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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
to get any closer to combat, you'd have to dodge bullets, March 23, 2010
This review is from: Road of 10,000 Pains: The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Division by the U.S. Marines, 1967 (Hardcover)
"Being shot at for the first time is an unforgettable experience. Having holes shot into a helicopterin which one is riding ... really concentrates the mind. There is nowhere to hide, and suddenly one is faced with the prospect of death by gunshot, falling, crashing, or any combination of the above. Adrenaline runs hard and fast, heart rate soars, and one suddenly gets a mouth so dry that spit is almost impossible and no amount of water will ever be enough." Through passages like this, Otto Lehrack captures the raw emotion of the First Marine Division's combat experience in the Que Son valley in 1967.
The Que Son valley was a very strategic corridor for the North Vietnamese Army. The valley provided an corridor from the mountains in the west, to the South China sea on the east. It was populous and fertile, capable of providing both recruits and food for the NVA. In 1967, the Marines made a fateful decision to sweep the valley of the NVA.
The book covers the time period of April through November 1967. Lehrack covers three named operations: Union I & II, and Swift. In each of these operations, US Marines engaged numerically superior NVA and Viet Cong forces. At the end of the year, the second NVA Division was beaten so badly, it could not participate in the Tet offensive of 1968.
In the style of Stephen Ambrose, Lehrack masterfully combines a discussion of the battles with the words and photographs of the men who fought. "Road of 10,000 Pains" is an intense combat narrative that puts the reader in the thick of the fighting. Lehrack wrote that being shot at for the first time is an unforgettable experience -- this book is unforgettable. After reading this, I have a new found respect for the Marines who fought in Vietnam.
In addition to the battle narrative, Lehrack provides the reader with the citations that accompanied the Medals of Honor earned by the Marines and Sailors during these operations. As he writes in the appendix, there are always more heroes than medals. Somehow a few pieces of shiny metal and colorful fabric don't seem to be enough to honor these men.
I highly recommend this book for readers interested in the Vietnam War, and the United States Marine Corps.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ROAD OF 10,000 PAINS: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 2nd NVA DIVISION BY THE U.S. MARINES, 1967, March 21, 2010
This review is from: Road of 10,000 Pains: The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Division by the U.S. Marines, 1967 (Hardcover)
ROAD OF 10,000 PAINS: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 2nd NVA DIVISION BY THE U.S. MARINES, 1967
LT. COLONEL OTTO J. LEHRACK
ZENITH PRESS, 2010
HARDCOVER, $30.00, PHOTOGRAPHS, MAPS, 304 PAGES, GLOSSARY, NOTES, APPENDIX, INDEX
During the DMZ border battles, the 1st Marine Division was heavily engaged in the rice plains and coastal sands of the lower three provinces of I Corps Tactical Zone. The Viet Cong stronghold in that area was between Chu Lai and Da Nang in the densely populated, fertile Phuoc Ha Valley, Nui Loc Son Basin, or Que Son Valley, which by 1967 was an old U.S. Marine battlefield. Isolated South Vietnamese forces had been consistently cut up trying to outpost the area. The U.S. Marines lacked the assets to control the valley and placed a reinforced company (Company F of the 1st Marines) on a critical hill mass overlooking it. On April 21, 1967, this company was moving along a ridgeline when it was hit by concentrated volleys of automatic weapons and grenade fire from the 3rd North Vietnamese Army Regiment outside Binh Son. The division responded by air-assaulting two battalions from Da Nang into action the next morning. One of them was airmobiled into a hornet's nest of North Vietnamese infantry and was forced to fight a major action getting beyond its landing zone. The reinforcements reached Binh Son, but combat was so intense all along the front that another battalion was helicoptered in from Chu Lai that evening. Operation UNION, under direction of the 5th Marines, had commenced. Fighting was heavy through April 25, 1967, and then the North Vietnamese began exfiltrating the battlefield. The U.S. Marines pursued, but contacts were infrequent. Then, on May 8, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines ran into steadily increasing resistance on the northern side of the valley. Hill 110 was taken on May 10, but NVA troops entrenched in nearby caves and sugar-cane fields chewed up several other U.S. Marine companies coming to assist. In a fierce daylong battle, marred by accidental aerial rocketing of U.S. Marine positions, the battalion pushed the North Vietnamese out of their defensive positions. Three days later, the 5th Marines entered a running battle with NVA companies and platoons in the valley basin. On April 15, 1967, the 3rd Battalion encountered another fortified bunker area. U.S. Marine air strikes and artillery pummeled the complex while the Marine riflemen pushed into assault positions. The fight continued through the evening and then gradually subsided as the U.S. Marines overran the main entrenchments around midnight. Two days later, Operation UNION was terminated. Operation UNION II was designed to trap the 21st North Vietnamese Army Regiment in the same general area, and was initiated with a main heliborne assault on May 26, 1967. Driving south from their landing zone, the U.S. Marines ran into the main trenchworks of the North Vietnamese regiment the first day, located on the hillsides north of Thien Phuoc. The 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines charged up the fire-swept slopes to overrun the North Vietnamese lines at bayonet point. Another large battle developed on June 2, 1967 in the rice fields and hedgerows outside Vinh Huy, and a day after Major General Donn J. Robertson took command of the 1st Marine Division, he was forced to commit an emergency composite battalion into the action. This extra reinforcement tipped the ground firepower scales, and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) broke contact. It was the last engagement of the UNION operations. The U.S. Marines continued the campaign against the 2nd NVA Division through airmobile assaults closely coordinated with amphibious landings conducted by the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet's Special Landing Force (SLF). However, at this stage, strong U.S. Army forces were also taking on this same North Vietnamese division in the Chu Lai area, as Task Force OREGON tackled the rugged inland jungle and numerous fortified villages hugging the coast. ROAD OF 10,000 PAINS, which takes its title from a translation of the Iliad, is a detailed and dramatic account of the battles fought within four miles of Route 534 in South Vietnam over seven months in 1967. This book draws extensively on the memories of U.S. Marines who fought in these battles. Students of military history, especially of the Vietnam War, will read this story of brave men persevering against terrible odds. It's an important account, told with compassion and intelligence.
Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding and long overdue!, April 2, 2010
This review is from: Road of 10,000 Pains: The Destruction of the 2nd NVA Division by the U.S. Marines, 1967 (Hardcover)
Road of 10,000 Pains, Otto Lehrack's latest tome, masterfully recounts the seldom heralded successes of the Marines in the strategically significant Que Son Valley in 1967. A retired Lieutenant Colonel (USMC) as well as a Vietnam combat veteran, Lehrack is eminently qualified to chronicle the gripping, months long battlefield theater in the valley and he does so with verve and panache, seamlessly wedding a Stephen Ambrose-like flair for thrusting the reader alongside the "grunts" at the tactical level with an insightful appreciation of what all the bloodshed, heroism, and sacrifice wrought at the strategic level.
Unlike most contemporary contributions to the expansive (and ever expanding) literature on the Vietnam War, Road of 10,000 Pains breaks new ground and adds a long overdue chapter to the War's burgeoning historiography--all in wildly entertaining, page-turning fashion.
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