Archived GAC Evening Events

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Vietnam War, the Veterans History Project is putting together a series of interviews with Vietnam veterans

The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The divisive war, increasingly unpopular at home, ended with the ...

During the Vietnam War, Army photographer Charlie Haughey shot more than 2,000 black-and-white and color images from the field and behind the front lines. But when he returned to the United States, he put the images away, hoping that forgetting about them might help erase memories of the conflict.

America didn’t just lose the war, and the lives of 58,000 young men and women; Vietnam changed us as a country. In many ways, for the worse: It made us cynical and distrustful of our institutions, especially of government. For many people, it eroded the notion, once nearly universal, that part of being an American was serving your country.

The Second Indochina War, 1954-1975, grew out of the long conflict between France and Vietnam. In July 1954, after one hundred years of colonial rule, a defeated France was forced to leave Vietnam. Nationalist forces under the direction of General Vo Nguyen Giap trounced the allied French troops at the remote mountain outpost of Dien Bien Phu in the northwest corner of Vietnam. This decisive battle convinced the French that they could no longer maintain their Indochinese colonies and Paris quickly sued for peace. As the two sides came together in Geneva, Switzerland, international events were already shaping the future of Vietnam's modern revolution.

(CNN)Here's some background information about the Vietnam War.

"More than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam war, dozens of ageing former American soldiers have gone back to the country to live. Some had difficulty adapting to civilian life in the US. Others have gone back in the hope of atoning for wrongs they believe were committed during the war."

Vietnam War Documentary to air: Many Vietnam War veterans live in Southwest Florida, and they all have stories to tell. WGCU plans to do just that this month with five local ...

This 2012 The Officer Review Magazine article "focuses on operations and missions of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in the U.S. It indicates that JPAC aims to recover and identify American soldiers who were killed in action during Vietnam War, Korean War, among others and to bring them back home. It asserts that JPAC is composed of 18 Recovery Teams which are deployed worldwide. It intends to increase the number of identifications to 200 a year."

Please note: If off-campus, you may be prompted to using your shoreline email and password.

"In 1998 the Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War was exhumed, identified and returned to his family. This article explains that remarkable turn of events, complicating claims that it resulted from scientific advances and suggesting that it originated in a political challenge to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It shows that the grassroots activists who first named the Vietnam Unknown had long opposed his interment as a memorialized forgetting of the war and argues that their effort to open the Tomb succeeded because their claims of ongoing veteran victimization resonated with Americans in ways that the Tomb's vision of redemptive sacrifice did not."

Please note: If off-campus, you may be prompted to using your shoreline email and password.

Published by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, this 2015 newsletter examines the results from the National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study. The study was " the first study to measure the long-term health and mental health of Vietnam Veterans."

This 2015 U.S. News article examines the effects of PTSD on Vietnam War Veterans, with focus on female vets, and the way in which "misconceptions on when veterans present symptoms often lead to misdiagnoses."

A look at the scars our soldiers who served in Vietnam still carry.

Whether they volunteered or were drafted, 1 out of 10 soldiers were injured or killed during Vietnam.

In the 1960s Mexican Americans drafted to fight in the Vietnam war were dying at twice the rate of their white compatriots. In response, the Chicano community across the US began campaigning against the conflict.

In 1968, Richard Nixon ran on a platform for the presidency that included a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam.