The VVA Veteran

The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc. ®
An organization chartered by the U.S. Congress

October/November 2003 BOOKS IN REVIEW
They Marched Into Sunlight: It Doesn't Get Better Than This
BY MARC LEEPSON

It would be hard to ask for more than what David Maraniss delivers in They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (Simon & Schuster, 561 pp., $30). Maraniss, a Washington Post reporter, has created an insightful, unique, and objective look at the Vietnam War.

Maraniss zeroes in on two noteworthy but heretofore under-examined events that took place at the same time in October 1967: the decimation of a battalion of U.S. Army First Infantry Division troops in South Vietnam, and the violence that ensued on the University of Wisconsin campus during a student protest against the Dow Chemical Company.

This book easily stands with the best nonfiction accounts of the Vietnam War. Maraniss backs up his first-rate writing with an exhaustive amount of research. He interviewed many participants in the two events, combed through letters, and filled in the blanks with a thorough examination of the official records. He interviewed the VC commander in the Long Nguyen Secret Zone whose unit ambushed undermanned elements of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division in Lai Khe. For the bigger picture, Maraniss went to the right sources to sketch the decision-making going on in Washington and in Vietnam.

His analyses of the events in Vietnam and Madison are even-handed, letting the reader judge who was right and wrong in both places. More than a few 2/28th infantrymen exhibited extreme courage under intense enemy fire. A few levelheaded antiwar leaders and university officials tried their best to avoid the violence that erupted on campus. The villains included bull-headed police officials in Madison and ticket-punching military men on the ground in Vietnam.

FATHERS AND SONS

Michael Takiff's Brave Men, Gentle Heroes: American Fathers and Sons in World War II and Vietnam (Morrow, 640 pp., $25.95) is a lengthy oral history of WWII dads and their Vietnam War sons. Much of what Takiff - whose father fought in WWII, but who is not a veteran - includes has been said before in many other oral histories and memoirs. The Vietnam veterans, for example, speak of the misguided emphasis on body counts, Gen. Westmoreland's cluelessness, and fraggings. The WWII veterans provide details of the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and liberating German concentration camps. But there are some surprises, including an off-the-wall (and presumably true) story about a squad of GIs who spent two days fraternizing and
smoking marijuana with three NVA soldiers.

Walter Anderson's excellent new memoir, Meant to Be (HarperCollins, 243 pp., $23.95), centers on the startling news that greeted him shortly after he returned from the Vietnam War: that the man who raised him was not his real father. Anderson, the chairman and CEO of Parade Publications who edited Parade for two decades, tells his story smoothly and effectively, using much reconstructed dialogue. Anderson had a very rough childhood and was often beaten by the man he thought was his father. The boy quit high school, joined the Marines, had a tour of duty in Vietnam, and then learned the earth-shaking news about his real father after the funeral of the man who raised him. Anderson deals mainly with the repercussions of that event, but includes a short and effective account of his wartime and postwar experiences and his meteoric rise in the world of publishing.

FORSYTH IN FINE FORM

Avenger (Thomas Dunne Books, 370 pp., $26.95), the latest page-turning thriller by Frederick (The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, et. al) Forsyth, has a strong Vietnam War theme. Forsyth's hero, Pete Dexter, is a former tunnel rat with the Big Red One. Dexter's tour in Vietnam marked him forever. He adjusts well enough to life back home after the war, but turns into a one-man anonymous avenging wrecking crew against bad guys around the world after his daughter is brutally murdered.

Forsyth, a Brit, does a good job evoking Dexter's Army basic training, AIT, and his tours in Vietnam. The heart of the book is its pulsating final half as Dexter devises and carries out an ingenious plan to terminate the career of a vicious Serbian murderer holed up in a heavily defended compound in South America. Forsyth brings in the CIA, Osama bin Laden, and assorted other good and bad guys as the story reaches an exciting climax and a surprising secret is revealed on this cleverly plotted book's last page.

NEW ANTHOLOGY

Love After War: Contemporary Fiction From Vietnam (Curbstone, 626 pp., $19.95, paper) is an excellent collection of short stories by 45 Vietnamese writers, edited by the novelist and former Marine Wayne Karlin and Ho Anh Thai, the accomplished novelist and short story writer in Hanoi. The writers in this collection have published in Vietnamese in Vietnam. Many fought on the other side.

