Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat: Memoir of a Combat Advisor in Vietnam, 1968-1969 - Softcover

Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat; Memoir of a Combat Advisor in Vietnam, 1968-1969

Trade paperback. Zustand: Very good. Presumed First Edition, First printing. x, 273, [1] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Bob Worthington Military History. Index. Inscribed on the half-title page by a member of the family of the deceased author. The Vietnam War was not going well in 1968. The January Tet Offensive--a tactical defeat but strategic victory for North Vietnam--showed the U.S. military and the American public that the enemy remained determined, no nearer defeat. Americans grew war weary while politicians and military leaders could not agree on how to win or how to withdraw. Between combat tours, the author served as a U.S. Army company commander--a job he came to despise. Experiencing what he perceived as a degradation in the Army's senior command, he resigned his commission. Yet he needed money to complete graduate school and volunteered to return to Vietnam as a combat advisor. This memoir describes his participation in the fiercest fighting of the war, on the Cambodian border, where he almost died of hookworm and was shot in a night operation. In Saigon to recuperate, he was tasked with creating an advisory team to train South Vietnamese commandos to conduct raids in the swamps south of Saigon, the Rung Sat Special Zone. For seven months they were successful, with Worthington receiving seven combat decorations. Elliott Robert (Bob) Worthington was born in Connecticut. He enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served in an Infantry battalion and saw combat in the Middle East in Operation Bluebat. He returned to Dartmouth and graduated as an Army ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate. Receiving orders to Vietnam as a combat advisor, he attended the JF Kennedy Special Warfare School at Ft Bragg, NC (for training in counter insurgency, counter guerilla, and unconventional warfare) and then the Defense Language Institute in CA for Vietnamese. He served in Vietnam as a combat advisor in 1966-1967 and as a combat advisor, again in 1968-1969. Bob left active duty after Vietnam to attend graduate school at Northern Arizona University. Receiving his MA in Counseling and Psychology, he worked a year at NAU. The Army brought Bob back on active duty (as a student) to help it transition into an all-volunteer force when he entered the University of Utah Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program. Post-Ph.D., Bob was appointed Psychology Consultant for the Army Health Services Command, which managed all Army health care, health facilities and medical personnel in the U.S. Bob joined Operation Homecoming, a five-year DOD program following the adjustment of military Vietnam POWs and the Center for POW Studies where he headed the psychological evaluation of all army Vietnam POWs. He became a pioneer researcher on the adjustment of Vietnam veterans. Doing psychological research on the Army's Olympic Modern Pentathlon Team led to his becoming a sports psychologist for the team. Bob earned a master's degree in Business Administration from Webster University in 1979. He ended his army career as the chief of the Ft. Sam Houston Army Mental Health Service (while also serving as the Psychology Consultant), retiring in 1981 as a lieutenant colonel. His military decorations include the Army Combat Infantryman Badge and the USMC Combat Action Ribbon, the Legion of Merit, seven decorations for valor, the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and several decorations for meritorious service. Bob became a tenured university professor, teaching psychology, then business, and then journalism, advertising and writing, retiring in 1997. Over 50-plus years, Bob has authored over 2,500 publications, mostly magazine and professional journal articles and several co-authored books. The subjects cover a wide range of activities, but have always involved pursuits Bob has been quite involved in. They are: military, aviation, business, travel, firearms, psychology, four-wheel drive vehicles, and motorcycles. Artikel-Nr. 89515

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