"This is a book about what it is like to fight desperately, often at night, for your own survival. The long siege at Khe Sanh was one of the true horrors of the Vietnam War, and Gregg Jones gives it to us in all of its bloody, often hopeless, and heroic detail. Based largely on interviews with the Marines who were there, Last Stand at Khe Sanh stands as a remarkable record of what they did."—S. C. Gwynne, author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell
"Gregg Jones captures with compelling detail and riveting prose the human drama of the US Marines' stand at Khe Sanh, one of the bloodiest, and still most controversial, of Vietnam War battles."—George Herring, Alumni Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975
Publishers Weekly, 4/21/2014
"This informative account serves as a testament to those who 'heeded the call of their duly constituted leaders' and 'went to Vietnam with the best of intentions,' earning 'a place of honor in American history.'"
Kirkus, 4/15/2014
"An acclaimed journalist recounts the hell that was the siege of Khe Sanh...[A] story about a long-abandoned fire base where too many died, which makes it a story worth remembering."
Advance Praise for Last Stand at Khe Sanh
"Last Stand at Khe Sanh brilliantly captures the pathos of the battle and the élan of the men defending one of Vietnam's most recognizable combat bases. Gregg Jones fuses the panoramic with the visceral boots-on-the-ground view, creating an unparalleled and highly readable narrative of Khe Sanh."—Patrick K. O'Donnell, bestselling author of Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc
"Last Stand at Khe Sanh is an enthralling tale of American courage and heroism. Gregg Jones brings to life one of the greatest battles in modern American military history, telling the story in such vivid detail and with such powerful writing that you'll find yourself wondering as you read how you would have responded to the horrific conditions faced by these soldiers. Stories of military valor from Vietnam are often overlooked, but this is a book you will always remember."—Jonathan Eig, bestselling author of Luckiest Man and Opening Day
"Last Stand at Khe Sanh is a powerful and moving reminder of incomparable courage and extreme heroism in the Vietnam War."—Alex Kershaw, author of the bestselling The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter
Washington Independent Review of Books, 4/28/14
“Jones recounts the battle with the naked honesty of the combatants who told him their stories…a commanding history, so detailed it reads in places like a novel…his cool, matter-of-fact approach makes the horror of the battlefield searing.”
Dallas Morning News, 5/18/14
“[Jones] skillfully draws the reader close to individual Maries at the Khe Sanh…[An] engrossing book…Jones, however, takes readers an important step further after Khe Sanh is saved and abandoned…In a moving epilogue, readers meet up again with several defenders and learn how their battle experiences shaped their lives moving forward.”
San Francisco Books & Travel, July 2014
“Gregg Jones in Last Stand at Khe Sanh has thoroughly researched the 77-day siege, and his descriptions of the day-to-day trauma for 6,000 grunts on the ground at Khe Sanh stands in stark contrast to his portraits of the headquarters folks in Saigon, Da Nang and Washington…The vivid contrast is superbly drawn.”"
Panoramic in scope yet heart-wrenchingly personal...Jones poignantly re-creates the miserable, subterranean hell in which the Marines fought and died, determined to outlast the North Vietnamese...A moving tribute to the men who served-and suffered-in the siege." —Vietnam Magazine
"A paean to the Vietnam-era Marine Corps...Jones's gripping description of the vicious combat around Khe Sanh reminds Americans of what they require of their soldiers-men, women, straight, gay, transgender, et al.-in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, (and soon Korea?). Thus, it merits careful reading and serious reflection."—Michigan War Studies Review
04/21/2014
Journalist Jones (Honor in the Dust) examines one of the most iconic and controversial engagements of the Vietnam War, the 77-day (February–April 1968) siege of the 6,000-man U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh by some 20,000 North Vietnamese Army troops. This is not the first book to look at Khe Sanh, as a number of memoirs and military histories have chronicled the siege's brutal on-the ground-action and bigger picture strategic issues, and Jones gives cursory attention to the larger picture—who won, who lost, and why. "Definitive answers" to questions such as the NVA's true objectives at Khe Sanh, he says, "will likely remain elusive." Instead, Jones concentrates on sharing the personal stories of the American Marines in the trenches, leaning heavily on interviews he conducted with veterans and making them the core of a readable narrative that also includes facts and figures from secondary sources and official records. This informative account serves as a testament to those who "heeded the call of their duly constituted leaders" and "went to Vietnam with the best of intentions," earning "a place of honor in American history." (Apr.)
2014-03-31
An acclaimed journalist recounts the hell that was the siege of Khe Sanh. In this history of one of the worst follies of Vietnam, Jones (Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dream, 2012) relies on a mix of well-reported historical detail for his combat narrative but rarely finds the depth of personal remembrance readers embrace in other works of Vietnam literature. Old soldiers remember that the siege was an absolute blood bath, an event whispered alongside names like Okinawa and Dien Bien Phu. Turning his focus to just four months at the beginning of 1968 allows the author to capture the worst of it. However, there is a larger context here. The question remains whether Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap was setting up the war's killing blow or distracting Gen. William Westmoreland from the onslaught of the Tet Offensive. Jones focuses on the brave Marines and other soldiers who maintained their defenses under impossible circumstances. Unfortunately, the book becomes in some ways a too-long list of faceless, if not nameless, casualties of war, cut down badly and far too young. To be fair, the author attempts to give personalities to all the soldiers, although some of the more colorful rise to the surface—e.g., fire support officer Harry Baig or chopper pilot David "Balls to the Wall" Althoff, who sometimes used up three war birds in a day. In other places, occasionally grim humor unlocks the story: the war-maddened soldiers doing their chicken dance to taunt the enemy or the surgeons who took out an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine reading, "Wanted, General Practitioner to assume a diversified medical and surgical practice in a small, quiet, mountain setting." An imperfectly told story about a long-abandoned fire base where too many died, which makes it a story worth remembering.
