Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Recommended Reading
Hell, No, We Didn’t Go! by Eli Greenbaum.
Buy Now
Note: Use discount code 24summer2024 through August 31, 2024 and receive a 50% discount.
Also you can order by phone at 800 848 6224
Episode 2851 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast, and his three guests discussing a new book about the Vietnam Era titled Hell, No, We Didn’t Go! by Eli Greenbaum.
Andy and his guests will be discussing the book with its author. In Hell, No, We Didn’t Go!, Eli Greenbaum presents firsthand accounts of men who were driven to resist or dodge the Vietnam draft at all costs. He introduces readers to a cross section of individuals who found ways to defy the draft by leaving the country, going to prison, becoming conscientious objectors, gaming the system, conspiring to fail physicals, and even enlisting—anything to avoid being drafted. These vivid essays and candid oral histories detail events that were often controversial, sometimes volatile, and almost always emotionally charged. Greenbaum brings together a chorus of first-person accounts of draft resistance and protest held together by an overarching personal narrative while providing context, commentary, and an unusual fifty-year perspective on the men’s decisions to avoid the Vietnam War, no matter what.
While some men passively accepted conscription as their fate, others actively resisted it, sometimes going to extremes. Each account reveals individual motivations, fears, and hopes—everything from disagreement with American foreign policy to questions of cowardice and the meaning of patriotism, all underlined by courage and determination.
When asked in a Gallup poll taken in August 1965 whether the US decision to send troops to Vietnam was a mistake, 60 percent of Americans polled said no. But as American casualties increased and the war escalated, polls showed fewer Americans supporting US actions in Vietnam. That, however, did not stop the drafting of Americans into military service.
Listen to episode 2851 and discover more about the new book Hell, No, We Didn’t Go! by Eli Greenbaum.
