What do you think?
Rate this book
North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series
Life and Death in the Central Highlands: An American Sergeant in the Vietnam War, 1968-1970 (Volume 5)
Featured in The Vietnam War PBS series by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick
In 1968 James T. Gillam was a poorly focused college student at Ohio University who was dismissed and then drafted into the Army. Unlike most African-Americans who entered the Army then, he became a Sergeant and an instructor at the Fort McClellan Alabama School of Infantry. In September 1968 he joined the First Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Within a month he transformed from an uncertain sergeant—who tried to avoid combat—to an aggressive soldier, killing his first enemy and planning and executing successful ambushes in the jungle. Gillam was a regular point man and occasional tunnel rat who fought below ground, an arena that few people knew about until after the war ended. By January 1970 he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge and been promoted to Staff Sergeant. Then Washington’s politics and military strategy took his battalion to the border of Cambodia. Search-and-destroy missions became longer and deadlier. From January to May his unit hunted and killed the enemy in a series of intense firefights, some of them in close combat. In those months Gillam was shot twice and struck by shrapnel twice. He became a savage, strangling a soldier in hand-to-hand combat inside a lightless tunnel. As his mid-summer date to return home approached, Gillam became fiercely determined to come home alive. The ultimate test of that determination came during the Cambodian invasion. On his last night in Cambodia, the enemy got inside the wire of the firebase, and the killing became close range and brutal. Gillam left the Army in June 1970, and within two weeks of his last encounter with death, he was once again a college student and destined to become a university professor. The nightmares and guilt about killing are gone, and so is the callous on his soul. Life and Death in the Central Highlands is a gripping, personal account of one soldier’s war in the Vietnam War. Number 5 in the North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series “Jim Gillam experienced real combat in his Vietnam tour. His stunning accounts of killing and avoiding being killed ring true. Although wounded several times, Jim did not leave the field for treatment in a field hospital, so he never generated the paperwork for a Purple Heart or two or three. Although he would be appalled at the thought, his attention to duty was ‘lifer’ behavior, a concern for the well-being of his squad that represents the best of NCO leadership in any army.”— Allan R. Millett , author of Semper Fidelis and coauthor of A War to Be Won “[Gillam] looks back on his experiences of Vietnam not solely as a participant in the war, but also with the critical eye of a trained historian. . . . [He] uses an impressive array of after action reports, duty officer logs, battlefield reports, and other primary source material, to back up and reinforce his recollections.”— Journal of Military History review by James H. Willbanks , author of The Tet Offensive “Gillam, a ‘shake and bake’ sergeant, presents a good account of small unit infantry action during the war. He is very good at explaining the weaponry, tactics, and living conditions in the field.”— James E. Westheider , author of The African-American Experience in Vietnam
In 1968 James T. Gillam was a poorly focused college student at Ohio University who was dismissed and then drafted into the Army. Unlike most African-Americans who entered the Army then, he became a Sergeant and an instructor at the Fort McClellan Alabama School of Infantry. In September 1968 he joined the First Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Within a month he transformed from an uncertain sergeant—who tried to avoid combat—to an aggressive soldier, killing his first enemy and planning and executing successful ambushes in the jungle. Gillam was a regular point man and occasional tunnel rat who fought below ground, an arena that few people knew about until after the war ended. By January 1970 he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge and been promoted to Staff Sergeant. Then Washington’s politics and military strategy took his battalion to the border of Cambodia. Search-and-destroy missions became longer and deadlier. From January to May his unit hunted and killed the enemy in a series of intense firefights, some of them in close combat. In those months Gillam was shot twice and struck by shrapnel twice. He became a savage, strangling a soldier in hand-to-hand combat inside a lightless tunnel. As his mid-summer date to return home approached, Gillam became fiercely determined to come home alive. The ultimate test of that determination came during the Cambodian invasion. On his last night in Cambodia, the enemy got inside the wire of the firebase, and the killing became close range and brutal. Gillam left the Army in June 1970, and within two weeks of his last encounter with death, he was once again a college student and destined to become a university professor. The nightmares and guilt about killing are gone, and so is the callous on his soul. Life and Death in the Central Highlands is a gripping, personal account of one soldier’s war in the Vietnam War. Number 5 in the North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series “Jim Gillam experienced real combat in his Vietnam tour. His stunning accounts of killing and avoiding being killed ring true. Although wounded several times, Jim did not leave the field for treatment in a field hospital, so he never generated the paperwork for a Purple Heart or two or three. Although he would be appalled at the thought, his attention to duty was ‘lifer’ behavior, a concern for the well-being of his squad that represents the best of NCO leadership in any army.”— Allan R. Millett , author of Semper Fidelis and coauthor of A War to Be Won “[Gillam] looks back on his experiences of Vietnam not solely as a participant in the war, but also with the critical eye of a trained historian. . . . [He] uses an impressive array of after action reports, duty officer logs, battlefield reports, and other primary source material, to back up and reinforce his recollections.”— Journal of Military History review by James H. Willbanks , author of The Tet Offensive “Gillam, a ‘shake and bake’ sergeant, presents a good account of small unit infantry action during the war. He is very good at explaining the weaponry, tactics, and living conditions in the field.”— James E. Westheider , author of The African-American Experience in Vietnam
328 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2006
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 7, 2013
A very good book. The author writes with a sort of binocular view as both a veteran of some very hard combat in Vietnam and a professor of history who painstakingly researched it long afterward. His tone is down-to-earth and he's scrupulously open about his own thoughts and emotions as well as quite insightful.
I read this shortly after reading Karl Marlantes' What It Is Like to Go to War, and there are some differences in perspective - Gillam was a black Army draftee and Marlantes a white Marine officer - but I think they'd recognize each other's feelings immediately and nod often at hearing one another's stories, both of the war and of their struggles with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual aftermath.
