QUICK REVIEW: With such an intense story, you wish the merely average writing could measure up to the events it records. But the writing is the only thing that holds this book back. You will find yourself stunned at both the horrific treatment of the POW's and at the POW's strength to overcome it. This is an eye-opening book worth reading.

FULL REVIEW: Sam Johnson gives a first hand account of what it was like to be a POW in North Vietnam. He gives a lot of details which gives the reader a full picture of the conditions and events that happened inside the prison. We follow his story through seven years of imprisonment but, unlike other POW stories, the events do not get monotonous with the same thing happening the same way all the time. Instead the account gets the readers attention and holds it through the entire book. He describes the activities of the prison with enough feeling and fear for the reader to feel his pain and determination to survive. The story is related to us from one agonizing event to another with the amazing strength of the prisoners' resolve to persevere throughout. At times the writing gets too involved in the political events surrounding the war, or else strays off to other personal stories, but generally the story still pushes through with enough interest. It is written with the desire to "tell the story" more than it is to impress the reader with the style of writing. Despite those few setbacks the book is hard-hitting and worth reading, especially for anyone interested in POW stories.

While I would never claim to understand what Sam Johnson went through, I can't imagine a book doing a better job of expressing what it's like to be a POW than this one did. The description of his experiences was detailed without being tedious, and the book was both disturbing and uplifing -- disturbing due to the brutality of Johnson's captors, but uplifting because of his faith and optimism.

I've also read "Faith Of My Fathers", but I enjoyed "Captive Warriors" quite a bit more. In my opinion, FOMF wasn't as effective at describing the POW experience, and while I don't intend to diminish what McCain went through, it seems apparent that his treatment was nowhere near as harsh as Johnson's.

A previous reviewer implied that the references to Johnson's faith in God were numerous to the point of being excessive, but I didn't find that to be the case at all. I don't recall the point having been made more than a few times, and certainly not in a gratuitous manner.

My only complaint about this book is that it didn't contain more information about Johnson's life after the war. He is continuing to serve his country, currently as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. After reading this biography, I'm hoping that he will consider pursuing a higher office, and maybe then he'll have enough material for a second book.

When Sam Johnson was shot down over Vietnam, he was badly injured in the bailout. He survived years of solitary confinement and extreme torture with his body broken yet his resolve firm. His story of his faith in God, his fellow prisoners, and the Code of Conduct is remarkable. We Americans owe Mr. Johnson and the other courageous POW's our undying gratitude.

Mr. Smith's depiction of daily life in the Cav, brought back many memories. His relating of the inner workings and politics of the cav troop were very accurate. Very good and easy reading.

I had the privilege to read this book in manuscript form. One of the main characters is Wolfman, who now teaches high school in California to at risk teenagers. I loved the entire experience and felt I actually knew Adam Smith. If you served in VietNam or did'nt you'll find this a riveting account of the terror, fear and heroics of the men flying helicopters during the War. Four stars!

This was one of the best Vietnam War stories I have ever read. I cringed im pain with him as he explained his agony in this long war. I recomend it to anyone.

As a former Marine Sniper who served two tours in Nam and who is still trying to understand what I went through this is an okay read. Not as good as some and a bit over blown at times but worth understanding the other side. It does make you want to better understand the other side of our current crisis in terrorism and see what makes them tick. Our leaders in Nam were a little lazy and self serving when it came to history. That is the leaders in Washington. Makes you wonder what might have been?

As a North Vietnamese colonel and high ranking Party member, the author accepted the surrender of Saigon on April 1975. He continued to work for Hanoi until 1990, when disillusioned with the communists he moved to Paris and hoped to see a free and democratic Vietnam.

In his memoir, he talked about communism being elevated to the rank of a "blind faith", the purges within the Party, the errors, greed, and corruption of communist leaders, the "arrogance of the Party" and so on.

This book is recommended to those who are interested in the inner world of the Vietnamese communist Party and the causes of its failure. It is not the ideal world painted by the communists, not the people's rule but the rule of five or six men who imposed their dictatorship on the people.

The rarest of gifts -- a credible account from a Vietnamese communist cadre! Bui Tin has done a great service to all of his countrymen, regardless political faction or religion. His assessments of legendary Vietnamese cadres, including Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan and Le Duc Anh are stunningly frank. Those interested in Vietnam or Cambodia should place this title on the top of their reading lists. There is simply no other work of its kind, although we can always hope that another courageous figure will follow in the author's footsteps.

