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Vietnam Diary
“as an intimate and unadorned account of what so many of our career soldiers and draftees … are going through day by day over there, this can be wholeheartedly recommended.” Kirkus Review In October 1962 Richard Tregaskis joined the American troops posted in Vietnam. For the next four months he spent his life on the frontline, witnessing and recording what the American men were doing, saying and thinking in the fight against the communist forces of Northern Vietnam. Tregaskis exposes the confusion of the conflict as he climbs on board Marine and Army helicopters and goes on missions to search out their deadly foes that seem to disappear into the jungle as soon as they are seen. Vietnam Diary is a remarkable book that takes the reader to the heart of what it was like to be fighting in this vicious war. Through the course of the book Tregaskis develops deep friendships with many of the troops who begin to open up to him and explain their experiences that they have been through since the beginning of the war. “He discusses in typical Tregaskis style his observations and experiences during the time he spent with the Marine and Army helicopter units, the Special Forces, the MAAG personnel, and the Junk fleet.” R. C. Rosacker, Lieutenant Colonel, U. S. Marine Corps, Naval War College Review Tregaskis won the George Polk Award for first-person reporting under hazardous conditions shortly after publishing Vietname Diary. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Vietnam War as well as the lives of the soldiers who fought within it. Richard Tregaskis was an American journalist and author who served as a war correspondent during World War Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He was no stranger to danger as he frequently put himself in the firing line to report and during the Second World War while in Italy a shell fragment pierced his helmet and his skull and nearly killed him. His book Vietnam Diary was first published in 1963 and he passed away in Hawaii in 1973.
369 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 1963
364 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
Richard Tregaskis
29 books21 followersRichard Tregaskis was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on November 28, 1916, and educated at the Pingrie Day School for Boys, Elizabeth, New Jersey, at Peddie School, Hightstonsic, New Jersey, and at Harvard University. Prior to World War II he worked as a journalist for the Boston Herald newspaper.
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.)
Assigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. He subsequently covered the European Theater of Operations against Nazi Germany and Italy.
Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, "This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. . . . Until the author's departure in a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks."
As a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, ''Guadalcanal Diary'' is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. military personnel. (A modern edition is available with an introduction by [[Mark Bowden]], author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
Tregaskis later covered Cold War-era conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam.
Tregaskis died at age 56 near his home in Hawaii as a result of drowning.
Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.)
Assigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. He subsequently covered the European Theater of Operations against Nazi Germany and Italy.
Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, "This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. . . . Until the author's departure in a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks."
As a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, ''Guadalcanal Diary'' is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. military personnel. (A modern edition is available with an introduction by [[Mark Bowden]], author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
Tregaskis later covered Cold War-era conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam.
Tregaskis died at age 56 near his home in Hawaii as a result of drowning.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 8, 2022
Most of us know Richard Tregaskis as the author of the legendary Guadalcanal Diary – an exciting, no-holds-barred account of the series of vicious battles American soldiers fought against the Japanese on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific during the Second World War. I consider it a must-read for WWII buffs, so I was excited to find out Tregaskis wrote a diary about Vietnam too. Alas, Vietnam Diary did not live up to the high expectations I had.
Maybe my taste in non-fictional works have developed beyond works like Tregaskis's, maybe this book is indeed no match for Guadalcanal Diary, but I could not have been less impressed with the way the American journalist handles the heavy, complex topic of the American invasion in Vietnam. Like at Guadalcanal, Tregaskis is always dragging the reader down there – into the mud and the gore. So focused he is on conveying what it was like to be an American fighting in Vietnam that he gives the reader no chance to rise at least a bit above the eye-level of a soldier and benefit from historical and bird-view perspective to grasp what is really going on. Such an approach to the subject worked for Guadalcanal because it was a remote Pacific island, a mosquito hell in a small, insignificant place. Had he chosen a single Vietnamese village for this diary, I would have understood his manner of reporting, but by widening his scope to the American experience in the Vietnam conflict as a whole, Tregaskis bit off more than he could chew in my opinion.
I seriously doubt anyone who has read at least one war memoir will learn something new from Tregaskis's diary. It is true that he demonstrates that the Vietnam conflict was bloody and horrible, but so is every other war. His reporting was not deep enough to reveal something about the peculiarities of the war against the Viet Cong, or guerrilla tactics, or why the Americans failed to prevail over the militarily inferior Communists. Although he traveled with the ARVN, his perspective does not seem to be that of an observant insider.
Furthermore, Tregaskis's attitude towards the American soldiers and the Vietnamese people reminds me of that of Alden Pyle from The Quiet American – overly idealistic and optimistic, and naive. He writes like just another outsider who had arrived in Vietnam abysmally ignorant about the society, culture, and war reality of the country and persists in remaining so. I noticed that sometimes he even deliberately glosses over negative experiences and exaggerates positive ones.
What makes this book worth your time are the photos. Tregaskis took many pictures while he was in Vietnam. Some of them show how as the war progressed, the age of the American, and Viet Cong, soldiers decreased. His non-combat photos show natives, children, soldiers relaxing, and benevolence missions. Because the majority of Vietnam photography portrays the most gruesome sides of the Vietnam conflict, the journalist's images are a refreshing sight.
All in all, VIETNAM DIARY is nothing special. If one has never read a war memoir and is especially interested in reading one about the Second Indochina War, Tregaskis's work might be a good choice. Otherwise, this book is more of a waste of time. This is not Richard Tregaskis at his best. I do not recommend it.
Maybe my taste in non-fictional works have developed beyond works like Tregaskis's, maybe this book is indeed no match for Guadalcanal Diary, but I could not have been less impressed with the way the American journalist handles the heavy, complex topic of the American invasion in Vietnam. Like at Guadalcanal, Tregaskis is always dragging the reader down there – into the mud and the gore. So focused he is on conveying what it was like to be an American fighting in Vietnam that he gives the reader no chance to rise at least a bit above the eye-level of a soldier and benefit from historical and bird-view perspective to grasp what is really going on. Such an approach to the subject worked for Guadalcanal because it was a remote Pacific island, a mosquito hell in a small, insignificant place. Had he chosen a single Vietnamese village for this diary, I would have understood his manner of reporting, but by widening his scope to the American experience in the Vietnam conflict as a whole, Tregaskis bit off more than he could chew in my opinion.
I seriously doubt anyone who has read at least one war memoir will learn something new from Tregaskis's diary. It is true that he demonstrates that the Vietnam conflict was bloody and horrible, but so is every other war. His reporting was not deep enough to reveal something about the peculiarities of the war against the Viet Cong, or guerrilla tactics, or why the Americans failed to prevail over the militarily inferior Communists. Although he traveled with the ARVN, his perspective does not seem to be that of an observant insider.
Furthermore, Tregaskis's attitude towards the American soldiers and the Vietnamese people reminds me of that of Alden Pyle from The Quiet American – overly idealistic and optimistic, and naive. He writes like just another outsider who had arrived in Vietnam abysmally ignorant about the society, culture, and war reality of the country and persists in remaining so. I noticed that sometimes he even deliberately glosses over negative experiences and exaggerates positive ones.
What makes this book worth your time are the photos. Tregaskis took many pictures while he was in Vietnam. Some of them show how as the war progressed, the age of the American, and Viet Cong, soldiers decreased. His non-combat photos show natives, children, soldiers relaxing, and benevolence missions. Because the majority of Vietnam photography portrays the most gruesome sides of the Vietnam conflict, the journalist's images are a refreshing sight.
All in all, VIETNAM DIARY is nothing special. If one has never read a war memoir and is especially interested in reading one about the Second Indochina War, Tregaskis's work might be a good choice. Otherwise, this book is more of a waste of time. This is not Richard Tregaskis at his best. I do not recommend it.
May 1, 2019
This is a dry retelling of Richard’s time in Vietnam. It does give a great insight to how the war was being fought in 1962 under the direction of Kennedy. The ARVN was doing all the fighting with American advisers. To date, we have suffered ninety casualties. Amazing how out of control the situation became under Johnson’s administration.
We get a good perspective of how the VC fought a guerilla war against the power of the US military and the men America sent who fought. Even in the early stages the opinions were varied from we have to be here to we aren’t going to win fighting it like this. Very interesting.
And now a word about the publisher/editor. Get your act together? I am sick and tired of reading republished works rife with errors. No, they weren’t the editors. There is no way Tregasklis could have screwed up that many dates while he writing this story. I did not find any issues with the original “PT-109.” Here are some examples:
1)The word bade is used instead of back multiple times
2)Korean War broke out in 1930? Perhaps I missed a history lesson?
3) What is a .50-poimd charge? How about pound?
4) There is no town in Oklahoma named Pomca, it’s Ponca.
And there are many others but since I’m not being paid to edit this work, I’ll let the current publisher Digital History Books get their act together.
Tregaskis gets four stars for his three-month tour while the publisher gets a paltry 2.
Three star push until it’s clean-up.
We get a good perspective of how the VC fought a guerilla war against the power of the US military and the men America sent who fought. Even in the early stages the opinions were varied from we have to be here to we aren’t going to win fighting it like this. Very interesting.
And now a word about the publisher/editor. Get your act together? I am sick and tired of reading republished works rife with errors. No, they weren’t the editors. There is no way Tregasklis could have screwed up that many dates while he writing this story. I did not find any issues with the original “PT-109.” Here are some examples:
1)The word bade is used instead of back multiple times
2)Korean War broke out in 1930? Perhaps I missed a history lesson?
3) What is a .50-poimd charge? How about pound?
4) There is no town in Oklahoma named Pomca, it’s Ponca.
And there are many others but since I’m not being paid to edit this work, I’ll let the current publisher Digital History Books get their act together.
Tregaskis gets four stars for his three-month tour while the publisher gets a paltry 2.
Three star push until it’s clean-up.
