Vietnam War Books

Some reviews of books on the Vietnam War, listed in the order I read them…

Title: Vietnam Ground Zero: Hamlet

Author: Eric Helm

Publisher: Gold Eagle (October 1988)

ISBN 0-373-62714-9

Summary:

This novel is part of a series ("Vietnam Ground Zero") based on an A team in Vietnam led by one Captain Mack Gerber. Gerber and his NCO Fetterman are army lifers who have already been in Vietnam several years when this novel starts, after the Tet offensive, at the time when Vietnamization was first being proposed as a way out for the US. The book looks at what happens when the VC decide to make an example of a model fortified village abandoned by the ARVN, resulting in Gerber and his men being sent in to sort out the mess.

Thoughts:

I don't normally read Vietnam War fiction and I wasn't expecting much of this book, but found it an engaging read. There are some good ideas for game scenarios in here, as I suspect there would be in other books in the series. The combat scenes are well done and seem realistic, and there is a granularity in detail that shows the two veterans who wrote under the name Eric Helm were actually "there", as it says in the blurb. There's a bit of policy thrown in with the action: the book shows the failings of the strategic hamlet program and the "fire brigade" response that had to be adopted by the US military in response. Plus there's plenty of action and even a bit of sex... 27 books were published in this series in the 1980s and, although I won't necessarily be seeking them out, if I see another one in a local charity store or bookstore cheap, I will probably buy it.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/eric-helm/vietnam-ground-zero/

Rating:

Title: Escape from Laos

Author: Dieter Dengler

Publisher: Presidio Press (1979) - first edition

ISBN 0-89141-293-X

Summary:

This memoir is an account of the experiences of the only US airman to escape from imprisonment in Laos during the Vietnam War. The scene is set in early 1966. Dengler is on his first mission from the USS Ranger over North Vietnam in his Skyraider when his flight is diverted to a target in Laos due to cloud cover obscuring their original target.When he gets shot down, he finds himself in a bitter struggle for survival that will involve repeated attempts at escape until he ends up in a hell-hole bamboo prison in the middle of nowhere with a small band of inmates, Thai and American veterans of the secret war in Laos, some of whom were captured as early as 1964. As if dealing with malnutrition, tropical diseases and the sadism of the guards were not enough, the prisoners find themselves slowly being starved to death during a provincial famine and overhear the Laotian guards plotting to murder them so they can pretend there was an escape attempt and they can finally go home. It's at that point that even the most unwilling of the prisoners agree with Dengler that there has to be a mass break-out and a plan is hatched to escape and kill all the guards.

Thoughts:
This is a gripping read. I found this first edition paperback at a book fair a few years ago and held off reading it because I wanted to be in the right frame of mind. I knew Dengler's story, having seen the two films made based on it (a documentary; Little Dieter Needs To Fly, and a drama; Rescue Dawn), and knew this was not going to be a book you just casually dip into. I read it last weekend and watched the two films again to compare them. The book is not as dark as Rescue Dawn, which dwells more on the madness and the mutual enmities of the inmates, which built up under intolerable conditions. Dengler in Escape from Laos hints at those tensions, but diplomatically plays them down: he was the only one who survived the escape. The others were probably murdered by the Pathet Lao and/or the NVA, if they did not die in the jungle. Dengler survived through luck and a stubborn will to survive, as well as a tough inner core hardened by his childhood experiences when he lived through the collapse of the Third Reich. The documentary, made during the last years of Dengler's life, shows a very well-adjusted, gentle man, who nonetheless still hoards rice under his floorboards and refuses to lock or close the doors in his house. It's a classic escape story, up there with the best of the WWII prison stories that I grew up reading.

Rating:

Title: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967

Author: David Maraniss

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks (2003)

ISBN 0-7432--6104-6

Summary:

An insightful, detailed account of a few days in October 1967 involving events that had a marked effect on the US military in Vietnam, and the anti-war movement Stateside. David Maraniss is from Madison, Wisconsin and studied in the early 1970s at the University of Wisconsin where, on 18 October 1967, things came to a head between the anti-war leaders on the campus and the university and city authorities, who called in the city police when protesters occupied a university building to disrupt the activities of a Dow Chemicals recruiter who was running a careers day there. The city police went in with billy sticks on a day that changed the face of campus, city, and national politics, and ultimately led to the bombing of the Army Mathematics Research Center at UW on 24 August 1970. With an unlikely cast of characters that includes Peter Coyote and Donald Rumsfeld, Maraniss gives us an insightful view of the shift in student politics that occurred over those few days. Alongside these events, Maraniss skillfully shows what was happening on the ground in Vietnam at the same time as the events unfold that lead to the battle of Ong Thanh on 17 October 1967, when an understrength battalion of the 28th Infantry Regiment led by Lieutenant-Colonel Terry Allen was ambushed by Colonel Võ Minh Triết leading the NVA 271st Regiment.

Thoughts:

Maraniss's gift is to accurately portray the two faces of the Vietnam War for the US at home and abroad, with all the contradictions and uncertainties faced by all the parties involved. Even the victor, Colonel Võ Minh Triết, later admitted "we weren't even supposed to be there" - the Regiment was under strict orders to rendezvous at another location and he had already been held up by harassing fire from US bombing and artillery and probing contact made by the Allen's men the day before. The description of the confused battle that ensued is very detailed. What's even more impressive is that the book is based entirely on primary sources, with Marannis relying on eye-witness accounts to build up a detailed mosaic-like depiction of what happened on campus and on the battlefield. The epilogue fittingly wraps things up with the author's visit to Saigon along with Clark Welch, the only surviving US company commander from the battle, where they meet Colonel Võ Minh Triết, and head off to revisit the battlefield. Favourite moments: Peter Coyote admitting he wasn't there to face the cops with the billy sticks at the UW protest because he got waylaid by a hot student chick the night before, and Colonel Võ Minh Triết meeting up on the field trip for the first time since 1967 with his old local force supply officer Nguyen Van Lam and, upon finding out he is now married with 10 children, starts joshing him with comments like "you breed like chickens!" and "haven't you heard of birth control?" (not surprisingly given that he was a district birth control education officer in HCMC at the time). The touching closing scenes include Clark Welch and Võ Minh Triết going off by themselves whilst walking the battlefield, sharing their recollections in Vietnamese while Welch leads them to specific places using his hand-held GPS.

Rating:

(cover of the US edition)

Title: The Price of Honour

Author: David H. Hackworth

Publisher: HarperCollins , London (2000)

ISBN 0-00 226143-X

The Price of Honor

Summary:

The opening scene is the Lang Vei Special Forces Camp, in the Central Highlands, in 1966, and the opening line is: "Burn 'em, for Christ's sake, burn 'em - they just blew the wire."

From there we are taken on roller coaster ride into the future to Mogadishu, the former Yugoslavia, and back to the present-day United States as a young Special Forces officer searches to find out what happened on the day his father died in that attack in Vietnam, and why various powerful people want him killed before he finds out the truth.

Thoughts:

This novel is a one-off by one of the USA's most decorated war veterans. It came as a complete surprise to me when I found out that he had published a novel. The other surprise is that he can really write fiction. The action comes fast and thick, along with heavy drinking, plenty of graphic sex, some gun, car, aircraft and bike porn, and various characters from the Vietnam War fighting to survive in a Millennial world that wants them dead. I immensely enjoyed reading this tome, and it has the best literary side-swipe that I have seen for a long time: one of the baddies drops his Tom Clancy novel as the good guys come crashing through the roof of his lair....

