Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A powerful work of literary military history from the New York Times bestselling author of In Harm s Way and Horse Soldiers the harrowing and redemptive account of an American army platoon fighting for survival during the Vietnam War.
On a single night, January 31, 1968, some 100,000 soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army attacked thirty-six cities throughout South Vietnam, hoping to topple that government and dislodge American forces. The twelve American boys of the recon platoon of the 101st Airborne Division, average age nineteen, are from small farms, California beach towns, and big cities like Chicago, and they are cast into a war they neither understand, nor, ultimately, feel they can win. The fighting was hand-to-hand, nonstop, and waged in endless small battles that forged this group into a lifelong brotherhood of survivors. The Odyssey of Echo Company is about the young men who survived sixty days on the run from the enemy during the Tet Offensive, at the height of the Vietnam War.
Each young man lived one hundred years in these days and came home to a country that did not understand, and didn t try to understand, what they had survived. They came home winners because they were alive; but were losers for having fought there. When they arrived, they landed in San Francisco, took off their uniforms, and walked back into America, where they fell silent and realized that not many wanted to hear the remarkable story they had to tell until now.
Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, dozens of detailed letters written to and from Echo Company soldiers, a huge trove of Pentagon after-action reports, and travel to the scenes of battle with the American soldiers and some of their Vietnamese enemy soldiers, The Odyssey of Echo Company breaks through the wall of time to tell this important story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances."
Synopsis
A powerful work of literary military history from the
New York Times bestselling author of
In Harm's Way and
Horse Soldiers, the harrowing, redemptive, and utterly unforgettable account of an American army reconnaissance platoon's fight for survival during the Vietnam War--whose searing experiences reverberate today among the millions of American families touched by this war.
On a single night, January 31, 1968, as many as 100,000 soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army attacked thirty-six cities throughout South Vietnam, hoping to topple the government and dislodge American forces. Forty young American soldiers of an army reconnaissance platoon (Echo Company, 1/501) of the 101st Airborne Division and hailing from small farms, beach towns, and such big cities as Chicago and Los Angeles are suddenly thrust into savage combat, having been in-country only a few weeks. Their battles against both North Vietnamese Army soldiers and toughened Viet Cong guerillas are relentless, often hand-to-hand, and waged night and day across landing zones, rice paddies, hamlets, and dense jungle. The exhausting day-to-day existence, which involves ambushes on both sides, grueling gun battles, and heroic rescues of wounded comrades, forges the group into a lifelong brotherhood. The Odyssey of Echo Company is about the young men who survived this epic span, and centers on the searing experiences of one of them, Stanley Parker, who is wounded three times during the fighting.
When the young men come home, some encounter a country that doesn't understand what they have suffered and survived. Many of them fall silent, knowing that few of their countrymen want to hear the remarkable story they have lived to tell--until now. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, dozens of personal letters written in the combat zone, Pentagon after-action reports, and travel to the battle sites with some of the soldiers (who meet their Vietnamese counterpart), and augmented by detailed maps and remarkable combat zone photographs, The Odyssey of Echo Company breaks through the wall of time to recount ordinary young American men in an extraordinary time in America and confirms Doug Stanton's prominence as an unparalleled storyteller of our age.