The enlisted men fought the war and Mr. Carhart fails to devliver that message in his book. I served with the 1/327(6/67-6/68) and remember the courage, care, concern for each other and resourcefulness of the soldiers. To read this book you will never know the closeness the soldiers in the front line felt for one another. This book fails to detail the many heroic moments the different combat platoons had in saving one another from one fight to another. Some of the hardest battles were fought in 67-68 and this book does not do justice to the men who fought the battles nor to some of the fine officers we had to lead us . The book attempts to put down African American soldiers and does not adequately address the many contributions of African American officers and NCO's in the 1/327. I disliked the book for the falsehoods and innuendos Mr. Carhart used and the lack of respect he pays my fallen comrades.

Tom Carhart's THE OFFERING superbly records the demands of being a combat platoon leader in Vietnam. His candid and honest portrayl of himself reveals the oftentimes conflict of the mission vs. the welfare of the men. Carhart accurately documents his units engagements with the enemy and brings home to the reader the managed chaos of jungle firefights. Most importantly, Carhart recognizes the courage and determination of the american paratrooper and the varied racial backrounds of what we were.

Steve Patterson A company 1st/327th Infantry 101st Airborne Div 1968

I was a member of ABU 1/327 during 1967-68 serving as an enlisted man and started by carring ammunition for an M-60 machine gun in the 2nd platoon. The book is as the title says a soldiers own view. Just as 5 people involved in a single car wreck will have 5 stories about what happen, it is an individual account of one who was there. Carhart recieved two purple hearts while in Viet Nam and was in part responsible for the Viet Nam Memorial becoming a reality for all Viet Nam veterans. He also was responsible for seeing that Mr. Flipper ( the first black graduate of West Point ) recieved a pardon from the President 100 years after an injustice. This book relates to Tom Carharts experiances as a platoon leader and his time in Viet Nam. I believe them to be accuate from what I remember while he served with ABU. Many good men gave a lot and some all during 67-68. Far too many from the 101st. There again the 1st Battalion and later the whole 101st Divison came to fight and we inflicted far more than we recieved. This is a book written by a man on the ground who saw what he saw. Protected those he served with out any indifferce as we were all Airborne and " Above the Rest". I recieved my book from Tom at a reunion in San Mateo in 1988 as did all who attended the reunion. It was praised by those in attendance. San Mateo is where one of the fallen is buried. It was the only city to adopt a unit during the war... that is another story.

This is an excellent story and a rare insight to the real life of an Air Force fighter pilot. One of the major reasons I enjoyed this book was in how little being in the Air Force has actually changed since the days when Cook served.

This is one of those few books that actually gives you a sense of "being there," and it has some touching stories as well as some funny stories. The only problem is the author tends to repeat himself A LOT, so if you read it cover-to-cover (like most people do), you get a sense of deja-vu. Anyway, good book.

This book is one man's story about his career in the Cold War air force. This is a collection of rememberences and recollections told with the straightforward style of a man who's flown jet aircraft most of his life.

He explains how his parents went from selling auto parts to owning their own Buick and Pontiac dealership in Oklahoma, and how on a visit to them during training he was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy just outside of town. He thought he had been speeding in his Pontiac convertible hotrod and was getting a ticket, but the deputy did a bit of hotrodding himself and wanted to challenge this young pilot to a race. Thinking that the deputy was just trying to get an easy speeding ticket out him, Mr. Cook was a bit cautious. The solution: the deputy would signal the start of the race and turn on his siren and lights so that people would think he was chasing Mr. Cook. It sounded fair enough so off they went to a lonely stretch of highway. They picked a start point and end point and the race was on. Cook's Pontiac took off like a rocket and soon the deputy's hopped-up hardtop was a dot in the rear view mirror. At the end of the race, Mr. Cook got out and the deputy jumped in his Pontiac. "Now we'll race back to town!" he said as the Pontiac shot off down the road. Mr. Cook got in the deputy's car and drove back to town, in no particular hurry since he had proven his point already.

He found his Pontiac in the parking lot of his dad's dealership and he could see the deputy in a heated discussion with Cook's dad. Exercising the better part of valor he hung out in the mechanics bay until things cooled down. After awhile his dad came looking for him and asked him if he knew what that discussion was about. Thinking that his joy-riding days were over, Mr. Cook muttered a few things, but before he could finish his dad said that he had just sold a brand new Pontiac hardtop to the deputy and that he had Mr. Cook to thank for it. Cook's dad never found out exactly how the deal wa! s done.