Rating:

Title: The Raid

Author: Benjamin F. Schemmer

Publisher: Avon Books (first paperback edition), 1986

ISBN 0-380-69942-7

Summary:

An in-depth look at the raid on Son Tay prison in North Vietnam on 21 November 1970, when a major operation was staged to rescue US POWs while the Paris Peace negotiations were dragging on. The author is a journalist who, nonetheless, gained the trust of various insiders, not least of whom was Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons, the commander of the raid, who sort of steals the show and leaves me thinking the author should have written a biography of him. As a journalist, Schemmer punctures the press hot-air balloon regarding this raid through careful research and shows just how audacious and successful it was, in spite of them not bringing back any prisoners because they had been moved earlier on by the North Vietnamese.

Thoughts:

This is a tricky topic to write about, and Schemmer's research is outstanding. He did a lot of careful sifting to sort out the facts from the fiction spread about this raid and it is a fascinating read. Even the chapters on the training are interesting: they had to build a temporary mock-up of the prison to train on and dismantle it when a Soviet spy satellite was about to pass overhead so there would be no clues offered about what was about to go down. Schemmer shows just how much intelligence work and training was required to pull off the raid, which happened just 23 miles from Hanoi, evading North Vietnamese radar, missiles and SAMs. He points out that the real impact of the raid was the boost it gave to the morale of US prisoners, and the wind it put up the North Vietnamese, making them feel that Nixon was running out of patience with the Paris peace talks and that nowhere was safe within their own country. A great read.

Rating:

Title: Once A Warrior King

Author: David Donovan

Publisher: Corgi Books (UK & Commonwealth paperback edition), 1985

ISBN 0-552-13273-X

Summary:

This is the account of a lieutenant (later captain) assigned to MACV Team 84 in a remote village on the Plain of Reeds. Donovan was not like the other young shake and bakes who arrived in Vietnam in the late 1960s: he completed Special Warfare training at Fort Bragg and learned Vietnamese prior to his tour of duty. He retells in vivid detail his arrival in South Vietnam and his initial acclimatisation assignment patrolling with the 9th Infantry down in the Mekong Delta, which ends with him applying his rifle butt to an artilleryman who stole an old peasant woman's bike. From there, we follow his troubled progress dealing with being assigned to a MACV team with a gung-ho captain wanting to score points to further his career, whose recklessness ultimately leads to the destruction of their base. Donovan ends up replacing him and we see how he, a young man in his early 20s, handles gaining a level of power that includes the ability to call in Arclight strikes and brown water navy units for support, and results in him having to deal with and gain an understanding of both the South Vietnamese and MACV provincial hierarchy in order to protect a community he loves.

Thoughts:

A book that is not what it initially appears. Early on, you get the impression that Donovan is just naive and idealistic, until the incident with the rifle butt, when you realise he is not a guy who takes any shit or suffers fools gladly, and his immense love and respect for Vietnamese people and culture becomes increasingly apparent as the narrative progresses, culminating when he attends the opening ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wearing a South Vietnamese blue beret and jungle fatigues and is spotted by a Vietnamese family: "They looked at me as if they could tell I had been one of the Americans close to their people. They didn't say anything [...]. Their message was in their eyes and on their faces. It was a message of pain, of sorrow, and of great loss." This is one of the first books about the Vietnam War I read in 1987, and which I sold up when I left my home town. I found another copy a few weeks ago for $2 and it was even the same edition, with the same wear (but more faded along the spine). This is the book that first got me thinking about going to Vietnam: in addition to the war stuff, Donovan got initiated into a secret society, hung out in girlie bars and whorehouses, and lived through times that were clearly the most exciting period of his life and which he missed greatly afterwards. The only problem with this book is that it isn't longer.

Rating:

Title: Matterhorn

Author: Karl Marlantes

Publisher: Corvus (UK 1st paperback edition), 2010

ISBN 978-1-84887-495-1

Summary:

The focus of Matterhorn is Waino Mellas, an FNG lieutenant posted to a Marine company on a godforsaken hill near the Laotian border. The novel vividly shows the issues faced by him and the men he commands, as well as his senior commanders, as they go through the farcical situation of first holding the hill, then being told to build bunkers on it, only to be told to abandon it for a wild goose chase through triple canopy jungle that turns into a starvation-fueled mountain-climbing Hell march due to lack of logistical support and base commanders who do not know how to read topographical maps. The novel climaxes when the exhausted company, as punishment for not reaching their impossible objectives on schedule during this forced march, is ordered to retake Matterhorn as the NVA have occupied the very bunkers that they themselves built.

Thoughts:

This is a novel about tough men pushed to breaking point by a series of clusterfucks created by senior commanders whose thoughts are more on backroom careerist politics than the men in the front line who they command. We see the rifts that develop within B Company even as its officers and NCOs desperately struggle to hold things together. This is one of those novels that you cannot put down. Written by a Marine veteran who spent decades trying to get it published, and who kept going in spite of being told by assistant editors in various publishing houses that Vietnam had already been "done" in the 80s and maybe he could rewrite it and set it in Afghanistan or Iraq to make it more "relevant", the novel itself is a testament to determination in the face of adversity. I missed this one when it came out in 2010. Maybe you did too - it's essential Vietnam War reading. The blurb on the back of my edition erroneously compares it to Siegfried Sassoon's "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer", Hemingway's "A Farewell To Arms" and Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead". Wrong on all three counts: it's the Vietnam equivalent of James Jones' "The Thin Red Line" in that it is essentially an insider's unit history that puts the reader right in the heart of the action with all the sweat, fear and uncertainty, the tropical heat and the harshness of the jungle terrain. My favourite aspect of the novel is that Marlantes chose to have a Canadian called Vancouver as the company bad-ass. On his third tour, he is the one always on point and spends much of the novel pestering the company commander for a Japanese sword he has mail-ordered, which the CO has hidden because he's damned if he's going to let the crazy Canuck loose on patrol with a sword. There is a scene where Vancouver comes back to Matterhorn just after an artillery battery has set up there:

"When Vancouver strolled across the LZ in the predawn semi-darkness however, even the studied indifference of the artillerymen was broken.
"Where the fuck did HE come from?"

"A fucking movie. [...] They couldn't get John Wayne so they got him." [...]

"Did you see what that mother was carrying? A fucking sawed-off M-60. Jesus Christ."

"I don't know man."

"It's bullshit. You couldn't control it."

"Who the fuck CARES if you can control a fucking M-60?"

Here's an in-depth interview with the author: http://jerryjazzmusician.com/2013/05/karl-marlantes-author-of-matterhorn-a-novel-of-the-vietnam-war/

Rating:

Title: One Crowded Hour: Neil Davis, Combat Cameraman 1934-1985

Author: Tim Bowden

Publisher: Imprint - Collins Australia, 1987

ISBN 0-7322-2418-7

Summary:

Neil Davis is a legend who tends to be overlooked. This book, written by a colleague who was finishing it just as Davis was killed in crossfire whilst filming one of Thailand's multitudinous military coups, records a remarkable life for posterity's sake. Davis was the man who was waiting with a film camera and a tape recorder (remarkably, all his sound was synched in the studio) when the first NVA T-54s came crashing through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon on 30 April 1975. The account of how he spent that day, after the last Americans had evacuated the US Embassy, is one of the many highlights in this book. Davis had just escaped from his home, Phnom Penh, on the last US helicopter before the Khmer Rouge arrived and, with little to lose, was determined to stay on in Saigon to record what happened. He wandered through the gates of the US Embassy with the NZ journalist Peter Arnett, watching philosophically as the place was ransacked by looters, and accepting a looter's offer of a free European-sized shirt snatched from a long-gone American's suitcase. Given that, at the time, he literally had nothing much more than the shirt on his back, he gratefully accepted the offer. Then he wandered over to the Presidential Palace to have a few last words of farewell with Big Minh, the South Vietnamese President, and the Vice-President, who he had known for years, before watching the NVA arrive. It was the culmination of a decade spent covering the Vietnam War, during which time he always insisted on going out into the field with ARVN troops rather than the Americans or the Australians, as might be expected. He was likewise one of the very few Western reporters who repeatedly went out into the field with Cambodian troops, carrying a bulky film camera that made him a tempting target for the Khmer Rouge.