July 21, 2014
This is the worst non-fiction account of the early years of the Vietnam War that I have read. Written in 1962-1963, it is the smug assessment by a smug journalist for whom every GI volunteered for ‘Nam to save America from the demons by helping the local peasants who really wanted to become Americans. Why do I include it? It is a terrific reminder of how easy it is to follow the party line by taking a few helicopter rides and paraphrasing press releases from army / marine information officers until one looks up (which Tregaskis never did) one day and discovers that the underlying facts about whether the locals really want American ‘intervention’ and their supposed aversion to home grown rebels is so wrong that it would be laughable if not tragic. Read ‘Vietnam.’ Think ‘Iraq,’ or ‘Yemen.’ Otherwise, 10 watts. I stayed awake only because I was drawn in by how badly Tregaskis missed the boat while writing to tell the public that he was on a pleasure cruise. - See more at: http://jwlbooks.com/jack-london-revie...
December 21, 2014
"Vietnam Diary" is a daily recount of the activities of Marines, US Army, and Special Forces troop advisors at the start of the Vietnam War. It was written by a war correspondent imbedded in the troop activities. The author helped me understand the lasting psychological devastation war inflicts on combatants and civilians. The book was a painful read for me.
June 1, 2019
It's always the same
As a two tour vet of VN , I could relate to his story. I myself flew UH1 C gunships. I was one of the lucky ones who made it home safe. God bless them all.
As a two tour vet of VN , I could relate to his story. I myself flew UH1 C gunships. I was one of the lucky ones who made it home safe. God bless them all.
December 26, 2018
The book was OK in my opinion. I graduated high school in 1963 and was essentially clueless about what was going on in VietNam so I found the descriptions interesting. Due to tech issues regarding the digital translation on my Kindle it was hard to decipher what the author was attempting to write.
It is hard to fathom that this country spent 58000+ lives lost and an unknown amount injured in this moral quagmire. It started out OK as documented by this book but went rapidly downhill from there.
It is hard to fathom that this country spent 58000+ lives lost and an unknown amount injured in this moral quagmire. It started out OK as documented by this book but went rapidly downhill from there.
March 10, 2019
Good reading if you want to understand what the military was doing during the "advisor" portion on the Vietnam War. The book is written from a correspondents perspective and could be more specific in many parts. Having served as an Advisor from May 63 thru May 64 I could relate to much of this book. Early on it was much like this in Vietnam. After our forces were heavily engaged from 1965 on, things were drastically different. I can relate to that period as well having served two additional tours in that later period.
February 16, 2019
Early book on Vietnam war before US forces took on a majority of the fighting.
The author, a well-known author of Guadalcanal fame , wrote about his experiences with American's assigned to train and lead Vietnamese in to battle . The losses were still relatively light and in reading this book, one gets the sense that it is only going to get worse, which it did. Mr Tregaskis has immortalised those casualties that paid the ultimate price by including their stories and their names. I highly recommend this book.
The author, a well-known author of Guadalcanal fame , wrote about his experiences with American's assigned to train and lead Vietnamese in to battle . The losses were still relatively light and in reading this book, one gets the sense that it is only going to get worse, which it did. Mr Tregaskis has immortalised those casualties that paid the ultimate price by including their stories and their names. I highly recommend this book.
May 16, 2019
An excellent read
This book gives a view of the very early part of the war. Before the massive build up of mid 60's, there was much more going on than I realized. Men were sacrificing their lives very early in Vietnam.
This book gives a view of the very early part of the war. Before the massive build up of mid 60's, there was much more going on than I realized. Men were sacrificing their lives very early in Vietnam.
June 22, 2019
Great narrative on early days of Vietnam war
It’s a great book by Richard and gives a good account of what it was like to fight the early days of the war. The war was considerably more brutal in later years.
It’s a great book by Richard and gives a good account of what it was like to fight the early days of the war. The war was considerably more brutal in later years.
July 5, 2020
An amazing take of war &bravery!!
What American troops and fliers experienced is almost unbelievable. The author experienced what most of us can only imagine. An easy to read account of what our men experienced. Hard to put down!
What American troops and fliers experienced is almost unbelievable. The author experienced what most of us can only imagine. An easy to read account of what our men experienced. Hard to put down!
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August 21, 2019Good read
Story was interesting but every time he mentioned a name he went on to give their home location. Just a bit annoying after a while as superlative information
Story was interesting but every time he mentioned a name he went on to give their home location. Just a bit annoying after a while as superlative information
May 13, 2020
A history of Kennedy's war in Viet Nam. Eye witness reporting and interviews of all ranks. Tregaskis did his usual great job.
August 9, 2020
Not bad, little slow
April 6, 2021
Very dry and for a book about combat in Vietnam, very dull.
March 18, 2016
Written for publication while embedded with American military "advisers" in 1962-3. Even at that early stage, it certainly seemed like a war. Tregaskis conveys the odd ambiguity of the Americans' situation, along with the mix of testosterone, valor and hi-jinks typical of his earlier books.
June 26, 2016
This was a very good book, and true to the title. It was written like a diary. Most of the time was spent in helicopter missions.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews