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Reviews by Marc Leepson
Something like 300,000 books are
published every year. A healthy percentage of them are self-published.
Of that group, an even healthier percentage are amateurish
to the extreme. Every so often, though, you come across a
gem in this category, and that is the case, in spades, with
Linda West’s moving memoir, Beyond
the Rice Paddies (Booksurge, 111 pp., $11.95, paper).
West,
born Tran Thi Bach Yen Oanh, does a superb job evoking
the American war in South Vietnam from the vantage point
of a young girl living with her grandmother in a small village
near Bien Hoa. She tells her story in an affecting, child-like
manner that is refreshingly naïve and, at the same time,
remarkably perceptive.
When you finish reading this short
book, you will understand how we Americans were perceived
by the South Vietnamese villagers, especially the children.
And you also will gain a new appreciation for how villagers
were forced to deal with the Viet Cong in their midst, not
to mention the South Vietnamese government and military.
West immigrated to this country when she was
ten years old, courtesy of a GI who married her mother, a
bar girl in Saigon. In her book, Linda West acknowledges
the debt she owes to that once-young man, as well as to other
American soldiers because, she says, “you made me feel
safer in my village when I was a young girl.” West
also notes with appreciation the help she received in researching
her book from VVA members. She is donating half the book’s
royalties to VVA.
For more info on this gem of a memoir, go
to http://beyondthericepaddies.com/index.html
THREE WARS
Andrew X. Pham also vividly shows the impact of the warring
sides on the Vietnamese civilian population in The
Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (Harmony, 256 pp., $24.95),
a creatively written “autobiography” of his father,
Thong Van Pham. Andrew Pham (born Pham Xuan An) covered some
of this territory in Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Journey
Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, his very readable
1999 memoir.
The new book, which is told using many recreated
quotes based on stories Andrew Pham heard from his father,
covers the years 1940-76. It flashes back and forth in time,
showing how the father’s upper-class family in northern
Vietnam suffered under the French colonial rulers, then lost
everything when the communists took over and the family was
forced to flee to the South. Things didn’t get much
better there, as Pham senior was drafted into the South Vietnamese
Army, where he was forced to put up with “corrupt politicians,” “inept
brass,” and “seemingly well-intentioned Americans.”
Things
only got worse after the communist takeover in 1975, when
Thong Van Pham barely survived seven months in a re-education
camp. His son tells his story well.
NIXONLAND
Historian Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland:
The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Scribner,
881 pp., $37.50) is the latest salvo in the ongoing literary
and cultural war over the legacy of Richard Nixon. The former
president himself started the war of words not long after
his August 1974 departure from Washington.
His first memoir,
published in 1978, marked the beginning of a small avalanche
of books from his pen, and from those of his supporters (including
chief Vietnam War strategist Henry Kissinger). All of those
books, and the interviews Nixon granted before his death,
have attempted to paint positive pictures of Nixon’s
domestic and foreign policies, including his stewardship
of the war in Vietnam.
Countless other books, mainly by historians
and journalists, have countered with mountains of evidence
that paint Nixon as a deceptive, dishonest politician whose
domestic policies failed and whose Vietnam War policies were
little short of disastrous.
Perlstein’s new book is
a notable addition to the anti-Nixon canon.
In readable prose and relying primarily on the best secondary
sources, Perlstein excoriates Nixon for a multitude of sins,
including playing politics with Vietnam War policymaking.
This anecdote-filled account also contains a thorough recounting
of the antiwar movement during its heyday with Nixon in the
White House.
NONFICTION IN BRIEF
Historian and journalist Martin J. Schram’s Vets
Under Siege: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who
Fight Our Battles (Thomas Dunne Books, 320 pp., $25.95) is a stinging
indictment of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Schram
takes a brief look back at the VA’s past performance,
but concentrates on how the agency—and the federal
government as a whole—ill serves the newest generation
of veterans.
In his chapter on Agent Orange, Schram reports
on conversations he had on Veterans Day 2007 at The Wall
with VVA members from Chapter 82 in Nassau County, New York.
Those men gave Schram vivid, first-person accounts of the
VA’s abysmal
record in the last forty years dealing with Vietnam veterans
with Agent-Orange caused diseases.
James R. Chiles’ The
God Machine: From Boomerangs to Black Hawks: The Story of
the Helicopter (Bantam, 320 pp., $25) is a sprightly
and well-researched history that includes an informative
look at the use of choppers in the Vietnam War. Chiles, an
author and journalist, points out that Gen. Maxwell Taylor
talked a skeptical President John F. Kennedy into deploying
helicopters to help the ARVN in 1961. Nearly three dozen
H-21C transport helicopters, the “Flying
Bananas,” were deployed to Vietnam that December in
Operation Chopper. That code name, Chiles notes, “could
serve as a name for the whole war.”
Historian and author
(Like Rolling Thunder) Ronald B. Frankum, Jr., does a terrific
job detailing what he calls “the
first chapter of the American experience in Vietnam” in
Operation Passage to Freedom: The United
States Navy in Vietnam, 1954-1955 (Texas Tech University, 288 pp., $40). Said experience
was the year-long evacuation, under much-less-than-ideal
conditions, of more than 300,000 North Vietnamese citizens
who wished to go south rather than live under the incoming
communist regime of Ho Chi Minh. “It was a first chapter
that ended in success,” Frankum notes, “one of
the few that would characterize the remaining American story
in Vietnam.”