Thoughts:

The tale of a man who lived life on the edge. A compulsive smoker who, in a vow to stop, swore he would never buy another cigarette and who was consequently continually cadging them off his colleagues, an inveterate womaniser who was known as The Fox by the Bangkok bar girls in his later years, and a hard drinker and party guy who, for a short while, co-owned the hottest night spot in Phnom Penh on an old barge, until the neighbours across the river, tired of the all-night partying, sent frogmen to do a demolition job on the barge in the early hours of the morning. There's a life lesson there: if your neighbours are the Khmer Rouge, do not piss them off. Davis was genuinely heartbroken to have to leave Cambodia, having moved there in the early 70s, where he became a crazy mentor for any greenhorn Western journalist who turned up there. This book is over 400 pages long, and would have been longer if Davis had survived to see it through to completion. My impression is that a lot has been left out, and the coverage is a bit patchy. Still, what is in there is incredible: the Cambodian war scenes are surreal, featuring levels of strangeness that make the Vietnam War look comparatively pedestrian. A must-read book for those interested in the journalists who covered the South-East Asian wars.

Rating:

Title: Novel Without A Name

Author: Duong Thu Huong

Publisher: Picador, London, 1995

ISBN 0-330-34407-2

Summary:

The stream of consciousness experiences of Quan, an NVA company commander fighting in the South. Nothing is left out here: a whole platoon wiped out by friendly fire, the political commissar who concocts a disastrous assault to further his career while the leader is away, surviving B52 strikes, the friend who goes mad and is locked up in a barbed wire enclosure reminiscent of a strategic hamlet, visiting a "Special Unit" that is on coffin-making detail, where the soldiers sleep in the coffins they have just made with the lids on tight because there are roaming tigers in the area, shooting some prisoners and not shooting others, and the continual "victories" that repeatedly leave him with most of his company wiped out. Quan went south down the Ho Chi Minh on foot in the mid-60s, and by the time his company is loading up onto trucks at what sounds like Bien Hoa airbase to advance into the Mekong, he is a changed man. He has survived, but that is about all he can say.

Thoughts:

Dương Thu Hương is a woman who spent a decade as a platoon leader in the South, and Quan is a male fictional character most likely created to deflect Party criticism, but it is clear that the scenes portrayed here are based on her experiences. She published this book in the UK after having her writing banned and being imprisoned in Vietnam, and to this day lives in Hanoi largely off foreign royalties from her fiction, along with a $20 a month pension. More of her works have been translated into French than English, and the first novel I read by her was in French. She looks beyond the official façade presented, and her images of the war are striking.

Rating:

Title: The Odyssey Of Echo Company

Author: Doug Stanton

Publisher: Scribner, New York, 2018

ISBN 978-4767-61914

Summary:

This book is the outcome of a chance meeting by the author with an operations officer at Bagram Air Base, Kabul, in 2005, who he got to talking with whilst trying to hitch a ride to a Special Forces camp on the Pakistani border. The first thing he noticed was how much older Stan Parker was than everyone else, and his appearance: "Short, sandy-haired, broad-chested, Stan had an easy smile and talked a lot like Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove. He was wearing body armor, with an M-4 carbine slung across his chest. I wouldn't want to mess with him." It turned out that not only had Stan Parker been in the battle of Mogadishu, but he had also been in firefights going all the way back to the Tet Offensive. His parting comment before Stanton finally hitched his ride was that he really should write a book about what Stan and his friends went through in Vietnam. This is that book.

Thoughts:

This is a true odyssey; a life story that criss-crosses the globe and spans several decades and comes down to one pivotal day during the Tet Offensive, near Hue, which changed the life of Stan Parker, and how things eventually came full circle. I'm not going to give away the ending, but if you have a dry eye after reading the final chapter, you have a heart of stone. A fairly recent book on the Vietnam War that is one of the best I have ever read.

Rating:

Title: M

Author: John Sack

Publisher: Corgi Books, London 1986

ISBN 0 552 12782 5

Summary:

John Sack joins a rag-tag group of draftees for training at Fort Dix and watches as they are transformed into M Company, then follows them over to Vietnam and accompanies them into battle: their first operation is a sweep through the Michelin plantation. Sack is the proverbial fly on the wall during everything the unit goes through, recounting the good and the bad that occurs during their tour of duty, running from 1966-67.

Thoughts:

How did I miss this when it was first published in paperback in 1986? M is an absolute classic of Vietnam War writing, and is up there with the best of them. The dense, detailed writing style, similar to Michael Herr's, will not be to everyone's taste, but Sack definitely provides an insider's view of what it was like to be there. John Sack volunteered for the Korean War and ended up writing for Stars & Stripes as a combat reporter, beginning a journalism career that extended all the way to the publication of his final book "Company C: the real war in Iraq" in 1995, which he wrote in his 60s whilst embedded in an armour unit that took part in the largest tank battle in recent history. His other book on the Vietnam War was "Lieutenant Calley: his own story; [as told to] John Sack".

There is so much detail in this 212 page book that I took it slowly and savoured it. Here's one extract to give you an idea of the writing. The scene is the edge of the unit's firebase, looking out over "spiral ooooo's of barbed wire" and "wooded hills and valleys", while a sergeant gives instruction on the wily ways of the VC:

"A southerner, the sergeant had succumbed to a drawl of such virulence that his vowels had become like a wind in old plantation chimneys, his consonants like the rustling of silken curtains: essence with no substance, matrix without matter the sergeant's smooth flow of words was a warm dessert in which one could scarcely differentiate between the custard and the currants. Early in his Army career, the sergeant had become aware that his most exigent utterances had been falling on the ears of his auditors like an alphabetical list of Hawaiian deities, and to compensate for this involuntary obscurantism he had made it his second nature to say each phrase of his glossolalia over and over until the drift of his Delphic meaning started to come across to the troops. Accordingly, even at times when the sergeant addressed himself on the topics of wrack and ruin, blood and guts, as he was obliged to this evening, even at these bloodcurling times the warmth of his Florida drawl and the easy leisuredness of his repetitions conspired with his loss-of-signal to make him as comforting as a man chewing a wad of 'baccy and reminiscing about the summer when one of his jerseys took a blue ribbon on the Chattahoochee. In this lonely hour, no eloquent gift of gab could have reassured Demirgian as much as this orientation by his soothing new platoon sergeant, Sergeant Allen."

All this is just prior to a mortar round landing nearby: "BANG! And as Yoshioka ducked and Demirgian's curious eyes turned to the concertina wire to gaze at the black explosion, a few hundred fragments of steel whistled through the evening air, s-s-s-s-s-, ten to twenty feet on the sunset side of M's new arrivals."

Rating:

Title: Close Quarters

Author: Larry Heinemann

Publisher: Faber & Faber, London 1987

ISBN 0 571 14922-7

Summary:

Fresh out of Fort Knox, Philip Dosier arrives at his posting, an ACAV unit based near the Black Virgin Mountain, Tây Ninh Province. The first thing evident is the ready acceptance with which he is greeted, soon earning the nickname "Deadeye". There are no mind games in store for the FNG; the ACAV guys are fellow tankers, and a relaxed fraternal air seems to prevail among them. Dosier is assigned to a track with an NCO called Cross, and is soon being taught how to drive:

"Dosier m'man, this here is a M-one-one-three, o.d., one each type, never fail, never float, armored personnel carrier. It is powered by a single two-eighty-three-cubic-inch Chevy V-8, with vacuum governor, and something like a ninety-gallon gas tank. The configuration of three automatic weapons makes it an armored assault vee-hicle, and it carries a basic load of eight thousand rounds. We carry firepower, not troops. Let the fucken line companies do that. To climb up, put yer right foot on the tread, grab this lift hook, swing yer other foot to this bolt head, and swing yourself up." He stood on the deck. "Now come up."

After an unfortunate encounter with a water buffalo on an S bend whilst leading a supply convoy, Dosier's track is nicknamed "The Cow Catcher", with the honor of painting the lettering falling on him. Within a few months, due to various departures and deaths of his fellow crewmen in a never-ending series of patrols, ambushes, and armored assaults, he mounts the track for the first time as its commander:

"That was the first time I climbed into the TC hatch and settled in behind the fifty-caliber machine gun, with a hundred five rounds hanging from the feed tray, the two slippery wooden handles, and the oily butterfly trigger. I had piled the fifty ammo cans into a high pyramid so I could stand as high as possible. The upturned hatch cover behind me, the two armor shields to the sides, and the curved gun shield on the fifty formed a tub around me. I could look down on the tops of heads, down the front of blouses; I kept a gas-mask bag of frags hung on one side and my shotgun - later a captured AK - on the other."

Thoughts:

This novel is literally a wild ride, with lots of attitude and swagger. Clearly based on Larry Heinemann's own experiences in Vietnam, it is a trackhead's delight. You can practically smell the grease and the gasoline. This is the only war novel I read where a grease gun was precisely that, and the ultimate weapon is "the BFH. The Bravo Fox Hotel. The Big Fucking Hammer."

Another Vietnam War classic I had never read. I found this in a second-hand bookstore in Wellington and started it whilst waiting for my order in the nearby Saigon Café and could not put it down. I have just mail-ordered Heinemann's "Paco's War" as a follow-up and am looking forward to its arrival.

Rating:

Title: Nam Au Go Go

Author: John Akins

Publisher: Vineyard Press, Port Jefferson NY, 2005

ISBN 1 930067 38 0

Summary:

John Akins volunteered for the US Marines, figuring that he was probably going to get drafted anyway. All the way to Vietnam he took every opportunity to point out his typing skills, hoping to get a clerk's position and some managerial training whilst in the Marines. Instead, after punching out a bullying Jehovah's Witness on the runway at Khe Sanh, who figured he was an easy mark because he kept to himself to himself and read books, he finds himself transferred to the Combined Action Program, where he learns the sort of special operations skills that have zero transferability when back in the world. He learns Vietnamese, how to call in fire from anything from a Huey Hog to a battleship, and finds himself feeling oddly at home in the world of unconventional warfare, to the point that he begins to relish going into combat, working with a Combined Action Team comprising various misfits at a minuscule firebase exposed to constant attack. Towards the end of his tour, his commander says he can make the specious charges filed against him for murdering 14 NVA prisoners disappear if he re-ups. His reply: I'll only do it if you guarantee I get into jump school.

Thoughts:

This autobiography is a raw account of a veteran's attempt to come to terms with a very violent, troubling tour of duty that left him a changed man. We see glimpses of how this period affected his later life, prompting repeated returns to Vietnam after the war, "searching for my soul", as he put it to one US border security officer who asked him the reason for his travel. Whilst there, he finds a strange peace as he comes to terms with his past. Definitely a guy I would like to go drinking with in Saigon, and I hope one day our paths will cross.

Rating:

Title: The Sympathizer

Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Publisher: Corsair, London, 2015 (UK edition)

ISBN 978 1 472151-37-7

Summary:

Fleeing Saigon in 1975 in a C-130 that takes off under rocket fire at Tan Son Nhut, the Sympathizer accompanies the General (the head of the Saigon Special Branch), and a planeload of his sidekicks and their families all the way to Los Angeles, where they get on with the difficult job of adjusting to life as civilian refugees in a country that no longer likes being reminded about the Vietnam War. The Sympathizer has a dark secret though; in spite of his French father, his American education, his CIA patronage, and a career involving torturing VC agents, he is in fact a North Vietnamese mole, fastidiously relaying what is going on among the South Vietnamese diaspora and reporting the General's every move as he trains and equips a guerilla force to infiltrate Vietnam.

Thoughts:

This novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 and it is a deft piece of writing. The New York Times compared it to Kafka and Genet, but neither of those men would have been capable of writing this tome, the author being a South Vietnamese who arrived in the US as a child refugee. Viet Thanh Nguyen manages to encapsulate all the contradictions of the Vietnam War and its absurd outcomes in a tale that combines elements of satire, politics, national identity and extreme violence. The text is dense and complex and will not be to all tastes. I personally found the absence of quotation remarks for reported speech off-putting and confusing in places. The interrogation scenes are gruelling and no one comes out of this story unscathed. I am interested to see what reactions it got in Vietnam. The main character is based on Phạm Xuân Ẩn, the subject of the book "A Perfect Spy" who, like the Sympathizer, spent a year in a re-education camp after the war for being far too Western in his outlook. The General, on the other hand, is based on Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, right down to his buying a liquor store in LA. It is a bold novel and, in spite of the fact this period is now entering into history, it took balls to write it.

Postscript: In March 2021, the sequel was published. "The Committed" follows the Sympathizer's flight to France and his descent into the Parisian criminal underworld. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Rating:

Title: The Committed

Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Publisher: Corsair, London, 2021 (UK edition)

ISBN 978 1 472151-5251-0

Summary:

Escaping Vietnam after a year in a re-education camp that has pushed him over the brink of insanity, the Sympathizer flees on a Boat People cruise from hell and ends up in an Indonesian refugee camp. There, he applies for residency in France on the basis that his father was French and he has a Parisian "aunt" (his letter drop contact from his days as a Communist spy in Los Angeles). Finding that dealing drugs is the easiest way to make a living in a country where "liberté égalité fraternité" are highly conditional terms, Vô Danh, as he is now calling himself (= anonymous in Vietnamese) finds himself caught in an ever-increasing spiral of gang violence as he tramples on the turf of a Maghrebin crew who come looking for him after he puts two of them in hospital with his switchblade.