And there are a few stories about pretty girls, life, and death, and combat. I haven't gotten to the part where he gets transferred to 'Nam yet, but I expect the rest of the book to be just as entertaining and well-written as the first parts are.

This review really doesn't do justice to the book. I think that this book could become one of the classics in my air combat library, along with "Baa Baa Black Sheep" by Gregory Boyington, "Samurai" by Saburo Sakai, and "Mustang Ace" by Robert Goebel.

As an enthusiast of modern day aerial warfare, complete with its thrust-vectoring, BVR engagement, pin-point bomb delivery, and missiles that actually work, I had some reservations about reading this book. Adding to my apprehension was the timeframe, set early in the Viet Nam War while valuable lessons were still unlearned, and the mere fact that it had anything to do with the Viet Nam War. Though I was born as Saigon fell in '75, I feel such intense and conflicting emotions when reading about it. Anyways, let me just say that General Cook quickly laid to rest all of my apprehension. From page 1 onward I was hooked. "Once a Fighter Pilot" is a chronicle of Cook's Air Force career from enlistment, through training, and finally his deployment to, survival of, and return home from SE Asia. His recollections of his combat experiences are very vivid and involving, especially for the amount of time between the experiences and the writing of this book. Most impressive was Cook's "anti-Maverick" attitude and admission of feeling real human emotions such as fear and sorrow, a rare quality among fighter-jock autobiographies. Most sobering were the General's accounts of losing close friends to accidents and to the enemy. Cook allows those of us who were born after the war to feel the pain and frustration of the generation that lived through it, feelings that bring with them an understanding of why that pain and frustration continue to be felt today. I had to refrain from giving this book a 10 simply because I wanted more. Though Cook acknowledges that many memories have been forgotten or are so blurred to render them untransferable to the written word, I still felt like this man had many more stories of bravery, heroism, high-spirited wit, and sorrow to tell. I highly recommend this book not only to enthusiasts of military aviation, but to critics of those who put their lives on the line in Viet Nam, as well as anyone with an appreciation for good stories about the ups and downs of li! fe, especially stories that are as well-written and easy to follow as Cook's "Once a Fighter Pilot."

I agree with all of the other reviews on this page; Oliver North certainly was not in Vietnam very long, but his co-author David Roth certainly represents well the time he did spend as a Marine platoon leader. The accounts are vivid and help to portray Marine combat infantrymen experiences in I-Corps. The book did help me to format my story of flying UH-1D helicopters in the Mekong Delta; I liked the set-up of the chapters and untilized this aspect. I wasn't too interested in the Christianity thing North gets into on his return trip; it certainly is true that this is what has anchored his life--but this is not much of a Vietnam vet story. It still is on my bookshelf, however, for the reasons expressed below by the other reviewers.

This book is one that gives a view into experiences many of us will never face. Oliver North had a short tour in Vietnam but it definitely left him with many long lasting memories.
In this book we read North's personal impressions of what it was like to fight in the Vietnam War and he gives us the reasons why he thinks we failed there.
In 1993 Oliver North decided to go back to the country where he fought and finish his mission. Instead of going in a stance of war he went as an agent of peace to bring support, hope and reconciliation.
Oliver North shares with us his views as a born again Christian. He is driven by the teachings of Jesus Christ who calls us to, "Love our enemies." Oliver North does just that. He is driven to bring help to this hurting nation, shackled by a crumbling system of communism.
Oliver North visited Hospitals and Orphanages both hurting and dilapitated. He helped lead the way in bringing aid to these people. It is nice to see North, a professing Christian taking his life in Christ seriously and really going out and showing love to others.
This book is full of unique observations and inspiring actions. It was an enjoyable and quick read.

i read this book while doing research on ptsd. as an unrepentent left-wing, hippie, i am quite certain that a lot of people will not read this book because of north's political views. they are making a mistake. this book is very healing. it made me cry several times.

this books takes the reader into the heart of the war in I corps in 1968...it seems a lifetime ago--and yet, for many, it is as real as yesterday. we are, as north points out, a nation in need of healing over the vietnam war. too many people still suffer from ptsd as a consequence of it. they have traumatized their own children.... and society as a whole is poorer for the loss of these individuals.

we owe it to ourselves to understand the war and what happened there--no matter what our own political belief system is. this book goes a long way towards that goal. it also gives practical advice on how we, as decent caring humans, can, without a political agenda, help the people we bombed the s--- out of for 10 years. people who do not, amazingly, hate us for it.