One of the many unique things about the
Vietnam War was that it provided the opportunity for women
journalists, for the first time, to break through the glass
ceiling of being relegated to reporting on women’s
news. In Vietnam, “women
established that their skills, courage, and fortitude entitled
them to be considered for any newsroom assignment,” Joyce
Hoffmann notes in On Their Own: Women
Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam (Da Capo, 448 pp., $26).
Hoffmann,
who teaches at Old Dominion University in Virginia, focuses
on a handful of women who made their marks covering the Vietnam
War. That group includes Dickey Chapelle (the first women
war correspondent killed in Vietnam), the great Gloria Emerson,
Kate Webb (who was captured and briefly held by the NVA in
Cambodia), and pioneering New York Herald correspondent Beverly
Deepe. In a detailed, fascinating narrative, Hoffmann clearly
shows how those and other women correspondents created “a
widespread acceptance of the female war correspondent—both
by the military and newsroom bosses.”
Prolific author
and former Vietnam War helicopter door gunner Hans Halberstadt’s
latest book, Trigger Men: Shadow Team,
Spider Man, the Magnificent Bastards and the American Combat
Sniper (St. Martin’s,
320 pp., $25.95) is a well-conceived look at modern-day snipers,
complete with an evocative selection of color photos, mainly
from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
MEMOIRS
IN BRIEF
Jim McGarrah’s A Temporary Sort
of Peace (Indiana Historical
Society, 251 pp., $19.95) is a well-written autobiography
that focuses on the author’s eventful tour of duty
with the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines in 1967-68. McGarrah,
who teaches creative writing at the University of Southern
Indiana, makes good use of reconstructed quotes and flashbacks.
The result is a compelling narrative that includes well-rendered
depictions of his recovery from his war wounds, his war-related
emotional problems, and his return to Vietnam in 2005 with
his son.
Jack Tumidajski’s Quadalajara:
The Utopia That Once Was (Brundage, 394 pp., $23.95) is an inspiring autobiography
by a man who survived a 1968-69 Vietnam War tour of duty
(as 1st Logistical Command clerk in Qui Nhon), only to break
his neck
in a car wreck soon after he came home. Tumidajski has been
confined to a wheelchair ever since. The heart of the book
details the author’s time living and working with other
quadriplegics and paraplegics in the 1970s in Mexico. The
group, including many Vietnam veterans, formed a chapter
of Paralyzed Veterans
of America and helped each other deal with their physical
and psychological problems. For more info, go to www.quadmexico.com
VVA
member Gary Robert Geister’s Nam:
The Devil’s
Domain: A Combat Infantryman’s Own Story of the Horrors
of Vietnam (Trafford, 256 pp., $19.95, paper) is an
unflinching look at the author’s action-filled tour
of duty with two 199th Light Infantry Brigade companies and
a Combat Recon Intel Platoon in Vietnam in 1968-69. Geister,
a Detroit native and star baseball player, was drafted into
the Army when he was 19 years old in March of 1967.
Stephen
D. Saunders’ Breaking Squelch:
A Vietnam Introspective (Marsh Lake,
159 pp., $17) is a creditable account of the author’s
1966-67 Vietnam War tour of duty with C Company, 2nd Battalion,
8th Cavalry in the 101st Airborne. Saunders and two buddies
joined the Army in June 1965 in Janesville, Wisconsin, just
after graduating from high school. Today he practices law
in Elkander, Iowa. For ordering info, email saunders@alpinecom.net
Soldiering:
Observations from Korea, Vietnam, and Safe Places (Potomac
Books, 288 pp., $17.95, paper) is retired Army Col. Henry
G. Cole’s lively account of his long military
career. That included two tours in Vietnam, the first in
1966-67 with the 5th Special Forces’ Blackjack 21 in
II Corps, and the second in 1970-71 in Kontum with the famed
Studies and Observation Group, also known as SOG.
William
Murphy’s Souvenirs of War: One Marine’s War,
An Entire Generation’s Story (Murchada, 166 pp.,
$16.95, paper) centers on his combat-filled thirteen-month
Vietnam War tour in 1968-69 with the 3rd Battalion, 27th
Marine Regiment.
Letters from Tommy J.: A Marine’s Story,
1966-1967 (Walker Press, 115 pp., $19.95, paper) is a beautifully
executed tribute to Marine Corps PFC Thomas J. Holtzclaw
of Atlanta, who was killed in Vietnam on April 21, 1967.
The book, a compilation of Tommy Holtzclaw’s reproduced
letters, photographs, and text, was put together by his nieces,
Connie C. Hughes and Terri C. Walker, and edited by Gina
Webb. Holtzclaw served with F Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st
Marines. He was killed while walking point during an NVA
ambush in the small village of Binh Son in Quang Ngai Province.
For more info, go to www.lettersfromtommyj.com
Kenneth D. Williams’ Blue
Tiger (1stBooks, 237 pp., $14.50, paper) is a creatively
written account of the author’s
1967-69 Vietnam War tour with D Troop, 3rd/17th Air Cavalry
Regiment, call sign “Blue Tiger.” The book is
based on the diary that Williams kept and is written in the
third person. Joseph Kelly’s Confession of a CIA Interrogator
(AuthorHouse, 422 pp., $20.49 paper), written with Vietnam
veteran, pilot, and author Ben R. Games, looks at the author’s
years working undercover with the South Vietnamese special
police.
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