There are stories by well-known Vietnamese writers such as Bao Ninh and Le Minh Khue, as well as writers little known outside Vietnam. That includes Vo Thi Xuan Ha, whose "Rice and Salt'' is an engaging, ephemeral lament about a thwarted love affair, and Ho Anh Thai, whose "A Short Rain'' deals with the actions of a series of insensitive men in matters of the heart. Together these tales succeed in opening a revealing window on Vietnamese society and culture.

FICTION IN BRIEF

Tobias (This Boy's Life, In Pharaoh's Army, et. al) Wolff's latest book, Old School (Knopf, 208 pp., $22), is a gem of a novel. It is the story of a scholarship boy at an unnamed boarding school that sounds a lot like The Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., where Wolff matriculated. Old School is an ode to the dedicated teachers and the coming-of-age boys at the school and also is an incisive treatise on poetry and fiction. The Vietnam War makes a cameo appearance near the end of this pleasurable read.

A Private War, a fast-paced, cleverly plotted thriller about a murder on a present-day military base, is now out in paper (Berkley, 337 pp., $7.99). Author and screenwriter Patrick Sheane Duncan (Courage Under Fire, Mr. Holland's Opus, et al.) served with the 173rd Airborne in the Vietnam War. Also new in paper: Richard H. Dickinson's The Silent Men (Penguin, 312 pp., $6.99), a thriller starring a former Vietnam War sniper, and Howard R. Simpson's Someone Else's War (Brassey's, 224 pp., $15.95), which deals with a CIA operative in Vietnam during Tet 1968. Former Vietnam War Navy corpsman D.S. Lliteras' latest worthy literary effort is Jerusalem's Rain (Hampton Roads, 223 pp., $19.95), an examination of the life and times of the biblical Peter and Christ's other disciples who remained in Jerusalem after the crucifixion.

NONFICTION IN BRIEF

I missed Pat (The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, et al.) Conroy's memoir, My Losing Season, when it was published last year. The book is now out in paper (Bantam, 400 pp., $14.95) and is well worth reading. It's the story of Conroy's senior year, 1966-67, at The Citadel where Conroy was an overachieving point guard on the basketball team. Conroy tells his tale with style, verve, and insight.

There's much more going on here than just the story of the team's inglorious season. Conroy has amazing things to say about his family, about his college, and about his friends and teachers. Near the end, the Vietnam War makes a surprising and startling appearance. It would give too much away to provide details, except to say that one of the guys on the team had a harrowing POW experience and his telling of it to Conroy - and Conroy's epiphany upon hearing it three decades later - is bone chilling.

Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind, and Spirit (University of California, 294 pp., $65, hardcover; $39.95, paper) is a lavishly produced, illuminating look at present-day Vietnamese society and culture, edited by Nguyen Van Huy of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and Laura Kendall of the American Museum of Natural History. The book marks the first major collaboration between American and Vietnamese museums. An exhibit based on the book's contents currently is on display at the AMNH in New York City.

The literary scholar and author Paul Fussell has written his third book about his war. The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-45 (Modern Library, 192 pp., $19.95) is an unblinking look at the war from the grunt's point of view. Fussell served as a 7th Army rifle platoon leader in France from November 1944 until he was wounded six months later. His new book broadens Fussell's field of vision and is partially based on his biting war memoir, Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic (1996).

Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (Public Affairs, 579 pp., $30) is a masterful recounting of the former president's two terms as California governor, from 1967-75, by Lou Cannon, the former journalist who is considered the foremost Reagan authority. Cannon deals briefly with the Vietnam War, which was raging during Reagan's governorship and which Reagan supported.

The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division (Bantam, 289 pp., $24.95), an on-the-ground look at the big victory in Iraq, is the work of two Vietnam veteran writers: F.J. "ing'' West, who served as a Marine infantry officer, and retired Gen. Ray L. Smith, a rifle company commander with the Marines at the Battle of Hue in 1968.