An interesting element in this account is that a major part of Gillam's healing was working with other veterans with their own homecoming challenges; it reminds of the common wisdom in 12-step programs that the best way to help one's own recovery is to help someone else with his or hers.
A great read, recommended for anyone interested in that experience that is moving farther and farther into our country's past but is being re-experienced in many ways by far too many young men and women today.
I read this shortly after reading Karl Marlantes' What It Is Like to Go to War, and there are some differences in perspective - Gillam was a black Army draftee and Marlantes a white Marine officer - but I think they'd recognize each other's feelings immediately and nod often at hearing one another's stories, both of the war and of their struggles with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual aftermath.
An interesting element in this account is that a major part of Gillam's healing was working with other veterans with their own homecoming challenges; it reminds of the common wisdom in 12-step programs that the best way to help one's own recovery is to help someone else with his or hers.
A great read, recommended for anyone interested in that experience that is moving farther and farther into our country's past but is being re-experienced in many ways by far too many young men and women today.
February 24, 2017
Now a Professor of Modern Asian History, James T. Gillam served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. Gillam began flunking undergraduate classes at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in 1968 which led to his student deferment being revoked and receiving a draft notice in the mail not long after.
Gillam recounts in great detail his time in basic training and advanced individual training. He then went to the Non-Commissioned Officer Course (NCOC) where he became a "90-Day Wonder" or "Shake-and-Bake" NCO before he headed to Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Gillam served with B Company, First Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, of the Fourth Infantry Division, in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. His unit participated in several major operations that included Putnam Wildcat, Putnam Power, Hines, Putnam Paragon, and the Cambodian Invasion of May 1970. Throughout this memoir, Gillam recounts in vivid detail many episodes of combat and hand-to-hand fighting that he engaged in with NVA and guerilla forces.
Gillam also remembers many aspects of soldiers' culture in his unit that included how FNGs were assimilated into the unit, the tensions between conscripts and lifers/REMFs, and how music, home front news, and influxes of replacements brought "the World" into conversation with soldiers serving in Vietnam. Gillam also recounts a growing culture of soldier dissent in 1969 typified by the mantras "Don't mean nuthin'" or "What are they going to do? Send me to 'Nam?" Finally, Gillam describes how Battalion Command and even company commanders became obsessed with body counts in Vietnam, often sending their men into dangerous situations to "find bodies" or other evidence of an enemy soldier being killed. Thus, Gillam's unit developed an informal command culture that obfuscated or omitted action in the field in communications with battalion HQ to avoid the perils of having higher command order men back into tunnels or elsewhere desperately searching for weapons, blood trails, or bandages.
Sometimes Gillam slips from the first-person narrative of a memoir into the third-person narrative of a historian. Given his background as an academic, readers will find that Gillam meticulously researched his unit history in the National Archives, interviewed former comrades to cross-reference his memories of events, and applies his present-day analytical skills to the past. If anything, Gillam's work shores up the veracity of his story in many ways because he did not rely solely on memory, conjecture, and speculation to write his memoirs.
Gillam recounts in great detail his time in basic training and advanced individual training. He then went to the Non-Commissioned Officer Course (NCOC) where he became a "90-Day Wonder" or "Shake-and-Bake" NCO before he headed to Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Gillam served with B Company, First Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, of the Fourth Infantry Division, in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. His unit participated in several major operations that included Putnam Wildcat, Putnam Power, Hines, Putnam Paragon, and the Cambodian Invasion of May 1970. Throughout this memoir, Gillam recounts in vivid detail many episodes of combat and hand-to-hand fighting that he engaged in with NVA and guerilla forces.
Gillam also remembers many aspects of soldiers' culture in his unit that included how FNGs were assimilated into the unit, the tensions between conscripts and lifers/REMFs, and how music, home front news, and influxes of replacements brought "the World" into conversation with soldiers serving in Vietnam. Gillam also recounts a growing culture of soldier dissent in 1969 typified by the mantras "Don't mean nuthin'" or "What are they going to do? Send me to 'Nam?" Finally, Gillam describes how Battalion Command and even company commanders became obsessed with body counts in Vietnam, often sending their men into dangerous situations to "find bodies" or other evidence of an enemy soldier being killed. Thus, Gillam's unit developed an informal command culture that obfuscated or omitted action in the field in communications with battalion HQ to avoid the perils of having higher command order men back into tunnels or elsewhere desperately searching for weapons, blood trails, or bandages.
Sometimes Gillam slips from the first-person narrative of a memoir into the third-person narrative of a historian. Given his background as an academic, readers will find that Gillam meticulously researched his unit history in the National Archives, interviewed former comrades to cross-reference his memories of events, and applies his present-day analytical skills to the past. If anything, Gillam's work shores up the veracity of his story in many ways because he did not rely solely on memory, conjecture, and speculation to write his memoirs.
September 17, 2017
Ágætis sambland æviminninga Gillams frá veru hans í bandaríska hernum í Víetnam með sagnfræðilegum staðreyndum. Öfugt við margar æviminningasögur nýtir hann sér sagnfræðiþjálfun sína til að styðja sögu sína gögnum úr bandarískum skjalasöfnum og ferðum á ráðstefnur víetnamskra aðila sem tóku þátt í stríðinu. Þessi blanda heppnast yfirleitt þokkalega vel.
June 28, 2014
Very detailed yet very down to earth. Written by a educated man but written in plain terms. Although written about a experience 50 years ago it is a fairly recent book and is written after/during the cultural revolution so it doesn't seem that old unlike "Over the Top" in which you can really tell that it is a 100 year old book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews