A Filthy Way to Die

Collected Memories of the Vietnam War

The author, a retired Navy Commander, presents a unique view of the Vietnam War while providing an understanding of the horror, brutality, chaos, and insanity of war. His interviews with 61 members of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1965 who served during the war in Vietnam include candid, first-hand accounts of American action on the ground, in the air, on the rivers, and offshore. Their stories involve Marines fighting bloody battles for hills soon abandoned after being captured; Naval aviators watching their wingman being shot down on missions targeting meaningless targets while Hanoi remained off-limits; "Brown Water Navy" sailors conducting ambushes and being ambushed,; Swift boats conducting dangerous operations on the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta; firefights on gunboats during secret forays into Cambodia; clandestine assassination missions with the CIA; secret night operations into North Vietnam; offshore bombardment where targets may, or may not, be enemy; and many other aspects of this bloody, and preventable, war.

The horrific losses were not limited to the 58,000 Americans who lost their lives and over 300,000 others who were wounded, but included three million Vietnamese (many of whom were innocent civilians) and countless Laotians and Cambodians.

Linz presents background information explaining how the United States became involved in a decades-long diplomatic slippery slope leading to American Marines coming ashore at Da Nang in early 1965, just prior to his class graduating from the Naval Academy. He describes how each officer, many of whom could not locate Vietnam on a map when entering the Academy in 1961, ended up fighting a frustrating, and deadly, war halfway around the world. Nine of these classmates died during service in Vietnam, some following capture by the enemy. It was indeed a filthy way to die.

Good stories to know

These individual stories are important to know and pass on. The service members history is more important than the overall war history.

The horrible conditions our navy endured

The virtual reading was just awful. The mispronunciations and gaps between phrases. Wonderful stories partially tyluined by virtual reader

AI Narration

When AI cannot pronounce the names of cities in the story correctly, I’m out. The major city & battle of Tet is Hue, pronounced “Hway,” not “Hyoo” or “Hugh.” This example is only one of several incidences.

Mispronunciation of towns, regions, some terms

Good review of the history. Interesting insight into commissioning, choices, and duties of Annapolis graduates. This is the third AI voice book I have heard. It should be possible to train the program to differentiate the voice of the author from that of the interviewees. The biggest issue for me was the jarring effect of mispronunciation. Hearing the city of Hue pronounced as the characteristic of color was as irritating as nails on a chalkboard. Surely a programmer could adjust the pronunciation.

virtual reader woes

Amazing collection of personal histories. The virtual reader let them down. The reader is not correctly programmed to read acronyms and abbreviations. It is distracting in military books as there are so many of each commonly used.