4/8: LOST TRAGEDY LOST: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover –by George Black (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 4 July 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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4/8: LOST TRAGEDY LOST: The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam Hardcover –by George Black (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Reckoning-Story-Redemption-Vietnam/dp/0593534107
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelorette. George Black is new book as the long-wrecking, a story of war, peace, |
| 0:09.5 | and redemption in Vietnam. It is 6768. We start with Manus Campbell, who is in Alpha Company, |
| 0:18.2 | the first battalion, Fourth Marines. They are in the killing zone of several parts of |
| 0:25.3 | the I Corps. George is mentioned, Hill 674. That story stays with Manus Campbell the rest |
| 0:33.4 | of his life, is still with him because of the arbitrariness of death. How so, George? |
| 0:39.4 | What does that mean to Manus Campbell? The first big firefight was a classic. About 80% of |
| 0:46.9 | all the military engagements in Vietnam were at the initiative of the Vietnamese, the |
| 0:53.0 | North and the Vietnam Kong. The primary tool they used was the ambush. They would set up |
| 0:58.7 | killing zones. They would entice American patrols in. The Hill 674 was, in fact, the stronghold |
| 1:09.1 | of the North Vietnamese military command for those two provinces we've been talking about, |
| 1:14.8 | which they call the Treetien military district immediately south of the DMZ. Manus's company, |
| 1:20.8 | his whole battalion, was sent into combat against what they didn't know were some of the most |
| 1:27.6 | tough elite units of the North Vietnamese army. His platoon walked into an ambush. Classic, |
| 1:35.1 | they'd set up this triangle ambush. Ironically, that exact same month, part of what Chuck |
| 1:41.5 | Cersei was doing in Saigon was writing a handbook for the intelligence command on different |
| 1:47.5 | kinds of the at Kong and North Vietnamese ambush techniques. Manus's company walked straight |
| 1:53.1 | into one. He is called in to reinforce the platoon, and he's immediately thrown into this horrific |
| 2:00.6 | firefight where the bodies of, I mean, the stream on which it happened is quite literally running |
| 2:06.2 | red with blood. He shoots and kills his first man. Throughout the various subsequent |
| 2:14.2 | fire fights and large-scale engagements he went through, there were so many times where, you know, |
| 2:20.9 | literally he would throw himself to the ground, another guy would throw himself to the ground next |
| 2:25.2 | to him with his foot up against Manus's head, and the bullet would hit the other guy's foot. |
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