted or not,
and advanced training, AIT in the army, and probably in the Navy Marines and Air Force
too, would really, really relate to this book, especially the first, you know, three-fourths
of it, talking about the training and stuff that happened.
And the other graphic novelization is called The Heart That Fed.
The Heart That Fed, and it's by a young guy named Carl Scacciattano.
And it tells his father's story, who was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, but
late in the war, in I think, I guess, 72 or 73.
And he wound up with a Marine detachment.
And, you know, you would think a guy in the Air Force and, you know, whatever, but he
was close to it.
He also had PTSD and the book goes through Carl's growing up with his father, you know,
who didn't talk about the war, but manifested the PTSD symptoms.
And again, it's a graphic novel, a.k.a. comic book, a.k.a. novelization that really, really
uses words and drawings and images to really tell a great Vietnam War and Vietnam post-war
story and a family story.
And so again, it's called The Heart That Fed by Carl Scacciattano.
Okay.
So those are graphic novels.
Yeah, go ahead.
Graphic novels.
I know we, I covered a couple of those.
I had one that I kind of piggybacked on that, but it was from World War II.
And the book was entitled, I Will Tell No War Stories, What Our Fathers Left Unset About
World War II.
And this is about by Howard Mansfield.
And he's talking about his father.
And he says, after coming home from World War II, Pinkis was his name.
Mansfield refused to tell anyone about his time as a waste gunner on a B-17.
And his sons knew nothing about what their father did during the war until he moved into
a veteran's home toward the end of his life.
And when they started cleaning out his house, they came across their dad's diary.
And it just, it's a fascinating story.
And it's a great memoir.
And it's, the book has been written just, I don't know, I guess, lovingly written by
his son.
And that would encourage for people, because we all know, you know, anybody who's grown
up with a relative who was in the service, especially your dad, you know, they never
talked about what they did.
They never really talked about what happened or good times or bad times.
And you know, you really want to go back and find out more about their lives.
And this is one example of that.
I know there are many out there, but this one I thought was very good.
It says, I will tell no war stories, what our father's left unsaid.
Yeah, great topic.
Great topic.
They're everywhere.
Yeah.
I don't know where they are and what they're doing.
Let's see, what have I got here?
Can I drop one in real quick?
Yeah, please do.
Yeah.
I mean, and kind of a different vein and a good one, I think.
You know, James Lee Burke, the crime novelist, the thriller, cop thriller novelist.
Well, of course he does much more than that.
But he's the one who created Dave Robichaux, the Cajun detective Vietnam War veteran who
is PTSD, recovering alcoholic and a great man, a great man who cares about other people,
risks his life to help people who are victims of crime down in the Bayou of Louisiana.
And so I think there are 28 Dave Robichaux.
I've read all of them and James Lee Burke is the great writer.
I mean, he creates great characters.
Well, Dave's partner in crime, you know, not really crime, but in fighting crime, although
those two guys get kind of wild sometimes and push the envelope as law enforcement officers.
Both were kicked off the New Orleans Police Department for behavior that crossed the line,
trying to help good people.
But anyway, his partner in crime, in fighting crime, was a guy named Klee Purcell, who was
a Marine, Marine in Vietnam, who went through hell there too, also has his issues with PTSD.
And James Lee Burke's newest novel, which came out this year, is just called Klee.
And in it, Dave and Klee go at it once again, fighting the most evil crime doers, standing
up for the little guy, going over the line, but all in and it's all just great, fast,
fast page turning police procedural.
And so I love James Lee Burke.
He's a great writer.
He's in his late 80s now, and he's still pumping out these great novels.
Yeah.
So that just wanted to get that one in just in case we were running out of time.
No, I think that's cool.
I love to hear, especially the uplifting stories about Vietnam veterans, because unfortunately,
Mark, as you know, when we first got back into the real world, the stories that were
being written at the time were not very positive about the Vietnam veteran.
And then we had the movies coming out with the apocalypse nows and the rambos and so
on and so forth.
And there weren't very many redeeming qualities regarding the Vietnam veteran.
And so this is one of the reasons why I'd love to read these stories that are written
as by Vietnam veterans who can kind of really get that true story out there.