Thoughts:

This is the follow-up to The Sympathizer, and it packs just as big a punch as the original. I was curious to see if the author would be up to the challenge of depicting life in 1980s Paris, a world he did not know personally. He captures all of its quirks, inconsistencies and hypocrisies: sidewalks mined with dogshit that are actually filthier than Saigon's, pompous Parisian intellectuals smugly lecturing on the failure of the Vietnamese revolution even while their own newly-elected Socialist government is falling flat, the weirdness of Paris's Chinatown, the 13th Arrondissement, which is so dilutely, blandly Asian that Vô Danh thinks it must be some sort of State-engineered plot, and the consequences of France's colonial heritage in the form of inter-ethnic gangland violence. I caught the tail end of the Mitterrand years, and as someone who has lived in Paris, and was even for a short while in Paris's Chinatown, and who has encountered just the sort of intellectuals and thugs depicted here, I can say that Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a thoroughly accurate portrayal of that world. There were laugh-out-loud moments of recognition as I read his portrayal of Paris and its denizens and the climax of the novel is as breathtaking as it is violent. The ending is suspiciously open-ended, so it looks like this is going to be a trilogy, with the 3rd book involving the CIA.

Rating:

Title: British G.I. In Vietnam

Author: Ian Kemp

Publisher: Robert Hale, London, 1969

ISBN 7091 0949 0

Summary:

Ian Kemp went to the United States looking for work but ended up going to university instead. He was warned when enrolling that upon leaving university, he would be eligible for military service. Dropping out of his course, rather than wait to be called up, he volunteered, signing up for airborne training, arriving in Vietnam in 1966. Originally trained as an Operations and Intelligence RTO, whilst deployed with the 101st Airborne Division, he found himself repeatedly being unable to receive assignments in the field because of his alien status and lack of security clearance. Consequently, he volunteered as a door gunner on medevac Hueys, protecting dust-off missions from attack with an M-16. After that he volunteered to join Tiger Force, during which time he saw a lot of ground action and was awarded the Silver Star. Subsequently, he transferred back to helicopters as a door gunner (this time manning an M-60), first on Huey sllcks, and then on a Huey Frog called "Satan's Wrath".

Thoughts:

A memoir that provides a unique perspective on the war: very few books have been written by Englishmen who were in the US Army in Vietnam. The only other one I have come across is "The Cage" by Tom Abraham. Ian Kemp's perspective on the war was that he had enjoyed the USA's hospitality, wanted to continue living there, and felt it was his duty to fulfil his obligations to his new homeland. His account provides a lot of detail about being on the front line both in the air and on the ground, with the centrepiece of his time with Tiger Force being a chapter called "The Ambush", the engagement which led to him being awarded the Silver Star. This chapter features a detailed map, providing the names and locations of members of a Tiger Force detachment that was attacked by an NVA company, and would make a good game. Ian Kemp offers a lively account of what he saw and the people he met during his time in Vietnam. Worth a read if you can find it.

Rating:

Title: Vietnam: Ground Zero

Author: Eric Helm

Publisher: Gold Eagle Books, Reading, UK, 1987

ISBN 0 373 62701 7

Score! I found this today in a "books we can't get rid of" box outside a local charity store for 50 cents.

It's off to a roaring start with a Chinese officer successfully leading an ambush of an ARVN Rangers patrol just south of the Parrot's Beak, with the Special Forces guys being sent out to find out what's happened to the missing patrol.

This book is the first one in the series, so it's almost like I'm predestined to work my way through the whole series...

I finished this one today: a good read, with realistic combat scenes and even a sniper op in Cambodia, along with the judicial hearing that followed it. Lots of granular detail about being in-country and in Saigon, giving the impression the authors were actually there and know what they are talking about. The authors are setting the scene for the series, so there's a bit of character development and background stuff going on. Not as much raunchy sex stuff as Hamlet though...

Rating:

Title: Knives In The Night

Author: David Sherman

Publisher: Ivy Books, New York, 1987

ISBN 0 8041 0001 2

Summary:

It's 1966, and CAP Tango Niner is faced with multiple problems: recruiting men to form the local Popular Forces platoon, countering the accusations being spread by a local official who appears to be working for the VC, and dealing with an elusive NVA platoon that has recently moved into its operations area.

Thoughts:

This is the opening novel in the "Night Fighters" series and is an action-packed read. The author is a Marine who served in CAP units, so there is a fair amount of realistic detail here, with lots of small unit action involving ambushes. The character development is a bit uneven, with the "spear carriers" getting it in the neck very quickly, while various other characters have their backgrounds explained in separate chapters, which broke the flow of the narrative somewhat. This is a useful book for ideas for game scenarios, or maybe even a mini-campaign, as it has three maps in it, including a detailed one of Camp Apache, the CAP unit's base camp. There are 6 books in this series and I'll be buying them if I spot them.

Rating:

Title: Going After Cacciato

Author: Tim O'Brien

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2015 (originally published in 1978)

ISBN 978 0 00 654307 7

Summary:

An unassuming private called Cacciato goes AWOL, and men from his platoon find out he has decided to walk to Paris, starting with a hump over the Central Highlands and into Laos. They track him as far as the border, then decide to cross it.

Thoughts:

The basic premise of this novel is a good one, but the execution of it left me cold. It is one of those books where you are left guessing what is "real" and what is "imaginary", which can be quite challenging given it is a work of fiction. I disliked this novel for the same reason I didn't like "Through The Looking Glass" as a child; the work just left me with the impression that the author was messing with my head. It's not that I don't like Tim O'Brien's writing - "If I Die In A Combat Zone" is a classic. On the face of it, "Going After Cacciato" looked promising. Philip Caputo described it as "Not only the best novel about the Vietnam War, but among the finest works of fiction in contemporary American literature". It won the 1979 National Book Award for Fiction, with the award citation citing "his irony recalls that of Stendhal, his landscapes have the breadth and scope of Tolstoy's and the essential American wonder and innocence of his vision deserves to stand beside that of Stephen Crane." Sadly, this is hyperbole. I studied Stendhal and Tolstoy in French and Russian at university, and O'Brien is a fine writer, but he cannot be compared to those two. I also studied Stephen Crane, and I think this is just another case of name-dropping in relation to this particular novel. This book read more like Robert Sheckley than a work by Crane. I get the whole "magic realism" thing, having read Alejo Carpentier and other writers of that genre in Spanish, but O'Brien doesn't handle it particularly well. His dialogues are stilted, and various of the characters are cardboard thin, as is the plot. The premise of a team of fully kitted-out grunts bluffing their way through travelling across countries like 1960s Iran and Yugoslavia, where they would have been arrested at the border and thrown into a dark jail, just didn't do it for me. Neither did the various "gosh darn we failed to catch Cacciato AGAIN" moments in the plot. Oh, and a word on that name: Cacciato means hunted or chased in Italian. And I'm going to give away the ending, as a public service: yes it was all a dream and the team turned back, never to find Cacciato.

Rating:

Title: Incident on Hill 192 (this is the UK title of "Casualties of War")

Author: Daniel Lang

Publisher: Pan Books, 1970

ISBN 330 02518 X

Summary:

Sven Eriksson, a GI three weeks in-country, finds himself assigned to a reconnaissance patrol with a five-times decorated sergeant about to be nominated for a Silver Star. Meserve, the sergeant, announces to his men prior to the patrol that they are going to bring along a Vietnamese girl for recreation purposes. Eriksson at first thinks that Meserve is joking but his reaction turns to shock and horror when Meserve diverts the patrol in the middle of the night and they abduct a girl from her family home. When they stop at an abandoned hooch on the hill where they are to carry out observation duties and Meserve orders Eriksson to rape her, he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to stand up to a hardened combat vet who makes it clear Eriksson will get fragged if he causes any trouble.

