The Christy Collection
Military Stories and Articles
I was not able to attend college immediately after graduating from high school and began working as a carpenter for local construction companies. Many of my friends were in similar situations and were considering the military or had already joined. The more I thought about it, the more sensible it became. My lifelong love of airplanes and my private pilot training gravitated me toward the Air Force.
It was 1965, and my wife and I were living and working in Atlanta, Georgia, when I received my ‘Greetings’ letter from Uncle Sam. I was working full-time and carrying a full semester load in college. Since I was working full-time, I was not eligible for a student deferment, and my rating was 1A.
Paratrooper Gary Linderer deployed to Vietnam with the 101st Airborne and often went out into the jungle with a six-man Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. During one patrol, he claimed to have encountered a creature with "deep set eyes on a prominent brow… five feet tall, with long muscular arms, walking upright with broad shoulders and a heavy torso." Linderer had no idea what he saw, but he wasn't the first American to report seeing an ape-like creature while out on patrol, and he definitely...
In 1968-69, I was in my senior year of high school when the Vietnam War was still raging. I knew the likelihood of being drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam was pretty good. I neither wanted to go into the Army nor to Vietnam. My best option was to check out the U.S. Coast Guard. That’s when I discovered there was a six-month waiting list for the Coast Guard. I went down to the Coast Guard recruiting station in January 1969, signed the enlistment papers and continued my high school education.
As a Cub Scout, the pack took a trip to the Philadelphia Navy Yard. We went through a submarine, and I was scared the thing would sink or blow up or something, so I ran through it. Going out, we passed all those old mothballed ships, and something inside me rang and said, “I want to be on one of those gray ships someday.
MajGen Keith Lincoln Ware was born in Denver on November 23, 1915. His military career began on July 9, 1941, when he undertook his basic training at Camp Roberts, California, following his induction into the Army under the Selective Service Act. He attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry on July 18, 1942. Keith Lincoln Ware Was Awarded the Medal of Honor Assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, he sailed on October 22,...
Thousands of books about Vietnam have been printed. Nearly all of them are memoirs, authored by those who experienced what is scripted. A few are fiction, occasionally written by someone who was in Vietnam at the time of the war while others are creations of fertile minds. Some have been made into Hollywood movies. What makes "The Patient was Vietcong" different than the standard Vietnam War narrative of books and movies and all those memoirs? Because it is about a healer whose remarkable and...
"The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, fought from March 13 to May 7, 1954, was a decisive Vietnamese military victory that brought an end to French colonial rule in Vietnam." The causes of the Vietnam War trace their roots back to the end of World War II. A French colony, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, & Cambodia) had been occupied by the Japanese during the war. In 1941, a Vietnamese nationalist movement, the Viet Minh, was formed by Ho Chi Minh to resist the occupiers. A communist, Ho Chi Minh, waged...
Looking Back at Past Presidents Who Served in the Military With the blood and fire in which the United States was forged, it is unsurprising that, looking back at past Presidents who served in the military, the number is a considerable one. Whether leading the US Army during the War of Independence in the 18th century or serving in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, almost two thirds of all men who have acted as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces have also...
Pat Sajak, best known as the longtime host of the “Wheel of Fortune,” has held many jobs. Early in his career, Sajak was a weatherman, talk show host, and DJ. Wheel of Fortune, which debuted in 1975, became the longest-running syndicated game show on American television, turning Sajak and his co-host, Vanna White, into pop-culture icons. But not many know that before his showbiz career began, Sajak served our country in the military during the Vietnam War. Pat Sajak’s Early Life On...
Like many young men who came of age in the late 1960s, W. Thomas Burns, the author of "Vietnam, The Memoir of a Sandlot Soldier", joined the military and found himself in Vietnam. Burns, despite the title of his memoir, was a United States Marine who joined the Corps in 1967. By May of 1968, he was in-country, fighting with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. "Vietnam, The Memoir of a Sandlot Soldier" isn’t a book about strategy, tactics, or the history of the war....
Movies and television have painted a deeply embedded picture of Vietnam veterans in the American collective consciousness. Somehow, despite the numerous books, articles, and documentaries produced about the war and those who fought it, some of them are simply untrue. The false ideas aren't just small myths, either. These misconceptions paint a distorted picture of who fought in Vietnam and the ability of the enemy and shaped how we perceived war for decades after the conflict ended. Here are...