READ IT!!!!

I had such high hopes for this book. The concept was a fine one: Follow the exploits of the members of a single company that served in the Vietnam war. Apparently, this project was initiated by the Newsweek magazine and the result of that first effort was a series of awards for excellent reportage. The authors attempted to expand the project for publication in book form. Unfortunately, the scope of the project is so large and unwieldly that the result is a major disappointment. The reason for this is that so many different people were required to compile the information of such a large number of people that the text has the feel of a third hand account written from a translation. In other words, it reads like a committee report. Thus, it is difficult to form any strong opinions or acheive insight because there is no internal logic which governs the book. Plus, many of the soldiers' stories seem to have been concoctions of incidents taken from a dozen different events. Much of the personal information about the soldiers seems, well, impersonal. If you would like to experience a successful execution of the concept, read the book 'Survivors' by Zalin Grant. In it he covers the POW lives of a dozen U.S. prisoners and he does it brilliantly. You will put that book down feeling that you have read something very original and very meaningful.

Best book I know of telling about the combat soldier there in Vietnam. Interestingly, I am one of those combat soldiers. It really helped me to get a handle on what happen there. Only problem it caused me to want to got back and go I have, seven times now. Probably go again soon. Curtis Gilliland,Jr. C 2/28 1st Infantry 68-69

This is the story of several men who served with Charlie Company. Each man tells about his tour and each man tells about what happened after he arrived home. This book is a great read and a real eye-opener.

I was disappointed in this book about the life a girl caught in crossfire. Kim Phuc was burn due to an accidental bombing of South Vietnamese position in Trang Bang. She survives but several other civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers were killed during this accident (the author did not reveal this).

I bought this book because I wanted to know more about Kim Phuc, about how she felt being used by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as a living monument to the Yankee imperialist crimes. Instead, I got only a superficial view of Kim Phuc and her family. Also, the author ignorant of Vietnamese history was much in evident such as the claimed she made that the picture of Kim Phuc stop the American involment in Vietnam, in reality, the Americans have already onthe way out of Vietnam at that time. Also, I do not know of any Vietnamese refugees who blamed Kim Phuc for making the S. Viets lose the war as the author claimed. Most of the author general view of the Vietnam War was wrong and I wish that she would forget such attempt to be a historian and instead focus on being a storyteller about a courageous woman.

I think that the Kim's story is fantastic. She truly is living with faith, not only in Christ but in people. She has allowed herself to move forward and use her position in life to help better other's lives as well. I was only a toddler when she was photographed, however, I remember seeing the photo all of my life. I can truly respect her and her struggle to become the woman she is today. I now have someone else to look up to. Thank you to D.Chong for allowing a strong woman's story to be heard.

I have read hundreds of books on Vietnam. This is one of the best. It really gets across the point of view of those poor peasants in the rural areas caught between the communists on one side and the government on the other side. That the girl survived was a miracle. All the pain and suffering that resulted after the communists took over is well documented. This young lady because of the photo was helped from time to time by those on both sides. She became a personal friend of Pham Van Dong the Communist leader of Vietnam. Yet this did not stop her or her family from suffering under the communists.

Jan has taken the reader into the cockpit with the Forward Air Controller. She has translated the various stories into a well organized history of what this mission was all about and tells the story of the pilots who flew at tree top level to direct airstrikes in Southeast Asia. It puts me back into my O-2 and I can re-live my experiences as a FAC all over again.

I know Jan Churchill, in fact bought an 0-1 birdog from her'wonderful airplane. She has put together an exhaustive, and accurate account of the development of Forward Air Control, Tactics, Equipment, Procedurees, and History. I was a Forward Air Controller in Vietnam, North and South, also flew in Laos with 324 missions total. She taught me many facets of the FAC business I did not know. I would consider her an expert in this field.,

Jan has done an outstanding job telling the slow and fast FAC stories from SEA. I am proud to recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about forward air controller operations durng the Vietnam War.

While I generally enjoyed this book, I'm only giving it three stars because it's a bit goofy. Not goofy in a HAHA sense, but, goofy in a "got hit on the head" sense. While I enjoyed Quan's travels as well as the supporting characters, the author waxed lyrically too long and too often. While a dab of this language would have made the prose sparkle, a thick coating only made things more dull.

Overall, it's worth a checkout from the library.

