Army

Title: The Sentinel & the Shooter
Author: Douglas W. Bonnot
Genre: Military, Army
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1595944184

Secret societies have existed for millennia; their purposes myriad. Generally, they are exclusive and require members to take an oath to keep their organization and activities secret. They possess guarded means of identification and communication. Some exist in the open, their purposes known, their activities undisclosed, and their practitioners anonymous. The US Army Security Agency was a separate organization within the Army having its own installations, training, academic, logistic, communications and scientific institutions and members took an oath to keep the organization and its activities secret, their identity and communications guarded. Until the advent of the Vietnam War, their purpose was intelligence gathering for national strategic objectives. As the US role expanded from advisory to active combat, intelligence support to combat units changed the structure and character of the Agency. Organizational secrecy, guarded communications, and member anonymity remained. The 265th Radio Research Company (Airborne) sentinels operated in the shadows, yet stood beside their warrior counterpart providing intelligence to the 101st Airborne Division. 101st Airborne units involved in the war are etched in the stone of their memorial at Arlington Cemetery. The 265th RRC (ABN), the only unit etched on the back, remains in the shadows. Nearly forty years have passed since the last Sentinel departed Vietnam. This is their story.

Title: Incoming
Author: Jack Manick
Genre: Non-Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction
Reviewer: Weymouth Symmes

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1452061122

1969 was a momentous year for the world and especially America. It was a year when man first set foot on the moon and in an equally amazing feat, the New York Mets won baseballs coveted World Series.While earth shaking events were happening two hundred thousand miles from home or deep within the confines of Shea Stadium, men of every race, education and age group were fighting and dying 12,000 miles from home in Americas most unpopular war, Vietnam. Today, 40 years later, writer, husband and Veteran Jack Manick reaches into his soul and resurrects the fear, tension, foreboding, laughter and terror that he and his fellow "Band of Brothers" felt as they walked the jungles and forests of the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969.While in the "Bush", he carried a pack, a medical aid bag, two knives, three grenades, a rifle, pistol and an unbreakable commitment to save the lives of his fellow soldiers, even at the cost of his own. The story of Jack "Doc" Manick and his fellow soldiers is one of survival...survival in a country laden with malaria, crawling with venomous snakes, scorpions, rats, giant centipedes and tigers and dominated by an enemy determined "Not to lose the War!" The language is as tough as the enemy who fought against him, as unrelenting as the blistering heat of the Dry Season and as depressing as the endless mud and mold of the Monsoon Season. Incoming invites you to lace up your jungle boots and take a walk with Jack through the jungles and the fields of dry grass in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969.

Title: Vietnam in Verse: Poetry for Beer Drinkers
Author: Mike Mullins
Genre: Audio Book
Reviewer: Bob Doerr

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): ISBN / EAN

I am Michael D. Mullins. I have written a book of poetry, telling my story when I was a grunt in Vietnam. I served there from March 1968 until March 1969. My unit was Delta Company, 3rd Battalion of the 7th Infantry in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. Our motto was "Light, swift and accurate." It could have easily been "light, sweaty and persistent." We were mobile and proved it every day.

The stories I tell are about friends, vets I have met in various situations and my own experiences in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. I continue to seek stories that inspire, concern, and delight me. They make me thoughtful, proud, and committed to their telling.

I have more to write and will continue to listen to the veterans I encounter on life's road. There are 8.2 million of us, so I am sure I will not get to everyone, but to those from whom I have already learned and those in my future I offer my gratitude, my respect, and my thanks.

"Vietnam in Verse" was recently awarded the Gold Medal for poetry in 2007 from the Military Writers Society of America.