And we were just regular people just doing our jobs and have the same issues that anybody
that comes back for more has.
One of the books that I have talked about recently was, and I know you know the name
of it, but I'm trying to think of it, but it was Achilles in Vietnam.
And that was written by, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he talks
about the history of the warrior, basically, and how you can't expect warriors coming home
from war, whether it's the Peloponnesian wars or from Afghanistan, not to have something
going on in their head that they're trying to work their way through.
And I think it's important for our audiences to remember that.
Because what he was talking about was that the Greek armies, they would take them out
somewhere for a month before they would let them go back into the community.
And today even the guys and women that are coming back, or that came back from Afghanistan
and Syria and so forth, they don't go straight home.
Yeah, it's called decompression.
And we didn't get that, remember?
Yes.
We came home, we got plane.
We were home within 24 hours and then they sent us right back into quote unquote normal
life.
Yes, you said we had to go back to your job at wherever it was and you definitely weren't
ready for it.
We're going to take a break right now.
And when we come back, we're going to continue talking about books that have come out during
2024 that you may be interested in.
And maybe some books that came out even earlier that just talk about military, about veterans,
military history, and so forth.
So stick around, stay tuned.
You're listening to Veterans Radio.
We will be right back.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in combat given a member of the Armed
Forces of the United States.
There have been over 3,400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Army Captain Ed Freeman flew 14 rescue missions under intense enemy fire, saving 30 seriously
wounded soldiers.
Details after this.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for
Veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
As a flight leader, Freeman supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion in the
Itrang Valley, in the Republic of Vietnam.
The unit was almost out of ammunition after taking some of the heaviest casualties of
the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy
force.
When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone due to intense direct enemy fire,
Freeman risked his own life by flying his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy
fire time after time, delivering critically needed ammunition, water, and medical supplies
to the besieged battalion.
His flights had a direct impact on the battle's outcome by providing the engaged units with
timely supplies of ammunition critical to their survival.
Their medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly into the area due to intense enemy
fire.
Captain Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, providing life-saving evacuation of an estimated
30 seriously wounded soldiers, some of whom would not have survived had he not acted.
All flights were made into a small emergency landing zone within 100-200 yards of the defensive
perimeter, where heavily committed units were perilously holding off the attacking elements.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
Military veterans touch everyone's life.
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe
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Even the toughest of us sometimes need help, but don't know where to turn for support.
You don't need special training to help a veteran in your life.
We can all help someone going through a difficult time.
Learn how you can be there for veterans.
Visit veteranscrisisline.net.
A message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
We're back here on Veterans Radio, and we're going to be talking, we're talking with Mark
Leapson.
We're talking about books today.
So let's get right back into this, Mark.
I've got one that's just kind of a handy book, and I think it's important.
It's a book about veterans benefits, and it's called Veterans Benefits for You, Get What
You Deserve.
It's by Dr. Paul Lawrence.
And it's a really, it's just a small paperback, maybe 200 pages or so, but it's got some great
information in there about how you can do business with the VA and eventually hopefully
get the benefits that you are entitled to and that you, you know, that you earned as
you go along.
So, yeah, this is kind of a side.
It's called Veterans Benefits for You, Get What You Deserve, Dr. Paul Lawrence.
And he was a good guy, too.
He's, he's, he's, hopefully I'm going to have him back on the program in a couple of months,
because he does, we do a benefits program once a month, and he's asked, you know, volunteered
to come back on.
So we'll have him back on again.
Okay.
I got also another, another history book for you.
It's a history and a memoir.
It's called Diplomats at War, Diplomats at War.
And the author was Charlie Charles Truhart.
And it's a, so it deals with Charlie's father, Bill Truhart, who was the number two at the
U.S. Embassy in Saigon in the early 1960s.
So this book tells about what happened through historical standpoint and through the standpoint
of Charlie Truhart, who, he was a kid.
He was like in middle school and maybe started high school.
Because, you know, remember, dependents were still allowed to be there back then and before
the war got really amped up, although stuff was happening in 1960, 61, 62, 63.
But it's also, so it's, but it's still through his eyes.
And he was, he went on to be a journalist.
He was a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post.
And so it's a dual story of this, you know, the historic events that happened, you know,
the Buddhist crisis, and then of course the assassination of ZM in November 2nd, 1963.
And you know, I, I've studied the Vietnam War for a long time.
I'm really interested, I'm interested in everything, but I've had particular interest
in how the U.S. got involved in the war, starting with the end of the World War II in 1945.
Through the French War from 45 to 54.
And then those decisions that were made in the early 50s, you know, to help out the French
regain their Indochinese colonies, which we did, we didn't send any personnel, but we
underwrote that war.
And then after the French lost in 1954, you know, we slowly began to get involved until,
you know, we were in a war.
And of course, what happened in 1963, and so Diplomats at War is a great title because
it talks about, you know, his father, who was the number two in the embassy, and Fritz
Nolting, who was the ambassador.
They were friends and colleagues from, they were both foreign service, a career foreign
service officers.
It was not, you know, an appointment of a, you know, somebody who knew the president
to be the ambassador to South Vietnam.
And they were both chosen to take this post mostly because they spoke French.
And when they got there, they found the war was, you know, bubbling up.
The Buddhist crisis was going on.
And they had this big disagreement over whether the U.S. should continue to support President
Zm, who was cracking down on the Buddhists, his brother, you remember, no, no, no, no,
was the head of the secret police.
And they had like a, you know, a suppression of freedom of the press, student protests
and so on.
So there was a big debate within American Vietnam policy making in Washington and Saigon
over whether to continue to support to support Zm or not to.
And of course we all know what happened.
And Knowlting, the ambassador and Charlie's father, Bill Truhardt were on opposite sides
of that.
Knowlting wanted to stay with Zm.
Truhardt originally did and then came to see that he thought he should go.
So they were at war with each other.
So this is a great title of the book.
Anyway, we know what happened and we kind of get a really good ringside seat on that
one from a personal standpoint.
And the history is really good too.
So, and it's a good read.
It's called Diplomats at War by Charles Truhardt.
Charles Truhardt.
Yeah, P-R-U-E-H-E-A-R-T.
Got it.
All right.
So kind of going back in time and talking about what's, you know, how all of these issues
and these famous names that we, you know, we heard as children stuff.
I just finished a book.
It's called Team America.
And it's about World War II.
And the Team America is, it's about George Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and Eisenhower
and how the world was made in their image.
And it's really great for any of you historians out there or World War II, you know, history
buffs that want to know more about what went on.
I found this to be a really good read.
It's in an audiobook as well, which is, you know, sometimes a little easier to listen
to sometimes.
But you find out all this interaction between, you know, George Patton, who was, you know,
a aristocrat, came from a rich family.
All these other things always felt neglected because he went to, you know, he didn't go
to West Point like the rest of them did.
And so he has these complexes.
But he's based on what every one of them said, you know, he was the best fighting general
in the history of America.
He just, nothing ever stopped him.
And George Marshall, who was, you know, overall commander in chief of all of the theaters going
on at the time, which most of us weren't aware of.
And, you know, eventually after World War II, he set up the Marshall Plan, which, you
know, to rebuild Europe.
It was a great Eisenhower, which many of us grew up thinking he was just the coolest guy
out there, and because he won, he personally won World War II, which we know is not true.
But from his humble beginnings in, you know, Kansas, and he ended up being a staff officer
for MacArthur and MacArthur, who's, you know, been called the American Caesar, whose personality
could drive anybody crazy.
But he was a great general.
And, you know, he always, a man always respected him, loved him and all these other things.
So anyway, this is a book I, you history buffs, you got to read.
It's one of those four or 500 page guys, but it's an excellent read.
It's by Robert L. O'Connell, C-O-N-N-E-L-L.
It's in paperbacks, not too bad.
It's a great read.
You get to find out what you're, what was going on, you know, when you were just before
you were born.
So, Team America.
I strongly recommend it.
My turn?
Yep, your turn.
Okay.
Yeah.
One of the better memoirs that I read this year was a book called Found by a guy named
Jack McClain, who was a Marine in the Vietnam War.
And Jack had it's really well written.
It deals with some really interesting stuff that happened to him afterward, after he came
home.
So Jack wrote a really good memoir that came out a bunch of years ago called Loon, L-O-O-N,
which was a landing zone Loon and talks about, it's a definite, one of the better in country
Vietnam war novels.