New in paper: The excellent reference book, The Oxford Companion to Military History (Oxford University, 1,048 pp., $29.95), edited by Richard Holmes, which contains scores of insightful, detailed entries on the worlds' wars; Walter Boyne's The Yom Kippur War and the Airlift Strike that Saved Israel (Thomas Dunne, 334 pp., $14.95), a readable, riveting account of that 1973 war by the former Vietnam War Air Force colonel, prolific author and former director of the National Air and Space Museum; and The Veteran's Survival Guide: How to File and Collect on VA Claims (Brassey's, 270 pp., $16.95) by John D. Roche, a retired U.S. Air Force major who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

POETRY

Roy Bradley Branch's Reflections: A Vet's View: Poems from a Medic (Wishing Well, 51 pp., $6.95, paper) is a worthy collection inspired by the author's service as a medic in Vietnam with the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta and with the 1st Log in Cam Ranh Bay. For more info, e-mail nambaxi@lexcominc.net

Jay Keck's Poems from the Bogeyman (VV Publishing, 44 pp., $8, paper) contains work based on by the author's 1966-67 tour as a machine gunner with the 1st Marine Division and his difficult adjustment to life back home. For info, e-mail keckjay@hotmail.com

Michael P. Maurer's A Journey Through A Warrior's Soul (Perfume River, 131 pp, $14.95, paper) is a collection of poems, drawings, and photographs dealing with his 1968-69 tour in Vietnam as an 82nd Airborne infantryman and his experiences since. For info, e-mail mpmaurer@hotmail.com Bob Foley's The Death of Innocence: Surviving Trauma (1st Books, 104 pp., paper) contains poetry and coping skills for trauma survivors. The author is a Vietnam veteran and a long-time school counselor.

Huu Thinh's The Time Tree (Curbstone, 169 pp., $15.95, paper) is an anthology in Vietnamese and English, translated by George Evans and Nguyen Qui Duc, of the work of the celebrated Vietnamese poet. Huu Thinh served as a tank driver during the American War, and that is the subject of some of his poetry.

John Balaban's Ca Dao Viet Nam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry is now out in paper (Copper Canyon, 73 pp., $15). This book contains first-time translations of Vietnamese oral poetry Balaban collected in Vietnam. The author served in Vietnam as a conscientious objector during the war.

Off The Shelf

The Real Truth
Reviewed by William J. Kelly, Jr.

The Education Of Lieutenant Kerrey by Gregory L. Vistica, Thomas Dunne/St.
Martin's, 296 pp., $24.95

Thanh Phong is a hamlet in the Mekong Delta. At dawn on February 26, 1969, the bodies of twenty-odd Vietnamese civilians were discovered there, apparently slain during the preceding night. Five were in a hootch on the outskirts of the hamlet. The remainder were in a cluster within. All were women and children, save for an elderly grandfather.

The previous night, Lt. Bob Kerrey had led a Navy SEAL Team into the hamlet on an
abduction mission seeking a Viet Cong political cadre.

This incident was the centerpiece of a lengthy article by Gregory Vistica, a former
Newsweek correspondent, in the April 29, 2001, New York Times Magazine. Vistica's book, The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey, tells the story of how the article came together.

Vistica mentions his concern that the investigation would turn into a "he said, she said'' affair. Working solely with the memories of the participants, that seemed to be how it would evolve. Those memories, clouded by the "fog of war,'' proved difficult to pin down. On many occasions, Kerrey and some of the other participants changed their remembrances. This is understandable, particularly if the memory is painful and a potential war crime.

One member of the team, Gerhard Klann, had a recollection of the night at Thanh Phong that greatly differed from Kerrey's. If his statement held up, it could be construed as an admission of guilt. Instead of focusing on Kerrey's shifting statements, Vistica might have assayed some different avenues in his quest for the truth. Several more salient questions go unasked and unanswered.

Did the Team have an interpreter? If not, an abduction mission at night in a hamlet with no electricity was doomed to failure. The result was foreordained. How long did the mission last? Hints suggest it could have been two to three hours, which is not a quick firefight and extraction. Why were bodies of those within hamlet found in a cluster? Would not this suggest that they were herded together by the SEALs?

Vistica briefly mentions the CIA's counter-terror operation, the Phoenix Program, and
that SEALs were often used. But that thread is not pursued. Regrettably, Vistica chose to make Kerrey and his name the focus. Although that caught the public's eye, the real truth might be found at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

VVA member William J. Kelly, Jr., served as a 1st Lt. with the Americal Division's
11th Light Infantry Brigade, in Duc Pho, Vietnam, in 1968-69.

The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc. ® An organization chartered by the U.S. Congress

The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc. ®
An organization chartered by the U.S. Congress