Strange ground

Spanning the years from 1945 to 1975, this collection assembles firsthand accounts from more than sixty Americans who were in Southeast Asia during the United States' three decades of involvement in Vietnam. The narrators come from many walks of life: medics, diplomats, clerks, homemakers, intelligence operatives, infantry soldiers, and generals.

The stories open with a secret OSS mission in 1945 that sought to win the cooperation of Ho Chi Minh against Japan, and they close with the hurried, chaotic evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Together the voices trace how the conflict looked and felt to the people living through it, from its earliest American contacts to its final days.