So this book, Found, is a file, a follow up, and it talks about his long fight to, you
know, with PTSD, with getting his benefits that he earned from the VA.
And when I say long, it took years and years and years and years.
But it also deals with his effort to bring the family of one of his buddies who was killed
in Vietnam together.
And it's a really intriguing story of, you know, generational split in a family that Jack
only took him a long time to figure out and to figure out how to help.
And I don't want to give too much away, but it's really intriguing.
And there is a happy ending for it.
So it's Jack McClain, he's a Marine.
His first book was called Loon, which is really a great Vietnam War memoir.
And then his follow up, which came out this year, probably 15, 20 years after the other
one is called Found, F-O-U-N-D.
Oh, well, he's a great story.
You know, I wish I could write like you guys do.
It's not that I have a great story to tell, but I would love to get it down.
So, you know, my son and granddaughter and stuff, you know, wanted to know, what did
you do?
I don't know.
Here it is.
But, yeah, I mean, they're good stories.
I got one that's a little bit more current that my partner Jim Falcone had on it when
he was doing a program.
The book is entitled Always Faithful, and it's the story of the war in Afghanistan,
the fall of Kabul, and the unshakeable bond between a Marine and an interpreter.
It's by a major Tom Schumann, S-C-H-U-E-M-A-N, and Zan Zainullah Zaki.
And he was the interpreter.
It talks about the bond between the Marine and his interpreter and how after the fall
of Afghanistan, how he worked so hard to get his interpreter out and all of the roadblocks
that he ran into.
It turns out to be a pretty good story.
I'm not going to give everything away either, but I would really encourage people to read
this.
You know, these things occur.
I can remember we have a family here locally who escaped from Cambodia.
You know, when we had that little incursion there.
They escaped from Cambodia to Thailand.
We're in Thailand four, five, six years.
Ended up finally getting to America.
They lived 20 in an apartment in California, and now they own a bakery franchise system
all across the country.
It's a great success story.
For those locally in Ann Arbor, just go to Dom's Bakery and ask them about it.
And the idea of trying to get these people that did so much to help the American troops
in their country and the difficulty that they had with the agreements that some people didn't
keep.
Let's put it that way.
But it's a great story.
It's called Always Faithful, Major Tom Shulman.
It's a good story.
It's a really good story.
It's one of those that you, you know, it's another up all night story.
So, your turn.
Okay.
Another, this one is in number two, Vietnam War and post-Vietnam War.
It's called The Face of the Enemy.
The Face of the Enemy.
And it's written by David Chung, C-H-U-N-G.
And David has a tie to Diane Carlson Evans in that he is an Air Force Vietnam War veteran.
He, kind of like, I was talking about Carl Satchitano's father who was in the Air Force
in the latter stages of the war.
So was David.
And he went up and he, I guess, was 72, 73.
He saw a lot of horrible stuff there during his Vietnam War tour.
He also had PTSD when he came back.
But he, you know, got himself together and he got a job with FedEx and he kept going
up the ladder on FedEx.
And then when the Vietnam, I mean, you might remember this deal, when the Women's Memorial,
the Vietnam Women's Memorial was built in, I guess, so they had the 30th anniversary
last year, so it was 93.
The centerpiece of the memorial is a sculpture by Glenna Woodacre and her studio, you know,
of the three nurses and her studio is in, I think, New Mexico or someplace way up there
in southwest.
Well, the question was how to get that statue to Washington, D.C. in time for the memorial.
Well, David heard about it and he managed to talk to Fred Smith, you know, Fred Smith,
as he's founder and CEO of FedEx.
He was a Marine in the Vietnam War.
And so Fred Smith gave David the job of packing this thing up.
I mean, it's huge and getting it cross country in time for the dedication.
And what happened was as they designed a special truck that had, you could, was open on the
sides, when, I'm maybe not getting this totally right, but basically when they made their first,
and it took like, I don't know, a week or 10 days to get across the country, when they
made their first stop, when they parked the thing overnight, people came out to watch
and by the hundreds, by the thousands eventually.
They eventually changed the route so it could go through more cities for people to take
a look at this great statue and they did get it there on time.
