Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans

Li spent seven years collecting the oral histories of 90 Vietnam War veterans, from combat soldiers to doctors, nurses, and spies. The battlefield experiences of Americans are sobering, but accounts from South and North Vietnamese stand out for their assessments of why the U.S. lost the war and the challenges of guerrilla warfare, respectively. But Li’s achievement is most remarkable for the window he opens onto the lives of Chinese and Russian veterans; their rare accounts appear here for the first time in English. Although American policymakers feared that the Soviets and the Chinese were working in concert, both countries competed for the loyalty of the North Vietnamese, offering men and material from the beginning. American veterans had notoriously difficult re-entries back home, but returning Russians encountered a very bitter pill; Russia still denies any role in the war and has never recognized its veterans at all. “Nobody knew anything about our service,” a retired, pensionless Russian missile training instructor declares. “Thus, our sacrifices are not appreciated by the society or the Russian people.” Photos. (June)