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95 of 98 people found the following review helpful.
I was there: no question we won the Vietnam war
By Seventh Degree
As a psychological operations officer who studied Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey California prior to my tour in Vietnam from July 1969 to July 1970, I may say with a heap of selfassurance that we did in truth win this war. Our area of operations extended from Da Nang, Vietnam northward to the DMZ, so called “I Corps”.
During that year, I was attached to the 3rd Marine division in Dong Ha, the 101st Airborne in Phu Bai just outside of Hue City, and the 1st of the 5th infantry division in Quang Tri. As most readers know, the Tet Offensive of 1968 was to a great extent fought in the cities of Hue and northward. Vietcong had eclipsed these areas. Hamlets all around were intimidated by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese regular army occupied the jungles.
While combat raged in those jungles for the infantry units I brought up above, the hamlets had become rather peaceful after Tet. We had three man teams consisting of an officer like myself, and enlisted man commonly a specialist, and a Vietnamese interpreter. In the early evenings before we would effort out to the hamlets in our truck and interact with the humans in the hamlets. For fear of ambushes or mines we expended the night in the hamlets. Amongst the three of us we had two M-16 rifles and a .45 pistol. Rarely, we would check out M-79 grenade launcher when we had heard there had been a great deal of action in the area. I preferent to spend the night on top of the truck, gazing at the stars above unless it was the rainy season.
During that entire year, occasionally no more than 7 miles from the DMZ where combat was raging, the hamlets were peaceful and friendly. The elders were very polite and ofttimes fed us; the children adored us. Not once were we ever harassed or injured. We had great prospects to talk with the Vietnamese. They dire the communists. Some who were Christians or Buddhists had left North Vietnam as Ho Chi Minh was killing persons of faith after they discomfited the French. The humans in the hamlets were thankful that we were there and they dire that we would leave.
I shall never forget when my interpreter, who had become my friend, and who loved America and loved the Beatles responded to a comment I made while we were riding along in our truck. I said to him, “Someday, Sgt. Lap, when the war is over, we will fetch our families together either here in your country or perchance even in mine.” He turned to me with a severe look — we were both in own mid-20s — and said “We will never see each other again.” I was speechless. Inside I was pained and confused. Why would a friend say this? I realized only later it was an act of benignity couched in the hard truth that at the time only he could see.
Further, when I was attached to the 101st Sgt Lap and I one evening a week would leave the base at Phu Bai and go to a high school in Hue city where allegedly Ho Chi Minh had matriculated and we taught English. The class was filled to standing room only with children as young as 6 and adults well into their 70s. I was too naïve at that time to perceive why they were there. Like Sgt. Lap, they saw what was going on in America as humans in my generation were marching in the streets, spitting on soldiers and calling us baby killers. They saw the end coming for themselves but at that point I was too blind to see it. They surely could see our country’s loss of will to fight. No matter what I said or believed they had to deal with the truth, because for them, it was a matter of life and death, a matter of survival.
I returned home, started medical school, but could never get Vietnam off my mind. I found myself debating with my fellow students, attempting to tell them something they were not learning from the Washington Post, the New York Times or the major news TV outlets. I was largely unsuccessful. The specialist I worked with maintained contact with Sgt. Lap for the next various years.
However, as Nixon lost his political battles and resigned over Watergate and Pres. Ford was unable to convince the Democratic Congress to carry on funding the South Vietnamese army a formally beaten Communist army saw an chance in that weakness. Then came 1975. I recall standing in the shower listening to the radio in my home as they described the helicopters landing on the roof of the American embassy in Saigon attempting to save a few people from the communist barbarians in a literal sense “at the gate”. I cried bitterly. I dire for Sgt. Lap. It would be easy to find out that he had worked with Americans. Both the soldier I worked with and I have concluded that Sgt. Lap was likely killed, no, executed, by the communists.
This book tells the story as it must have been told 30+ years ago. Every chance I get at 63 years of age I undertake to tell the real story of what happened. As a Hungarian woman told me in 1971 as she described the pain of realizing that the liberators after World War II were not going to be the Allies but rather the Soviet Union and that their lives would be evermore changed until the era of Reagan: “You never realize how fragile your civilization is until you have lost it.”
We are now in dangerous times once again. We never in truth learned the lesson of Vietnam as told in this book. Read the book, find the truth here.
50 of 53 persons found the following review helpful.
Finally, unvarnished truth
By K. Gulbranson
I am so very thankful for this book. My late husband was awarded a silver star as a platoon leader in Vietnam in 1965-66, and was always so frustrated to listen the standard line that the US lost the war.
I am a school librarian and have looked in vain for suitable material that acknowledges that we won the war, and that then the Democratic majority in the US Congress reneged on the peace terms permitting Southeast Asia to fall to the communists two years later, resulting in more deaths in that firstborn year of communist rule than in the 10 years of our engagement in Vietnam.
I have even found Vietnam veterans who were amazed when I have said we won the war and then Congress gave it away. They have heard for 30 years regarding the war that we “lost.” But when they listen just a few of the facts, they recognise that that is genuinely the case. President Nixon won unbelievable concessions from the communists that would have given South Vietnam self-rule. Democratic Congressmen gave it away in 1975 and American press “credited” the military. A third of the population of Cambodia paid with their lives and Southeast Asia lost their chance for self-rule.
Everyone must read this book that in the end lays out the facts of just what damaged American believability and gave encouragement and power to the tyrants of the world.
49 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
How not to trust the US Congress
By Alexander Hang
Having lived through the terrible time of Pol Pot, I can not help but to think how a lot of lives (including those of my brothers’) were lost due to the insensitivity of the US Congress and their supporters. The author does an magnificent occupation in showing us how the presidency of the US may be crippled by the Congress. The US has lost believability over the years because of the lack of consistency in it is alien policy.
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