Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a powerful livestream conversation with Michael Archer, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and author of A Patch of Ground: Khe Sanh, a firsthand account of one of the most intense and contested battles of the Vietnam War.

Michael Archer is not writing as a distant historian or outside observer. He was a Marine at Khe Sanh. He lived on that patch of ground, endured the siege, and carried its weight with him long after leaving Vietnam. His book is rooted in direct experience—what it meant to be young, scared, exhausted, and determined, holding a remote combat base under constant artillery fire while the world debated whether Khe Sanh would become another Dien Bien Phu.

A Patch of Ground is spare, unsentimental, and deeply personal. Archer writes about daily life under siege: patrols, bunkers, incoming rounds, boredom and terror existing side by side, and the bonds formed among Marines who depended on one another to survive. He also writes about memory—how Khe Sanh stayed with him, how veterans carry places like that inside them, and why telling the story matters decades later.

In this conversation, we’ll focus squarely on Archer’s Marine Corps service and his experience at Khe Sanh: what he remembers, what surprised him looking back, and what gets lost when battles are reduced to maps, timelines, and strategic arguments. We’ll talk about why Khe Sanh became such a symbol during the war, what it felt like on the ground to be part of that symbol, and how writing the book helped Archer make sense of an experience that never really ends.

This is a conversation about combat, memory, and bearing witness—told by a Marine who was there, on that ground, and who has spent years finding the words to describe it.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

Author Eric Setzekorn gives us a new look at World War II’s China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre through the eyes of Joseph Stilwell, the tough-minded American general entrusted with command over all U.S. forces in China, Burma, and India. His new book is Uncertain Allies: General Joseph Stilwell and the China-Burma-India Theater.

Most Americans know little about the CBI, an awkward, sprawling command that stretched from eastern India across Burma into China. It was created mainly to keep China in the war against Japan and to defend British India, using a mix of Chinese, Indian, British, East African, and American forces against Japanese and local Axis-aligned troops.

Japan seized Burma in 1942 and cut the Burma Road, China’s last overland lifeline to Allied aid. The U.S. responded with two desperate improvisations: flying supplies over the Himalayas on the dangerous “Hump” air route and carving a new jungle highway—the Ledo Road—through Assam in India to reconnect with the old Burma Road into China.

Into this tangle stepped Lt. Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. A career officer, fluent in Chinese and with long experience in Asia, Stilwell was chosen to be Chiang Kai-shek’s chief of staff and the commanding general of all American forces in China, Burma, and India. Washington hoped his language skills and blunt, no-nonsense style would bridge gaps between the Allies and turn China’s vast manpower into a more effective fighting force.

Instead, Stilwell found himself at the center of a constant political and strategic storm. He clashed with Chiang Kai-shek, whom he saw as corrupt, cautious, and more interested in preserving his regime than fighting Japan. Chiang, for his part, distrusted Stilwell’s plans to rebuild and control Chinese armies and resented American pressure on Chinese strategy.

Stilwell also collided with fellow American Claire Chennault, the former Flying Tigers leader who commanded the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force. Chennault believed that a strong air campaign from Chinese bases could batter Japanese cities and lines of communication. Stilwell argued instead for a ground-first approach: reopen Burma, build the Ledo Road, and reform Chinese ground forces before committing to large-scale air offensives. Allied leaders in London and Washington tried to mediate the difference but often ended up deepening the rivalry and confusion over priorities.

Each of the Allies, it turned out, had its own priorities. The British wanted to defend India and recover Burma. The Americans wanted China as a major fighting partner and future base against Japan. Chinese leaders pursued survival in a grinding civil war against Chinese Communists even as they resisted Japan.

In Uncertain Allies: General Joseph Stilwell and the China-Burma-India Theater, historian Eric Setzekorn uses Stilwell’s story to make sense of this complicated, often overlooked front. Drawing on American, Chinese, and Japanese sources, he shows how mismatched expectations, clashing personalities, and limited resources shaped the campaigns in Burma and China—and how the CBI became an early example of the political-military challenges the United States would face in later conflicts.

Setzekorn’s analysis draws on newly available archival materials, including declassified U.S. records and Chinese- and Japanese-language sources — a research base far wider than most earlier accounts of the CBI. The result is a more balanced, granular, and realistic portrait of war, alliance, and policy than the sweeping, often sentimental narratives that dominated postwar memory.

The book doesn’t pretend that Stilwell was entirely right or wrong. Rather, it shows how his blunt, soldierly pragmatism, his insistence on a transactional, militarily efficient approach, collided repeatedly with the political realities of global alliance, Chinese internal weaknesses, and divergent Allied priorities. The CBI campaign emerges not as an unalloyed triumph, but as a case study in the deeper challenges that would continue to haunt U.S. military-political engagements for decades to come.

For readers of the Greatest Generation, Uncertain Allies offers fresh insight into a theater of WWII that rarely gets the attention it deserves.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for an open and wide-ranging virtual conversation about the military experience, past and present.

