The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War

The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War

by Doug Stanton
The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War

The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War

by Doug Stanton

Hardcover

$30.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

A powerful work of literary military history from the New York Times bestselling author of In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers—the harrowing and redemptive account of an American army platoon fighting for survival during the Vietnam War.

On a single night, January 31, 1968, some 100,000 soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army attacked thirty-six cities throughout South Vietnam, hoping to topple that government and dislodge American forces. The twelve American boys of the recon platoon of the 101st Airborne Division, average age nineteen, are from small farms, California beach towns, and big cities like Chicago, and they are cast into a war they neither understand, nor, ultimately, feel they can win. The fighting was hand-to-hand, nonstop, and waged in endless small battles that forged this group into a lifelong brotherhood of survivors. The Odyssey of Echo Company is about the young men who survived sixty days on the run from the enemy during the Tet Offensive, at the height of the Vietnam War.

Each young man lived one hundred years in these days and came home to a country that did not understand, and didn’t try to understand, what they had survived. They came home winners because they were alive; but were losers for having fought there. When they arrived, they landed in San Francisco, took off their uniforms, and walked back into America, where they fell silent and realized that not many wanted to hear the remarkable story they had to tell—until now.

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, dozens of detailed letters written to and from Echo Company soldiers, a huge trove of Pentagon after-action reports, and travel to the scenes of battle with the American soldiers and some of their Vietnamese enemy soldiers, The Odyssey of Echo Company breaks through the wall of time to tell this important story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781476761916
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: 09/19/2017
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

About The Author

Doug Stanton is the author of the New York Times bestseller In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors, and The Odyssey of Echo Company. A former contributing editor at Esquire, Sports Afield, and Outside, Stanton is now a contributing editor at Men’s Journal and has written extensively on travel, sport, entertainment, and history. Stanton lives in his hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, with his wife, the investigative reporter Anne Stanton, and their three children.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xv

The Recon Platoon in Vietnam. December 1967-December 1968 xvii

Invocation 1

Part I The Girl With The Peaches 5

Part II Wandering 125

Part III Homecoming 287

Epilogue 291

Acknowledgments and Sources 293

Bibliography and Suggested Reading 301

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews