Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History

A riveting and raw collection of narratives about Black men during the Vietnam war. Eye-opening tales about the trials, personal plights, racial tension and victories of great Black soldiers. Details the atrocities of war in depth. A provocative and thought-provoking work. Must read!

This is a good and fascinating read, but I had to put the book down many times because it is a hard read in the sense of the brutality that took place in Vietnam. There are some very disturbing details in the book.

This is the second time around for me with this remarkable book. I would highly recommend that people read about this important piece of history.

I remember seeing this book as a teenager over 30 years ago in a local mall’s Walden Bookstore. I’m sure I passed on the book in favor of a World War II book. All these years later, I immediately recognized the cover of this book (a Soldier/Marine throwing a grenade) in a list of suggested Vietnam books and felt compelled to finally read it … I’m glad I did.The first book I ever bought about the Vietnam War was Al Santoli’s “Everything We Have”. I loved the format of that book because it let 33 veterans tell their stories … in their own words. BLOODS follows the same format. Wallace Terry provides the (very) personal stories of 20 Black American servicemen who served in Vietnam. Like Santoli’s book, BLOODS offers a wide perspective of experiences … different service branches and ranks, draftees, career-military, varying degrees of combat experience and as prisoners of war. As diverse as the individual stories are, they all share a common denominator: being black and fighting for a country that was still predominantly segregated as they served and sacrificed.Wallace Terry provides a perspective of the American serviceman during the Vietnam War that has been touched-on, but never presented in such a personal manner. Rather than summarizing the accounts of these men, he lets them tell their stories in their own words, literally. Chock full of colloquialisms/jargon/slang representing the era, the stories read like each of the 20 men are actually speaking directly to the reader. Most all the men account for experiencing the horrors of combat (some of the stories are quite graphic and disturbing), but also recount a degree of racism that puts todays rampant use of the word to shame. It is hard not to read the book and wonder why these men felt compelled to fight for America at all … it certainly didn’t seem to be a worthy cause. What I liked about BLOODS was that it wasn’t all combat, but of lives interrupted by war, surviving that war only to come home and surviving a different type of war. The pathetic homecoming experienced by Vietnam veterans has been thoroughly documented; it was clearly worse for black veterans. There were several instances in the book where these men returned home only to be shunned by the black community for serving a country that treated their race so poorly. To a degree, the details of these veterans’ post war lives are more interesting than the wartime experiences and on some occasions, worse than the war itself. While there are accounts of postwar successes, many of these men succumbed to hardship and all of them struggled at some level (emotionally or physically). One of these stories become the basis for the film “Dead Presidents” (about a black Vietnam who seeks to better his life by robbing a bank). Unfortunately, Wallace Terry did not live to deliver a follow-up edition to show how these men fared in their later years (however, I’m sure an internet search can probably reveal details on some).If you are truly interested in the Vietnam War and/or American History, I believe BLOODS is a vital ingredient in better understanding the complexity and controversial nature of the American experience in Vietnam. The integrated US military had significant problems within and this book sheds light on that issue. The stories are raw and painful to read, but reading about the experiences of these men shows how far America has come over the years. It’s shameful how the country treated Vietnam veterans in general, but after reading BLOODS, there are some veterans who had a worse “homecoming”. Wallace Terry’s vision of exposing the experience of black servicemen in Vietnam is a hard punch to the reader’s stomach.

I finished this remarkable book several hours ago and I am afraid that it will stay with me forever; there are memories of events that will never leave me and I have no idea how the people actively involved in those events will ever outlive their memory.Vietnam was my war; I was supposed to participate in it's patriotic overview but instead I grew enough between finishing high school in '65 and scoring a high number in the draft lottery in January of '71 (I think that date is right) to become 4F and miss the mental carnage of that terrible conflict.How can any person forget the horror of the incidents chronicled in these 291 ages? And when you think you have read about the worst, along comes Arthur Woodley's story on page 236 and you enter a whole new world of actions you had tangetially read about in the main-stream media decades ago and here it is presented as a memoir of one of the guys who carried out some of those actions. I fully admit that I am not mature enough at 60 to read that these things happened to people so I have the Fates to thank for denying me the right to be a participant--the VC I could probably handle, breaking bread with these guys would been suicidal.Anyone living through the Fifties and Sixties and even into the Seventies probably, could not avoid the heavy veneer of racism glued, seemingly permanently, to American society. It was a cancer that sapped the society of the very goodness that it so desired to demonstrate to the rest of the "uneducated and undemocratic" world. Any reader must, as I was, be struck by the horrendous racial slurs, both words and activities, in that "Christian" society; a scratch, regardless of how minute, would immediately open to view the putrefaction of this racism. I am reminded, again of Woodley's emotionally draining description of the American guy he had to shoot because the guy begged him to end his misery: there was no hope of medical treatment, he had already been suffering for several days before he was found and the maggots were eating his flesh while he was still alive. These maggots are a metaphor for the racism eating American society; at least however, the soldier knew what was happening but many, many Americans did not. This race question is a companion to the terrible story of war within these pages; it is the canvas upon which Terry has painted the tasles of these men fighting for "freedom."In short, even after 23 years since publication, Bloods is a massively difficult read--attempt it only after a strong whiskey and thefore-knowledge of what is to come as nthe book unfolds..

The author did a splendid job in terms of interviewing the African American soldiers, and it gave me some insight to what I felt at the time versus what I actually knew. These soldiers prior to 1969 were regular enlisted men, professionals, that accepted the kool-aid associated with the American propaganda of the Communist domino theory. After 1969, most of the black soldiers were conscripts that were not accepting the kool-aid, didn't buy into that madness, and were not putting up with the typical racist conduct that seems to follow every American institution wherever it happens to go. It appeared that the US may have been on the verge of a domestic race war in the ranks carried 12,000 miles away from the American shores, and may have been the well kept secret of why it was time to cut its losses and curtail its stay in Viet Nam as it went deeper into the 1970s. Had that racial top blew off in the US Military it would have been a major embarrassment discussed to the US's detriment around the world.

A brilliant book that provides a pure record on those Black people who served in Vietnam. They excelled themselves, and got the respect of the “Caucasian” officers in Nam, however on return home, they were hardly acknowledged. Some officers did not want to maintain eye contact. A large of the Black soldiers, more than their percentages in the populace or in the services, were placed in the front line of fire, while the “white” boys were always in the rear. The Black soldiers seem to suffer a higher degradation in rank when they challenged an officer who tried to be rude because they had not been to Vietnam or had no combat experience. Just wonder why a “white” officer, asks a Black soldier if they were entitled to have wings and medals on their uniform, all because they were jealous of the Black mans achievements - contrary to whatever they had been taught growing up or in West Point. This happened attitudes was prevalent in the First World War, when a whole Black regiment - The Hellfighters- were handed over to French Command; all because they were Black. Nothing has changed. America is rotten at its core. Most of the soldiers, if not all did not understand the reasons behind the Vietnam War, did not even know where Vietnam was; which is typically an American trait; asked to go and fight for freedom and against communism, yet had no rights at home. It seems their rights and freedoms went down the drain after their return from Vietnam. This is an excellent oral history narrated by those who were actually there. The brutality of war is ever present in all their stories.

Very good book strongly recommend

great

interesting and worth the cheap price

A book of its time. I enjoyed the read as I have read a lot about the Vietnam war as it was on the TV when I was 19. The contributors (not all) were very concerned with the injustice of their treatment by society whilst treating the Vietnamese as almost a sub human species. Read with other books it completes the picture of that war and period