We believe every veteran has a story to tell and wisdom to share. This event is a chance to listen, learn, and connect with others who understand the unique bonds and challenges of military service. If you have something on your mind—whether a personal memory, a question, or a topic you think deserves attention—we encourage you to bring it to the conversation. Veterans are also invited to email Shaun Hall at shaun@veteransbreakfastclub.org with any specific topics or issues they’d like to discuss.

The Veterans Breakfast Club’s mission is to create communities of listening around veterans and their stories, and our Open Conversations are one of the most dynamic ways we do that. These sessions are often wide-ranging, emotional, funny, and thought-provoking, providing a welcoming space where everyone’s voice is valued.

This event is free and open to all. To join the conversation live on Zoom, please use this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6402618738. Or tune in on Facebook or YouTube at 7:00pm ET on February 2. Whether you have something to share or simply want to listen and learn, we welcome you to be part of the conversation!

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

Glenn Flickinger sits down with legal historian John Q. Barrett to explore the origins, drama, and legacy of the Nuremberg trials, the unprecedented post–World War II prosecution of Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Barrett, a Professor of Law at St. John’s University and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center, is one of the foremost experts on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt’s close adviser who left the Court in 1945 to serve as chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg. He is currently at work on a major Jackson biography and is the creator of The Jackson List, a long-running email and web project that shares stories and discoveries about Jackson, the Supreme Court, Nuremberg, and related topics with readers around the world.

In this program, Glenn and Professor Barrett will walk us through how Jackson came to lead the Nuremberg prosecution, what was at stake in the courtroom, how the trials were actually conducted day-to-day, and why Jackson later called Nuremberg “the most important work of my life.” They’ll also look at how the trials shaped modern ideas of international criminal law and individual accountability for state-sponsored atrocities, and why Nuremberg remains a touchstone in debates about war, justice, and memory today.

Whether you’re new to the subject or already familiar with Jackson and Nuremberg, this is an opportunity to hear from the scholar who has done as much as anyone to recover and explain this history.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

Join us for a compelling conversation with award-winning journalist and bestselling writer Wil Haygood (author of The Butler) as he discusses his latest book, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (out February 10, 2026).

Haygood reframes the Vietnam War not simply as a foreign conflict, but as a crucible in which the fight for civil rights followed Black Americans from the streets of the United States into the jungles of Southeast Asia. Drawing on deep research and vivid personal stories, he traces the lives of Black soldiers, airmen, doctors, nurses, journalists, and activists who fought simultaneously against enemy forces abroad and systemic racism at home.

In The War Within a War, readers encounter figures both famous and obscure: from an Air Force pilot POW and a frontline surgeon to Marvin Gaye and Martin Luther King, Jr. The goal is to illuminate how this dual struggle reshaped both the war and the American conscience.

This book goes beyond military history to explore how race and war intersected in ways that still echo in American life. Haygood’s narrative brings urgency and humanity to a chapter of the Vietnam era that reshapes our understanding of service, sacrifice, and the unfinished fight for equality.

Join us to hear from one of America’s most insightful chroniclers of Black experience and national history, and to engage with the stories that still reverberate a half-century later.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

When Americans picture the Pacific War, they usually imagine palm trees and jungle heat. But in 1942–43, World War II came to the frozen edge of Alaska. On the remote Aleutian Islands of Attu Island and Kiska Island, U.S. and Japanese forces fought a brutal campaign of fog, wind, snow, and rock, the only land battle of World War II fought on American soil.

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a virtual conversation with Allen Frazier, Military.com journalist and historian, whose deeply researched article brings this overlooked campaign into sharp focus. Drawing on military records and human stories, Frazier recounts how more than 15,000 American troops battled not only entrenched Japanese defenders, but exposure, frostbite, and terrain so unforgiving that weather claimed more casualties than enemy fire.

This conversation will explore:

• The Japanese attacks on Dutch Harbor and the occupation of Attu and Kiska

• Operation Landcrab and the savage 18-day fight to retake Attu

• The role of “Castner’s Cutthroats,” Alaska Native scouts crucial to the campaign

• Acts of heroism, including Private Joe Martinez’s Medal of Honor charge

• The final banzai assault on Attu—and its devastating cost

• The bloodless but deadly Allied landing on evacuated Kiska

• The forgotten civilian story: the Unangax̂ (Aleut) people, whose village was destroyed and whose culture was nearly erased

Frazier also confronts the moral weight of the campaign: the forced relocation of Aleut civilians, the deaths of Attuan villagers in Japanese captivity, and the fact that survivors were never allowed to return home. The Battle for Alaska secured U.S. territory, but at an immense human cost that still echoes today.

As always, VBC’s livestream will invite reflection, questions, and conversation. This is a chance to revisit a chapter of World War II that is both uniquely American and too often forgotten.