Thoughts:

This is the book that the film "Casualties of War", starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, was based on. Whereas the film focuses primarily on the patrol, with the trial that followed being the aftermath, in the book, the trial is the centre of attention, with the events of the patrol forming the preliminary to the main focus of the book: how a principled man deals with an unprincipled war. Daniel Lang's account is sober, restrained and matter-of-fact; there are no fancy flourishes in the writing. Indeed, none are needed, as the events retold are powerful enough in themselves, and it is a very moving account.

I rewatched the film to sort out fact from fiction. The initial scene with the night-time firefight is not featured in the book and appears to have been added for plot purposes, to show that Meserve was a veteran and Eriksson was green. The events shown on-screen regarding the patrol follow the real events in the book, apart from the riverside firefight. In real life, the patrol was observing VC in a cave in the valley below, the firefight was complicated and drawn out, and Mao's actual murder was more sordid than is shown in the film. In the trial, the defence attempted to implicate Eriksson in the murder, saying he had joined in when Meserve gave the order to the patrol to shoot Mao when they found themselves caught in a firefight. Crucially, Eriksson was a blooper man - M79 rounds have a distinctive copper casing: the CID crime scene investigators only found M-16 rounds in and near the body. The film's fragging scene back on base is also entirely invented, for plot purposes, and Eriksson did not smack one of the murderers upside the head with a shovel, although it is one of the best scenes in the film. Various pivotal points in the book are however accurately retold in the film, including various quotes from the people involved.

The plural "Casualties" in the title of the film was always unclear to me: Mao, the Vietnamese girl who was raped and murdered, was one person. I assumed the plural referred to truth being a casualty of war too. In the book, we find out that after Mao's abduction, rape and murder, her mother was taken away by the VC (supposedly for providing intelligence to ARVN forces), and subsequently her younger sister was also abducted by the VC and disappeared, never to be heard from again. One of the Vietnamese court interpreters offers the following comment on the family's fate, which is pivotal: "Charlie kidnapped her [the sister] just as he did Mao's mother. So now it's only the father who's left - or is he? Who says we don't get along with Charlie? Between us, we've taken care of that whole family."

Rating:

Title: Saigon

Author: Anthony Grey

Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1982 (first edition hardback)

ISBN 0 297 77935 4

Summary:

It is 1925 and Senator Joseph Sherman, his wife and two sons, arrive in Saigon on a hunting expedition. The events that follow irrevocably change their lives and the lives of their descendants, which become intertwined with Vietnam. The novel recounts their experiences, encompassing the first stirrings of rebellion against the French, the Japanese occupation and its aftermath, Dien Bien Phu, the coups d'état of the early 60s, the Tet Offensive, the Paris Peace negotiations and ending with the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Thoughts:

This is a long (789 pages) sprawling historical novel of the sort written by the likes of Herman Wouk and James A. Michener. The title of the novel is a bit of a misnomer: the author is an old China hand who spent two years imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, and his knowledge of Chinese culture shines through in his accounts of the Imperial Court in Hue, which he describes better than Saigon. Some of the novel is also set in Hanoi. The historical details are accurate, and it is clearly well researched. There are lots of combat scenes, and some love interest for the ladies. Overall it was a good read, but there was a lot of improbably fortuitous crossing of paths down through the decades that pushed credulity somewhat.

Rating:

Title: Fields of Fire

Author: James Webb

Publisher: Granada, London 1981 (UK paperback)

ISBN 0 583 13331 2

Summary:

The opening scene features a Marine Lieutenant, Hodges, calmly sitting on a paddy dyke, stirring his can of Beef & Potatoes while all hell breaks loose around him. An M-48 tank nearby is opening up on NVA taking shelter in a pagoda. It fires White Phosphorus. Snake, his black platoon sergeant comes up and lights up a cigarette: "Get some tank. Half a dozen crispy critters in there, now. "Hodges grunts with contentment: "Fucking tank." Over to their north, there is more gunfire. Snake then gives a report on what's up with the platoon, telling him "Senator's pissed off again." There is cryptic reference to someone called Baby Cakes, some derogatory remarks about a REMF officer called Kersey, and the reader becomes aware that there is some deep shit going down in that unit for these two to be sitting in the middle of a firefight with their minds focused on other matters.

Thoughts:

This is one of those novels that puts you right in the middle of things and gives you a sense of what it was like to be there. The novel is based on James Webb's own experiences as a Marine lieutenant, and this is one of the very best novels written about the Vietnam War. The reader is shown the corrosive effect the conflict has on a unit formed of men from various walks of life, who face conditions that are unforgiving, and who, one by one, and sometimes several at a time, fall victim to mistakes made both in the front line and in the rear that prove fatal. Of them all, Senator, the platoon's college-educated square peg, seems to be the one least likely to survive.

A novel I have been wanting to read for years, and it did not disappoint. The final scene, at the Stateside university war protest rally, where the amputee vet on crutches is invited up to the podium to spout some slogans and instead says what he really thinks, is jaw-dropping.

Rating:

Title: The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Author: John "Chick" Donohue and JT Molloy

Publisher: Monoray, London 2020 (UK paperback)

ISBN 978 1 91318 330 1

Summary:

John "Chick" Donohue and his buddies are sitting in Doc Fiddler's Bar in Inwood, Manhattan in November 1967, talking about various of their pals who are serving in Vietnam. The idea is conceived that someone should take them some beer to thank them for their efforts, and Chick, a former US Marine working as a merchant seaman, offers to do it. He is the perfect candidate: having served, he has the military background required to handle himself in a war zone, and his seaman's papers will enable him to get over to Vietnam easily, at a time when the volume of shipping heading that way was enormous.

Thoughts:

This is a drinker's guide to the Vietnam War, and Chick is a consummate raconteur as he tells about how he went the extra distance to track down several widely-dispersed buddies serving in Vietnam, hopping rides in jeeps, trucks, planes and helicopters to get to some very unlikely places. He soon cottoned onto the fact that, because he was dressed in civilian clothing, various officers and NCOs assumed he was CIA, as there was no other possible reason for him being there, and he played that for all it was worth. As a seasoned barman, he also offers a precious account of what the bar scene in 1968 Saigon was like and where, he finds himself caught in the front line of the fighting when the Tet Offensive breaks out on the very morning he was scheduled to catch a pre-dawn bus to Tan Son Nhut Airport from outside the US Embassy.

A wonderful read. I'm looking forward to seeing the film that is rumoured to be in production.

Rating:

Title: Policing Saigon

Author: Loren W. Christensen

Publisher: LWC Books, Las Vegas, 2017

ISBN 10: 1979253420

Summary:

Loren W. Christensen had never been abroad when he found himself transferred to Saigon at the age of 23, his second assignment as a Military Policeman. Having received Vietnamese language training and with a background in martial arts, he soon found himself in the thick of things, responsible for maintaining law and order in a city that was the wildest in the Western world. Whether chasing down wallet-snatching hookers, muggers, GIs who were AWOL, drunk, disorderly or who had simply gone troppo (the worst case recounted was a chaplain), no two days on patrol were the same. Due to his size, martial arts skills and knowledge of Vietnamese, he found himself in a front-line role during his time in Saigon, to the extent he was assigned to a special squad whose job was to deal with the inveterate shit-stirrers and brawlers in the Tu Do bar strip area. He commented that this squad did shifts from 6 pm till midnight and it involved more or less continuous bar room brawling, every day of the week. Then there were the VC to deal with as well - an ongoing series of snipers, grenade throwers, hit and run shooters, and explosive devices left in public places requiring the attentions of the bomb squad. And just as dangerous as the VC was the Saigon traffic, with its attendant horror stories. Christensen later went on to work as a policeman in Portland, Oregon, and comments that one year on patrol in Saigon was the equivalent of five years' police experience in the US.

Thoughts:

This is a print-on-demand book I got through Amazon. Loren W. Christensen is a veritable publishing industry, having written many books since he first started writing for Soldier of Fortune in the late 1970s. His other books include titles on topics like street gangs and self-defence. This book was a delight to read. There are jaw-dropping moments, including all sorts of weirdness and strangeness, along with knuckle-crunching action, and perilous near-misses. For example, Christensen tells of a hotel he was billeted in, where the open breezeway corridor running through the centre of the building on his floor was targeted by a sniper who let rip with automatic fire (including tracer bullets) from a vantage point across the way just as he was about to step outside his room, narrowly missing him. He writes that ever after, he always peeked out of the door of his room first before venturing out. On the topic of weirdness, there was the MP unit shindig held at a local swimming pool, where no one swam, because some weeks before a VC sniper had shot a GI in the head while he was up on the high board. After the party, Christensen got a call-out to the pool only to find there was a dead soldier in the bottom of it who, according to the autopsy, had broken in the night before, was swimming alone and died of a mishap. He had lain unnoticed in the bottom of the swimming pool throughout the MPs' poolside party. There are more colourful anecdotes here than you could even hope to outline in a short review. The book is paced so you get an impression of the chaos and craziness involved in being an MP in Saigon from 1969 to 1970, with various chapters being grouped in parts, providing a loose continuity to a complicated experience. He meditates on the good and the bad, and the effects his Saigon experience had on him and the other men in his unit.

Rating:

Title: Army Blue

Author: Lucian K. Truscott IV

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing PLC, London 1989 (first UK paperback edition)

ISBN 07472 34701

Summary:

It is 1969 and Lieutenant Matthew Nelson Blue IV finds himself in LBJ on trumped-up charges after a friendly fire incident caused by running into a CIA drug pick-up whilst his unit is illegally deployed across the border in Laos. His whole platoon is rapidly made to vanish by the Powers That Be, his casualty report on the man he lost to CIA fire is classified Top Secret, and he finds himself accused of desertion in the face of the enemy after narrowly missing artillery fire on his own position in what is clearly an attempt to wipe him off the face of the Earth. He gets one phone call, and he makes it to his father, who is an Army Colonel who is currently serving Stateside. His father is not his only ally. His grandfather is a retired General who fought in the European theatre in WWII and who, post-war, was one of the founding figures of the CIA. A titanic legal struggle ensues

Thoughts:

I found this novel in a book fair a couple of months ago. Although it is from the 1980s, and the cover proclaims it to be "the international bestseller of injustice and corruption in Vietnam", I had never heard of it. Lucian K. Truscott IV was a West Pointer who was drummed out of the military after publishing an article revealing drug abuse in US Army during the Vietnam War and this is clearly a novel based on his own experiences with military justice, and on his own family; like his character, Lieutenant Blue, he too was the third generation of his family to graduate from West Point.

I wasn't expecting much, but this novel is on point in terms of all sorts of detail: great accounts of what it was like to be on the frontline in the war, picturesque descriptions of Saigon, and a detailed understanding of military court proceedings, doubtless based on personal experience. If you like courtroom dramas and want to read one set in the Vietnam War, this is recommended. Truscott did lose me when he introduced the defence's final witness. Apart from that, a great read.

Rating:

Title: Fatal Light

Author: Richard Currey

Publisher: Faber and Faber, London 1989 (first UK paperback edition)

ISBN 0 571 14137 4

Summary:

In a series of episodes that show the fragmented impact of the Vietnam War on the writer, we gain an insight into what it was like to be a combat medic on a tour of duty. His thoughts range from his front-line experiences to his childhood and his life back home as he deals with the craziness of the war.

Thoughts:

Richard Currey did four tours of duty as a corpsman with the US Marines and this novel seems heavily autobiographical, although it is more of a distillation of his experience, with a contemplative approach adopted. It is not a voluminous novel, yet covers a lot of ground, from combat in the boonies to the underworld of Saigon, which is beautifully described. The writing is very immediate and powerful: the book earned the Hemingway Foundation Citation and the Vietnam Veterans Excellence in the Arts Award in 1988. It left me wanting to read more of his work and it turns out he published a poetic work on the war too called "Crossing Over: A Vietnam Journal", as well as "Lost Highway", the tale of a country musician who has to come to terms with the return back to the World of his war-wounded son. I'll be keeping an eye out for these.

Rating:

Title: The Battle For Saigon - Tet 1968

Author: Keith William Nolan

Publisher: Pocket Books, New York 1996 (hardback edition)

ISBN 0 671 52287 6

Summary:

Keith William Nolan puts the reader right in the thick of the action with a series of riveting accounts of the fighting in and around Saigon at the opening of the Tet Offensive. Relying heavily on personal interviews with the men who where there, and quoting them extensively, the reader gains an insight into what happened during the assault on the US Embassy, Tan Son Nhut, Bien Hoa, and Long Binh.

Thoughts:

I had already read Nolan's book "The Battling Bastards" and knew this was going to be a good read. There are lots of ideas for wargame scenarios in this book, although some imagination and map research will be needed to translate these accounts to the tabletop. My only problem with this book is that it feels like it should be much longer: there is however a companion volume on the Battle for Hue, so I will be looking out for that too.

Rating:

Title: Hamburger Hill

Author: William Pelfrey

Publisher: Avon Books, New York 1987 (first US paperback edition)

ISBN 0 380 75403 7

Summary:

A veteran standing at the Vietnam Memorial is overcome by memories flooding back that return him to Hill 937 in May 1969, and the men in his unit that he lost during 10 days spent repeatedly scrambling up a muddy hill in pouring rain whilst being cut down by multi-layered NVA defences.

Thoughts:

This is a novel based on the screenplay to the film "Hamburger Hill", one of the best Vietnam War films ever made. I found it for a dollar in a charity store several years ago and finally got around to reading it. My hesitancy over reading it was due to my impression that film tie-ins are not usually well-written, but that is not the case with this one. William Pelfrey served in an infantry recon platoon in the tri-border region of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1969 to 1970, so he is well-qualified to write this novelisation. I rewatched the film while I was reading the novel. The dialogues are faithfully lifted from the script, and the novel closely follows the film, but with the added layer of detail and background that only a novel can provide. Pelfrey's writing is tense and impactful, and hits you just as hard as the film. I recommend this one if you loved the film. William Pelfrey also published a novel in 1972 called "The Big V", which is one of the earliest Vietnam War novels written by a veteran - I'll have to track that one down too. It is available on Kindle.

Rating:

Title: Combat Police: U.S. Army Military Police in Vietnam

Author: Rick Young

Publisher: 1st Books, 2003 (US paperback edition)

ISBN 1 4033 6391 9

Summary:

A comprehensive history of the deployment and multiple roles played by the US Military Police in Vietnam, from their initial deployment in September 1962, through to their withdrawal in March 1973. Rick Young explains the complexities of MP unit structures, and their deployment and assignments throughout South Vietnam.