And it's a great success.
And that's, you know, one part of David's story in the face of the enemy.
The other is since he's Asian-American, his face, he talks about how being Asian and being
a US member of the US Air Force, the impact that that had on him, it wasn't always a positive
thing, you know, in country or after the war.
So I recommend that book.
Wow.
I remember, I must have read that one because it sounds, I remember the story.
I reviewed it in the magazine.
There you go.
Maybe I read it there.
Well, you know, anyway, you and, you know, if people wanted to read your reviews, the
regular audience can do that, can't they?
Yeah, they can access the magazine.
Yeah, on the online version comes out, you know, a couple of weeks after each print edition.
So VVVVVVeteran.org.
And then scroll down and hit the key for books, books and reviews, the name of the column.
Are we going to talk about this other great book that's coming out like in December?
Yeah, yeah, we actually, we are, because I just got the sign we got about three, four
minutes to go.
So I'd like to introduce the author of a new book that is coming out.
It's called The Unlikely War Hero.
And it's, so tell me all about this book, not in detail, because we're going to do that
again in December.
Okay, thanks.
Thanks, Dale.
Yeah, The Unlikely War Hero is the story of the youngest and lowest ranking American
taken prisoner in North Vietnam and held in the Hanuay Hill.
His name was Doug Higdall.
He was a Navy seaman apprentice.
20, 20 years old, fell off his ship in April of 1967.
Then in the Gulf of Tonkin, while the big guns were firing, nobody saw it.
The ship pulled away somehow.
He's sort of, and this is like four o'clock in the morning.
He survived two to three hours, maybe even longer in the South China Sea.
He was about to go under when a fishing boat, North Vietnamese fishing boat picked him up.
They actually saved his life, but then they shipped him up to Hanuay.
He goes to the Hanuay Hilton.
And there he is with all those John McCain's and Jeremiah Denton's and all those guys,
10 years older than him, fly boys.
He's a 20 year old kid from Clark, South Dakota.
And then it turns out he has this great memory.
People may know this story.
It's been out there, but no one's told it in a book before.
And he winds up memorizing 254 names, ranks, and services of prisoners.
And when he does, the Americans, you know, they had their own unofficial chain of command
in the prison.
They ordered him to come home.
And he hesitated at first.
And he did when he got home, he rattled off those names.
And the Pentagon was able to change the status of 63 men from missing in action to prisoner
of war.
In other words, they told their families that their husband's fathers were live because
of what Doug did.
So this is a great story, unlikely war hero.
And let's talk about it on the show in depth.
Okay.
Yes, we will.
And when does that come out?
The official pub date is December 17th.
You can order it now on Amazon and all the other online.
It should be in bookstores by next week.
And I'm real, I try to get excited about my books, but I'm kind of excited about this
one.
So it'd be my 11th book, but my first book really that deals totally with the Vietnam
War.
Okay.
Well, I know that I have heard the story, but I'm anxious to hear you know what you got
because I know you did more research on it and so forth.
100%.
And a lot of the stuff you hear about Doug is either, you know, exaggerated or not true.
I got it.
I think I got it.
All right.
I thought the five POWs did a lot of research.
Okay.
All right.
Well, Mark Leapson, thank you very much for being on Veterans Radio today.
We talked about a lot of books.
I'm just trying to get all the names of them up on our website so people can go and say,
oh, that's where I heard about it.
So I encourage people to do that.
So Mark, thanks very much.
I'll be talking with you next month.
My pleasure Dale.
Thanks for doing what you do, man.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
We're going to be taking, you know, ending our program today and we're going to go out
on our America the Beautiful and it's going to be John Fountain this time.
And it's a, it's kind of a cool version of the song.
As you know, I think this song is really important.
So pay attention, stick around next week is benefits program.
And until then, this is Dale Thromary for Veterans Radio.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Those of you who might ask is what is your fascination?
My home sweet home
God bless America
My home sweet home
God bless America
And that I love, stand beside her
And guide her through the night with the light from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home
God bless America
My home sweet home
Oh beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grey
For purple mountain majesties
Above the brood at play
America, America
God shed His grace on thee
And crowned I could with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea
And crowned I could with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea
America