Both sides of Mr. Webb's family have a strong citizen-soldier military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Mr. Webb's father was a career Air Force
officer who flew B-17s and B-29s during World War Two, cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift, and was a pioneer in the United States missile program. Colonel
Webb put the first Atlas missile into place for the Air Force in the late 1950's, and held an unsurpassed success-rate record as commander of an Atlas, Thor, and
Scout Junior missile squadron during the early 1960's. During the Vietnam war he served at Air Force Systems command on sensitive satellite link programs
and as a legislative affairs officer in the Pentagon, leading him to become a vocal critic of Defense Secretary McNamara's leadership methods and causing him
eventually to retire from the Air Force, partially in protest of the manner in which the Vietnam War was being micromanaged by the political process.
Jim Webb grew up on the move, attending more than a dozen different schools across the U.S. and in England. He graduated from high school in
Bellevue, Nebraska. First attending the University of Southern California on an NROTC academic scholarship, he left for the Naval Academy after one year. At
the Naval Academy he was a four-year member of the Brigade Honor Committee, a varsity boxer, and was one of six finalists in the interviewing process for
Brigade Commander during his senior year. Graduating in 1968 he chose a commission in the Marine Corps, and was one of 18 in his class of 841 to
receive the Superintendent's Commendation for outstanding leadership contributions while a midshipman. First in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officer's
Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, he then served with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam, where as a rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous
An Hoa Basin west of Danang he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. He later served as a
platoon commander and as an instructor in tactics and weapons at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, and then as a member of the Secretary of the
Navy's immediate staff, before leaving the Marine Corps in 1972.
Mr. Webb spent the "Watergate years" as a student at the Georgetown University Law Center, arriving just after the Watergate break-in in 1972, and receiving
his J.D. just after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. While at Georgetown, he began a six-year pro bono representation of a Marine who had been convicted of
war crimes in Vietnam (finally clearing the man's name in 1978, three years after his suicide), won the Horan award for excellence in legal writing, and
authored his first book, Micronesia and U.S. Pacific Strategy. He also worked in Asia as a consultant to the Governor of Guam, conducting a
study of U.S. military land needs in Asia, and their impact on Guam's political future.
Mr. Webb has written six best-selling novels: Fields of Fire (1978), considered by many to be the classic novel of the Vietnam war, A Sense of
Honor (1981), A Country Such As This (1983), Something To Die For (1991), The Emperor's General (1999) and Lost
Soldiers (2001). He taught literature at the Naval Academy as their first visiting writer, has traveled worldwide as a journalist, and his PBS coverage of
the U.S. Marines in Beirut earned him an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
In government, Mr. Webb served in the U.S. Congress as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981, becoming the first Vietnam
veteran to serve as a full committee counsel in the Congress. During the Reagan Administration, he was the first Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve
Affairs from 1984 to 1987, where he directed considerable research and analysis of the U.S. military's mobilization capabilities and spent much time with
our NATO allies. In 1987, he became the first Naval Academy graduate in history to serve in the military and then become Secretary of the Navy. He resigned
from that position in 1988 after refusing to agree in the reduction of the Navy's force structure during congressionally-mandated budget cuts.
Among Mr. Webb's many other awards for community service and professional excellence are the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service
Medal, the Medal of Honor Society's Patriot Award, the American Legion National Commander's Public Service Award, the VFW's Media Service Award, the
Marine Corps League's Military Order of the Iron Mike Award, the John Russell Leadership Award, and the Robert L. Denig Distinguished Service Award. He
was a 1992 Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.
Mr. Webb travels extensively, particularly in Asia, as a journalist, business consultant and screenwriter-producer. He speaks Vietnamese and has done
extensive pro bono work with the Vietnamese community dating from the late 1970's. In 1989, he met with key Japanese government and industrial officials
as a featured guest of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. He has worked on feature film projects with many of Hollywood's top producers. His original
story Rules of Engagement, which he also executive-produced, was released in April 2000 and starred Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. It
was the number one film in the US for two weeks.
His fifth novel The Emperor's General was purchased by Paramount pictures as the largest book-to-film deal of 1998. His book Born Fighting, How
the Scots-Irish Shaped America, which was his first commercial non-fiction effort, was published in October 2004. It is currently in its 10th printing. He has
most recently written a second non-fiction book entitled, A Time to Fight, Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, which was published by Broadway Books
mid-May 2008 to great acclaim.
Mr. Webb is currently the Senior U.S. Senator from Virginia.
And Other Vietnam War Short Stories
http://www.vietnamwar.net
