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  • Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne

  • By: Arthur Wiknik Jr.
  • Narrated by: Todd McLaren
  • Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (93 ratings)
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Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne cover art

Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne

By: Arthur Wiknik Jr.
Narrated by: Todd McLaren
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Summary

An honest tour of the Vietnam War from the soldier's eye view... 

Nam-Sense is the brilliantly written story of a combat squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division. Arthur Wiknik was a 19-year-old kid from New England when he was drafted into the US Army in 1968. After completing various NCO training programs, he was promoted to sergeant "without ever setting foot in a combat zone" and sent to Vietnam in early 1969. Shortly after his arrival on the far side of the world, Wiknik was assigned to Camp Evans, a mixed-unit base camp near the Northern village of Phong Dien, only 30 miles from Laos and North Vietnam. 

On his first jungle patrol, his squad killed a female Viet Cong who turned out to have been the local prostitute. It was the first dead person he had ever seen. Wiknik's account of life and death in Vietnam includes everything from heavy combat to faking insanity to get some R&R. He was the first man in his unit to reach the top of Hamburger Hill during one of the last offensives launched by US forces, and later discovered a weapons cache that prevented an attack on his advance fire support base. 

Between the sporadic episodes of combat he mingled with the locals, tricked unwitting US suppliers into providing his platoon with a year of hard-to-get food, defied a superior and was punished with a dangerous mission, and struggled with himself and his fellow soldiers as the anti-war movement began to affect his ability to wage victorious war. Nam-Sense offers a perfect blend of candor, sarcasm, and humor, and it spares nothing and no one in its attempt to accurately convey what really transpired for the combat soldier during this unpopular war. 

Nam-Sense is not about heroism or glory, mental breakdowns, haunting flashbacks, or wallowing in self-pity. The soldiers Wiknik lived and fought with during his yearlong tour did not rape, murder, or burn villages, were not strung out on drugs, and did not enjoy killing. They were there to do their duty as they were trained, support their comrades, and get home alive. 

"The soldiers I knew," explains the author, "demonstrated courage, principle, kindness, and friendship, all the elements found in other wars Americans have proudly fought in." Wiknik has produced a gripping and complete record of life and death in Vietnam, and he has done so with a style and flair few others will ever achieve.

©2005 Arthur Wiknik, Jr. (P)2018 Tantor

What listeners say about Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Dragged kicking and screaming

If you wanted a story of a brave heroic soldier, keen for the fight, you’ll be disappointed. What you get is an unfiltered view of a good soldier, in a war he didn’t ask to be in, in a place he didn’t want to be fighting in - working for intense or incompetent leaders enabled only by their rank.
If you’ve served, you’ll relate to this mans story. Would highly recommend.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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War from a sensible guys point of view

Great story of Vietnam and Hamburger Hill in the middle... real gritty grunt stuff and his constant battle with having to advise and deal with gung ho inept officers who wanted to charge around getting his men killed.

I really enjoyed it!

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Well worth it

Great story about 1 man trying to survive his tour and get everyone back alive fighting the jungle , NVA , mental health and worst of all the top brass along the way .
Wish it was longer :)

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

offensive to the professional soldier..

Every soldier has a story and every story deserves to be told, and Wiknik has a story, I've certainly never read any books by anyone else that was on Hamburger Hill.. The narration was good, I just wish he didn't go crazy doing different voices for everyone.. Especially the officers, for some reason the narrator made every officer sound like a deep voiced old man, when most platoon/company commanders, lieutenants and captains in Vietnam were usually 22 years old if not younger and captains, the company commander was probably 27! (In the British army, my platoon commander was 21) so to make them sound middle aged or old aged is a bit annoying, but I could get over that. What I struggle with is, which is where my review title comes from, is the terrible attitude and what, as an ex British army infantry soldier of 14 years, I'd call cowardice.. There was times, I couldn't help thinking, "No wonder they lost with troops like that".. In Afghanistan, we'd argue with each other about who was going to walk point, "I'll do it" "No, you've got kids and you did it yesterday, I'll do it" because we were a team and loved each other enough to try and absorb more risk from our friends, and our youngest lad was 18! Wiknik tries to pass it off that he cared about his friends lives and that's his reason for not wanting to get to grips with the enemy, but all he cares about is own safety, ghosting it in the rear while other people take his place in the jungle. finding any reason he can to avoid following the actual brave soldiers plans, the soldiers that he calls "lifers".. Its just my opinion that if more soldiers were like the so called lifers and not like Wiknik, there'd have been a different result in that war.. Thank god, the US now has a professional army... I just found the borderline cowardly behaviour offensive to my professional soldier mind.. But worth the read/listen to the none military types.. If nothing else, just because more people should know about that war.. But my military mind couldn't get past the negative approach to wanting to fight, so I couldn't finish it.. But would recommend it for everyone else.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Highly Recommended

Couldn’t possibly imagine what these guys went through during their tour, but this will give you a glimpse. Outstanding personal account. Funny, sad, surreal and everything in between.
Thank you.

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    4 out of 5 stars

Very good

You might see the other side of this story as a young man kicking off against his superiors, but i believe it is an honest account of his actions in war . Thank you for writing and telling your story, very very good.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A window into History

Well written and read.
an excellent account to a harrowing time.
I have utmost respect for them all.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Utterly biased book

Yet another American account which attempts to change the reality that they lost a war in which they committed the most horrendous atrocities and crimes. If it teaches anything it would be that they hadn't, haven't and probably won't learn from their past disasters and attempt to rewrite a very narrow if not obscenely dishonest view of history.

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Interesting perspective

I enjoyed the book - the narration in my opinion didn’t need the change of voices for certain characters but overall a good account of one man’s year in Vietnam.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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First-hand account of why Vietnam war was lost

Selfish, self-centered, unmotivated POS trying to mask his lack of EVERYTHING as the opposite of what he is.

But he has a point when criticizing the Army. He never should have been an NCO nor in the 101st Airborne. I wonder if he ever understood that his bad attitude/being selfish WAS the problem the whole time.

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