Thoughts:

This book is a mine of information if you want to deploy a unit (large or small) of the various MP figures that have been released recently. Rick Young gives you all the granular detail you need, with detailed Tables of Organisation & Equipment, right down to the number of individual weapons and transport used by the various units. Want to field some or all of a Physical Security Company? An Escort Guard Company? How about a Dog Company or a Light Amphibious Boat Company? (Yes, the MPs had riverine units; Rick Young was in one and even includes photos.) He also provides details of the MPs' Cadillac Gage V100 armored cars and M113s in action on road patrols. There are lots of first-hand accounts from veterans, and he draws on articles from the MPs' newsletter in Vietnam "The Roundup" to provide a comprehensive picture of all the roles that the MPs played in Vietnam. The reader is given a good understanding of how MP units were integrated into line units, and the author provides accounts of combat between MP units and the VC/NVA ranging from 1-man dog patrols through to company and battalion-sized actions, so there are lots of potential gaming scenarios offered. My only problem with this treasure trove is that there is no index, so you need to take notes as you go. It would also have been nice to have some photos showing MP uniforms, but fortunately these are easy enough to find on-line. I got "Combat Police" as a print on demand book via Amazon, but an electronic version is also available.

Rating:

Title: The Sorrow Of War

Author: Bao Ninh

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, London 1993 (1st UK paperback edition)

ISBN 9 436 31042 2

Summary:

Shifting between locales as diverse as the totally surreal Jungle of Screaming Souls, soberly patriotic Hanoi in 1965, and the debauched setting of the Air France departure lounge bar at Tan Son Nhut Airport on 30 April 1975, this stream of consciousness work follows the life of an NVA scout who signed up as an idealistic 17 year-old and spent 10 years fighting in the South, returning to Hanoi after the war only to find out that the love of his life is now a two-bit hooker who bangs bikers, one of whom, after he is triumphantly told this, he beats the shit out of in a lakeside bar before dragging him out into the street and ramming his head down an open sewer. "There had been no trumpets for the victorious soldiers, no drums, no music. That might have been tolerated, but not the disrespect shown them."

Thoughts:

This work is best described as a hand grenade. And it goes off with a bang. No one is spared, not even the soldier who wrote it. It was banned in Vietnam, although there was a roaring trade there in selling pirated copies of the English edition to tourists, and my copy is one of those. It is clearly autobiographical, although Bao Ninh frames it as a found journal that was passed on to him for publication. The parallels with the author's life are clear, even though the chronology of Bao Ninh's life is slightly different: he fought from 1969 to 1975, being one of only ten survivors of the 500-strong Glorious 27th Youth Brigade, which he joined in 1969. His protagonist, Kien, is a handsome idealistic youth with a rough edge, being happy to disprove theories about his bourgeois effeminacy even before he reaches the front, by pulling a pistol on a loud-mouthed officer and pointing it at his head whilst quietly telling him "You're an arsehole and an idiot". With its lakeside ambiance and insomniac late-night walks to all-night bars through empty foggy streets whilst mulling over the past, this is a distinctly Hanoian take on the war that is irreverent in its lucidity. Essential reading.

Rating:

Title: Blackfoot Is Missing

Author: William F. Owen

Publisher: Arrow, London 2004 (1st UK paperback edition)

ISBN 0 099 44154 3

Summary:

Bobby Lake turns up at his Korean War veteran uncle's secluded log cabin beyond the black stump in Kentucky with some news: he's dropped out of Harvard and he wants to join the army and fight in Vietnam. It is the beginning of a journey that ends up with him volunteering for MACV-SOG and being posted to CCC Kontum, where he experiences the sharp end of a war most of the world doesn't even know is going on.

Thoughts:

A tale of across-the-fence operations, based on hours of interviews with veterans who were at CCC Kontum, this novel has lots of detail and held my attention but didn't really reel me in. The character development was a bit uneven and the ending felt a bit predictable and like it should be longer. Of interest mainly because it was written in the early 21st century, with a cover that makes the book a period piece in itself.

Rating:

Title: A Viet Cong Memoir

Author: Truong Nhu Tang

Publisher: Vintage Books, New York (1st US paperback edition)

ISBN 0 394 74309 1

Summary:

Truong Nhu Tang was not your typical VC. He did not lead ambushes or stage assaults against firebases. He never fired a weapon in anger. Yet he was being held in the cells at the Saigon Police HQ at the time of the Tet Offensive, and he was sufficiently important for his release to be brokered by the CIA in exchange for someone big being held in North Vietnam. He subsequently spent several years living on the Cambodian border, where he managed to escape an airborne assault on his headquarters during the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, and took part in the founding of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, for which he became the Minister of Justice. It seemed to be the penultimate step on a straight road to a radiant victory.

Thoughts:

This is the political autobiography of a leading figure in the Vietnam War whose life embodies all the contradictions of Vietnamese nationalism. The son of an affluent Saigon family, Truong Nhu Tang was still a law student when he met Ho Chi Minh in France shortly after World War II; a meeting that changed the course of his life. In 1958, he was one of the three men who took part in the founding meeting of the National Liberation Front in Saigon, and was one of the men who designed the VC flag. At the same time, he was living a double life as a high-ranking official, ending up directing South Vietnam's national rubber industry, and was on a first-name basis with military figures such as Nguyen Cao Ky through his friend Albert Pham Ngoc Thao, a former Viet Minh who became a master spy, helped foment the 1963 coup and was also the South Vietnamese military attaché in Washington for a time. The extent to which the National Liberation Front infiltrated the South Vietnamese establishment is shown here through the portrayal of his friend Albert's life: he pushed Ky's upward progress into national politics at the same time as falling foul of the regime as a result of his failed 1965 coup attempt. Truong Nhu Tang ultimately found out that North Vietnamese party politics were just as dangerous. Seeing how the Southerners who led the NLF were being sidelined by doctrinaire Marxists from Hanoi from 1972 onwards, he fought against the flow but ultimately resigned as the NLF Minister of Justice, dismayed at the treatment being meted out to South Vietnamese veterans and the large number of people going "missing" after Saigon fell in 1975. As a disillusioned middle-aged man he was forced to concur with his father's earlier warnings to him about the Communists, resulting in him turning his back on a position in the new national government and fleeing Vietnam by boat in 1976.

This is an insightful read about the political dimensions behind the military struggle involved in the Vietnam War. The most telling moment is the victory parade in Ho Chi Minh City on 15 May 1975, when Truong Nhu Tang, standing on the podium with the other bigwigs, watches the march-past of NVA tank squadrons, anti-aircraft batteries, artillery and missiles, followed by massed NVA troops, which ends with "several straggling companies" of VC "looking unkempt and raging after the display that had preceded them". He asks "Where are our divisions one, three, five, seven and nine?" The reply: "The army has already been unified." His concluding message is that, although independence of sorts as a Soviet satellite State was achieved in 1975, meaningful national unification was not achieved.

Rating:

Title: Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans

Author: Wallace Terry

Publisher: Random House, New York, 1984 (1st US paperback edition)

ISBN 0 345 31197 3

Summary:

A panoramic overview of black veterans’ experiences in Vietnam, from a draft resister who was forced to enlist in manacles escorted by FBI agents, through to lifers who went to the war more than willingly, having already fought in World War II and the Korean War.

Thoughts:

This book offers many insights on sociological and political levels, as well as providing a fine cross-section of military experiences that provide a fascinating read even if you are not so interested in the ethnic context. The paths of the various individuals who were interviewed are highly varied, ranging from those who never saw action and were in rear areas through to combat veterans who lost limbs and became POWs. Through its carefully chosen selections, the book also provides good coverage of the US Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force. This was a big seller back in the day and is relatively easy to find cheap second-hand. A recommended read.

Rating:

© W.S. McCallum 4 March 2022

Web site © Wayne Stuart McCallum 2003-2022