Novel Without A Name by Duong Thu Huong is a terrific novel that lets the reader into the head of a Vietnamese soldier fighting for the North Vietnam side during the Vietnam War. A twenty-eight year old man, Quan, is the narrator of Novel Without A Name. Quan's view of life is much different from what it was when he was a naive 18-year-old, enlisting in the army with his childhood friends. Back then, Quan had thought of war as a glorious time; a time when heroes and legends were made. At this point, Quan has begun to see the Vietnam War for what it really was; a brutal massacre needlessly killing his fellow Vietnamese people. Luong, once Quan's childhood friend, and now his commander who's life has become the Communist Party, sends Quan on a mission to find Bien, their childhood friend. The other task that Quan is given is one that Luong does not report to the officials, he asks Quan to go to their home village. Luong wants Quan to do this for a variety of reasons. First, he knows that the war will be going on much longer than was ever intended, and he knows that Quan misses his home. Second, Luong wants Quan to reassure all the families back home that they are doing well, even if this is partially a lie. Quan sets out on his long journey, and unfortunately is met with bad news. The war has driven Bien to insanity. This insanity was caused by the fact that Bien has a life threatening form of malaria, which he got from a mosquito; a very common occurrence during the Vietnam War. The cell that holds Bien was on par with others during the War, but was nonetheless despicable. The crazy man eats, lives, and sleeps in his own waste, and is malnourished.
After seeing Bien, Quan returns home to his village. He finds that it is not only he who has changed during the 10 years that he has been absent. His childhood girlfriend, Hoa, whom he had planned to marry, has become pregnant by a passing soldier. Her life is in shambles and there is nothing he can do to help her. In addition, Quan learns that his brother had died. This came as a shock, as Quan had not even known that his brother had enlisted. After Quan learns that it was his father who encouraged Quang to join the army, he is enraged. His father, like many other fathers during the time, had been sucked in by the Communist propaganda. He had volunteered his son as a way to attain some personal honor. The shaky relationship between the father and son grows worse, and Quang leaves his home village unhappy with his life.
During the course of the book, Quan encounters many people, all who give the reader an idea of what the society that existed in Vietnam during the war was like. Novel Without A Name by Duong Thu Huong is a great book. Because the book was told from the point of view of a boi doi, otherwise known as a soldier, the book seems so much more real. By reading Novel Without A Name I feel that I have learned so much about the Vietnam war in a way that was much more interesting than a book full of dates and facts.
Reading this book also gave me information about the Vietnam War that could never have been obtained from a textbook. No textbook could have fully expressed the horrors of the Vietnam war like Novel Without A Name did. A textbook would not have told the real life experiences people went through. For example, Quan, the narrator of the Novel Without A Name tells of a skeleton he discovered in the forest. The decomposed body was lying in a hammock hidden by trees deep in a Vietnamese forest. Quan deduces that the man must have become lost in the maze of trees, and after becoming too week from starvation to move on, made a hammock and died a painful death. After searching the area, Quan found a knapsack with items of clothing, and a letter requesting that the soldier's remains be brought to his mother. No textbook would have told this story. I never would have known about how notorious the Vietnamese forests were for being traps that easily ensnared humans passing through. Basically, Novel Without A Name took me behind the scenes of the Vietnam War. There are thousands of books on the Vietnam War, but these books cover only what occurred on the battlefields, not what was going on in the lives of the people living in Vietnam during the time of the war.
Another example of how Duong Thu Huong took me behind the scenes of the war, was her description of a woman with whom Quan came into contact on his journey. This woman who collected the bodies of the dead in her area, was beastly, but kind. She took Quan into her home because he needed food and shelter. During the course of the novel, two other families took in Quan when he was in need of food and shelter. During the Vietnam War, people throughout the country pulled together and took care of their men in action. This was a common practice during the Vietnam War that I would not have known had I not read the book.
Novel Without A Name can at times be gruesome, but thus is the nature of war. If a book about the Vietnam War did not include parts that sickened one, then that book would not be accurately be informing readers of what occurred during the Vietnam War. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Though by reading Novel Without A Name I do not know about all the battles that took place or the famous commanders that reigned during the war; I can honestly say that I understand what happened during the Vietnam War.

War is never a good thing. This book can give us a picture of what we were fighting against. We were not just fighting for our country we were fighting a people. A people with thoughts and dreams for an uncertian future. Let this book be a statement to all that there are two sides to every war.