A graduate of Occidental College and the University of Washington, Erik has worked at the U.S. Army Center of Military History since 2000 as a specialist in the Vietnam War. He is the world’s leading expert on the 1968 Tet Offensive and has written two books on the Vietnam War: The 1968 TET Offensive Battles of Quang Tri City and Hue and US combat operations in 1967-1968.
In his personal time he directs the Facebook group VietnamWarHistoryOrg which has grown to nearly 25,000 members since its inception in the spring of 2014.
His passion for US Army history has lead him to develop an online visual database of the Vietnam War using Google Earth-based 4-D GIS (Geographic Information System) technology.The Google Earth project will layer (South) Vietnam with Photoshop-enhanced military maps, custom icons, contemporary photos, and colored shapes to identify all of the units, installations, lines of communication, terrain features, engagements, administrative boundaries, and any other information that a researcher might want to view- location of downed aircraft, the best bars in Saigon, whatever.
His goal is to develop a free, crowd-sourced database that will integrate all publicly available information about the Vietnam War for the benefit of veterans, active duty military personnel, simulation experts, educators, students, media organizations, travel groups, and the video gaming community.
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