The Boys of ’67 Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam, by Dr. Andrew Wiest

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Recommended: Psychological impact war has on soldiers

The Boys of ’67 Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam, by Dr. Andrew Wiest, is an account of Charlie Company’s involvement in the Vietnam War: from the activation of the Ninth Infantry Division, the draft and training, the arrival in Vietnam, the battles and losses, the replacements, the Freedom Bird, and ultimately for some, to the return home. The author writes of boys who were just becoming men and how they were brought together, the only division during the Vietnam War to be trained together and deployed together, to create a group of soldiers who became a band of brothers. The Boys of ’67 is the story of that brotherhood and how they walked through a year of living hell and were changed forever. As Dr. Wiest writes, “That jarring transformation, along with the transformation of the country to which they returned, changed the lives of the boys of Charlie Company forever.”
Dr. Andrew Wiest graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is currently a Professor of History at The University of Southern Mississippi. He is a founding director of the Center for the Study of War and Society, and 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. He is a widely published award winning author. In addition, he appears in and consults on historical documentaries for several publishers. He began with a desire to help students understand Vietnam better. He met a Vietnam veteran, John Young, and discovered that the story of Charlie Company was a tale that needed to be told. He researched using personal papers, collections of letters, newspaper...

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...erything the nation asked of them and received nothing in return but hardship.
Dr. Wiest used the personal accounts, of the soldiers who fought or of their surviving families, to make this an excellent account of a war so few want to talk about. His exhaustive research and expert writing, lets the reader see the bonds of brotherhood that developed in this division. He shows the soldiers as not just soldiers, but as humans, who suffered both physically and emotionally, both during their year in Vietnam and in their life afterward. He has clearly written a book that is for anyone interested in the Vietnam War. It is a powerful book that shows both the brutality and the humanity of war, through the lives of a group of brothers known as Charlie Company.

Works Cited

Wiest, Andrew A. The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam. Oxford, UK: Osprey Pub, 2012.

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