David H. Hackworth

An orphan, Hackworth paid an older man to pose as his father to certify he was old enough to join the U.S. Army because he hoped for "sex and adventure." He was only 15. After enlisting he advanced quickly: he became the youngest Captain to serve in the Korean War, and then the youngest Colonel to serve in the Vietnam War. During his distinguished service he earned 91 medals (including two Distinguished Service Crosses, 10 Silver Stars, 8 Bronze Stars and an astounding 8 Purple Hearts). During his Vietnam tours he wrote a manual on how to fight back against guerilla warfare, and a General called him "the best battalion commander I ever saw in the United States Army." But by 1971 Hackworth was convinced that the U.S. could not win the war in Vietnam and said so -- publicly -- and boldly spoke up against suggestions that the U.S. use nuclear weapons there. The Army moved to court-martial him, but he was allowed to resign instead, ending his 25-year career with an honorable discharge. But he didn't go quietly: Hackworth went on to become an outspoken anti-nuclear activist, earning him another medal -- the United Nations Medal for Peace. After his military career, he wrote a column on military matters for Newsweek magazine and newspapers, wrote several books, and served as a TV commentator during the 1991 Gulf War, the conflict in the Balkans, and, in 2004, predicted that American troops could be stuck in Iraq for "at least" another 30 years. "Most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars, remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout," he said in early 2005. "That's not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield." Col. "Hack" Hackworth, America's most-decorated living veteran, died May 4 in Mexico from bladder cancer. He was 74. (Hack's personal web site.) From This is True for 1 May 2005 Suggestions for further reading: Steel My Soldiers' Hearts : The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of U.S. A... By: David H. Hackworth List Price: $16.00 Amazon Price: $10.88 Editorial Review: In January 1969, one of the most promising young lieutenant colonels the U.S. Army had ever seen touched down in Vietnam for his second tour of duty, which would turn out to be his most daring and legendary. David H. Hackworth had just completed the writing of a tactical handbook for the Pentagon, and now he had been ordered to put his counterguerilla-fighting theories into action. He was given the morale-drained 4/39th -- a battalion of poorly led draftees suffering the Army's highest casualty rate and considered its worst fighting battalion. Hackworth's hard-nosed, inventive and inspired leadership quickly turned the 4/39th into Vietnam's valiant and ferocious Hardcore Recondos. Drawing on interviews with soldiers from the Hardcore Battalion conducted over the past decade by his partner and coauthor, Eilhys England, Hackworth takes readers along on their sniper missions, ambush actions, helicopter strikes and inside the quagmire of command politics. With Steel My Soldiers' Hearts, Hackworth places the brotherhood of the 4/39th into the pantheon of our nation's most heroic warriors.Steel My Soldiers' Hearts is retired Colonel David Hackworth's account of his tour of duty in Vietnam commanding the 4/39th, an infantry battalion operating south of Saigon in the Mekong River delta. Poorly led (the previous commander had based the battalion in the middle of a mine field), with frightfully high casualties (40 percent during the six months prior to Hackworth's arrival), and fighting in the most dangerous of terrain, the 4/39th was a dispirited and demoralized group when Hackworth assumed command in January, 1969. Upon arrival, Hackworth fired many of the senior officers and then put the 4/39th through "Combat 101," which made him so unpopular that at one point Hackworth was warned of a bounty some of his men had put out on him. Over the next five months, however, Hackworth would transform the 4/39 from "hopeless to hardcore," dramatically reverse the casualty rate, score some spectacular victories over the Viet Cong, and earn the undying respect of his troops. Here's a gung ho and earthy firsthand account of the Vietnam War that fans of We Were Soldiers Once... will appreciate. --Harry C. Edwards   About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior By: Colonel David H. HackworthJulie Sherman List Price: $24.00 Amazon Price: $18.72 Editorial Review: He joined the army at 15 and is today America's most decorated living soldier. In one of the most extraordinary military memoirs of our time, About Face chronicles the wars of David H. Hackworth--from World War II to his opposition to U.S. tactics and goals in Vietnam. Photographs.   Hazardous Duty By: David H. Hackworth List Price: $15.95 Amazon Price: $14.35 Editorial Review: The author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller About Face, Colonel David H. Hackworth is one of America's most decorated soldiers, having served at the end of World War II, and in Korea and Vietnam. Retired from the military since 1971, he has completed second tour of battlefield duty -- this time as a war correspondent -- accompanying our nation's fighting men and women to the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Somalia, Korea and Haiti. What he learned of high-level military incompetence, futility and corruption in the heat and fury of Desert Storm -- and in the desperation of the Balkans and Mogadishu -- is shocking, frightening and infuriating...and it must be told. Hazardous Duty is a necessary wake-up call for military reform -- a no-holds-barred, no-punches-pulled exposé that calls America's top political and military leaders to account for selling out duty, honor and country. It is riveting, real-life adventure of courageous warriors on the world's new battlefields -- and of their systematic betrayal by the weakness of an increasingly wasteful and inept high command. It offers essential solutions to problems that must be addressed if our nation is to remain the foremost military power in a volatile and ever-changing world. Nobody can question Hackworth's credentials--he's America's most decorated living soldier, a military reporter forNewsweek, and author of the best-selling About Face. In Hazardous Duty, he travels to danger spots like Bosnia, Haiti, Korea, Somalia and the Persian Gulf to rate U.S. military performance. All too often, he sees it coming up short. "Our military machine is sputtering like a worn-out tank," he writes in the final chapter, where he also offers a practical agenda for reform that is sure to raise the hackles of what he calls the Pentagon's "Perfumed Princes and Propaganda Poets."   Their Shadows Are Dark Daughters By: Naton LeslieMark HackworthDavid Baratier List Price: $5.00 Amazon Price: $5.00 Editorial Review: Poetry. "THEIR SHADOWS ARE DARK DAUGHTERS is an extremely powerful sequence. There is a timelessness found here like the timelessness of their subject--stone circles. These poems, like those circles, will endure. These carefully crafted pieces explore the mysteries of the circles--they embrace mystery like the best poems do. The words in these poems contain the same delicate magic of stones standing on point"--Jim Daniels. Naton Leslie's poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, and others.   Biography - Hackworth, David H. (1931-2005): An article from: Contemporary Au... By: Gale Reference Team List Price: $9.95 Amazon Price: $9.95 Editorial Review: Word count: 2023.

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