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LZ Sitting Duck: The Fight for FSB Argonne
"What shines through from this bare-knuckled, furious battle is the core ethos. It comes though loud and clear when you read chapter after chapter in different voices. These Marines had no battlefield prep, no intelligence, no cohesive leadership. What held them together was the Marine spirit. There was nothing else. Wow! What an epic fight!"- Bing West, author of The Last Platoon and The Village"LZ Sitting Duck shows battle from the bottom up. In personal statements it captures the chaos, bravery, confusion, fear, and fighting spirit of Marines of the First Battalion Fourth Marines who fought a fierce hill battle with regular North Vietnamese Army forces in March of 1969. Readers will learn about combat down in the dirt at the very tip of the spearpoint."- Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn and What's It Like To Go To War
306 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 3, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 10, 2022
This is an interesting and important book about an aspect of the war in Vietnam which I have not seen before. Most accounts are a time-based narrative describing events with varying amounts of personal story interjected.
This account takes the fight for FSB Argonne, which occurred most intensively over a three week period, into slices of men's experience, so however many men wrote their own version of the same event. After a couple of these accounts, I knew what was going to happen next, so the reading provoked a sense of dread in me.
From PFC's to officers, from different roles, we get to see an event unfold from the differing perspectives of the participants who survived. There are, however, accurate descriptions of the gore, SNAFU, and luck involved, all of which go into the sweat-filled nightmares of the survivors. Some interject into their narrative comments and perspectives from fifty years later.
I am in awe of the service in Vietnam as well as the courage it takes to tell stories buried in the unconscious for fifty years.
Thank you!
This account takes the fight for FSB Argonne, which occurred most intensively over a three week period, into slices of men's experience, so however many men wrote their own version of the same event. After a couple of these accounts, I knew what was going to happen next, so the reading provoked a sense of dread in me.
From PFC's to officers, from different roles, we get to see an event unfold from the differing perspectives of the participants who survived. There are, however, accurate descriptions of the gore, SNAFU, and luck involved, all of which go into the sweat-filled nightmares of the survivors. Some interject into their narrative comments and perspectives from fifty years later.
I am in awe of the service in Vietnam as well as the courage it takes to tell stories buried in the unconscious for fifty years.
Thank you!
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March 26, 2022MWSA Review
LZ Sitting Duck is a collection of personal stories, one per chapter. It's different from most books in that all of these stories revolve around the same incident, the Battle of LZ Argonne in the spring of 1969. In such a circumstance there's a danger that repetition will push readers away; this book does not do that. The story is raw and the descriptions are hard to read at times, but it's a straight from the heart snapshot in time of what life was like for combat Marines in Vietnam. The next time most of those who read this tell a Vietnam Veteran, "Thank you for your service," it will not be perfunctory; they will say it with feeling.
There were countless battles large and small in the Vietnam War. Most remain unknown to all but those who fought there. The Battle of LZ Argonne is one of these, albeit a larger and lengthier one than most. LZ Sitting Duck describes this battle from the perspectives of twenty-two Marines who were there, some as riflemen, some as artillerymen, some as forward observers, some as line officers, some as helicopter pilots, etc. It provides a unique, comprehensive, immersive view of a brutal battle than ended with survivors, not victors—survivors who shared the most terrifying and likely the most formative experience of their lives on a forgotten mountain top in a remote Southeast Asian jungle, men who did their duty.
LZ Sitting Duck is a valuable resource for those interested in the history of the Vietnam War, and particularly for those who have served in combat or who care about someone who did. No one can ever truly understand combat and the effects it has on those involved except those who lived it. However, LZ Sitting Duck comes very close. Each chapter is written by a different Marine from his personal perspective, using his vocabulary in his own way. When combined in the reader's mind this forms a more complete picture of the battle and those who fought it than that of any single participant. Of course, most of the visceral aspects of the battle, the sights, sounds, smells, etc., remain solely in the minds of the participants, but that is as it should be.
MWSA Review by Jamie Thompson (March 2022)
LZ Sitting Duck is a collection of personal stories, one per chapter. It's different from most books in that all of these stories revolve around the same incident, the Battle of LZ Argonne in the spring of 1969. In such a circumstance there's a danger that repetition will push readers away; this book does not do that. The story is raw and the descriptions are hard to read at times, but it's a straight from the heart snapshot in time of what life was like for combat Marines in Vietnam. The next time most of those who read this tell a Vietnam Veteran, "Thank you for your service," it will not be perfunctory; they will say it with feeling.
There were countless battles large and small in the Vietnam War. Most remain unknown to all but those who fought there. The Battle of LZ Argonne is one of these, albeit a larger and lengthier one than most. LZ Sitting Duck describes this battle from the perspectives of twenty-two Marines who were there, some as riflemen, some as artillerymen, some as forward observers, some as line officers, some as helicopter pilots, etc. It provides a unique, comprehensive, immersive view of a brutal battle than ended with survivors, not victors—survivors who shared the most terrifying and likely the most formative experience of their lives on a forgotten mountain top in a remote Southeast Asian jungle, men who did their duty.
LZ Sitting Duck is a valuable resource for those interested in the history of the Vietnam War, and particularly for those who have served in combat or who care about someone who did. No one can ever truly understand combat and the effects it has on those involved except those who lived it. However, LZ Sitting Duck comes very close. Each chapter is written by a different Marine from his personal perspective, using his vocabulary in his own way. When combined in the reader's mind this forms a more complete picture of the battle and those who fought it than that of any single participant. Of course, most of the visceral aspects of the battle, the sights, sounds, smells, etc., remain solely in the minds of the participants, but that is as it should be.
MWSA Review by Jamie Thompson (March 2022)
May 12, 2022
almost there.
The complexity of that situation is more than adequately described. Thank you for all you did, and livers saved for the kids
The complexity of that situation is more than adequately described. Thank you for all you did, and livers saved for the kids
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews