Pass in Review
an inspection of the literature
A book may be as great a thing as a battle.
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield
To Bear Any Burden,
the Viet Nam War and its Aftermath in the Words of Americans and
Southeast Asians
by Al Santoli; E.P. Dutton, New York (©1985), Indiana
University Press, Bloomington (repr 2004)
There are about twenty oral histories on the Viet Nam conflict.
Some are worthless. Others are quite commendable, yet lack the
depth and breadth of Santoli's work, arguably among the most
informative and enlightening of oral histories, if not the best
of the lot. Another, Otto Lehrack's No Shining Armor
[Kansas University Press], is outstanding, yet focuses almost
exclusively on United States Marines along the DMZ and is, for
this reason, a sub-genre within Viet Nam oral histories.
Santoli, a combat veteran of the war, displays a knowledge and
insight not only in selecting interviewees, but also exacting
statements of import and significance, too often overlooked by
compilers of oral histories. This distinguishes his work from
those content to dwell upon the horrors of war while overlooking
Viet Nam's unique aspects in history. It is easy for anyone to
interview a combat veteran, reveal that war is indeed Hell (big
surprise!), yet fail to provide any historical understanding of
the forces that forged and molded that history. In these
instances, larger questions remain: Why was the war fought, how,
and with what overall impact?
Unlike some oral history compilers, Santoli does not limit his
book to the accounts of American combat veterans; nor does he
follow the typical question-answer format. He instead provides
experiences, views and thoughts of Americans, Southeast Asians,
and civilians, that focus on matters beyond the chaotic insanity
of combat, descriptions of which do not dominate the book. Of the
eighty-seven separate narratives, provided by forty-eight
different people, just over half are from Americans, the
remaining come from Southeast Asians themselves, including a
number of former VC or NLF supporters and sympathizers who
uniformly express dismay at and disgust with the eventual
outcome. Santoli has also astutely included some non-veteran,
non-military women, who one way or another came to have direct
and enduring experiences with Viet Nam's tortured history; the
accounts of refugee worker Berta Romero, POW/MIA wife Janis
Dodge, and human rights activist Ginetta Sagan are welcome and
insightful additions to the work.
Several recognizable names are included in the mix, to include
General Edward Lansdale, Peter Braestrup, Eddie Adams (who
discusses his famous photograph of Colonel Loan's summary
execution of a VC assassin), Colonel Harry Summers, and former
PRG Minister of Justice Truong Nhu Tang are among the
contributors. All were and remain well known to informed students
of the war. No high-ranking policy makers are included, which has
proved to be a wise decision as few have shown any great depth of
knowledge about the war's essence, and too often dwell upon
generalities and/or abstruse political sub-topics having little
bearing on the hows, whys and wherefores of the war. At the same
time, Santoli's selection of lower ranking subjects was
astutely done and with great forethought, producing a selection
of people with knowledge, maturity, humanity, and, as Santoli
spells out in his preface, values worthy of emulation.
The book is broken down into five sections, roughly spanning the
entire course of the war, and extending beyond the post-1975
aftermath, an aftermath that was hardly the utopian paradise
promised by Hanoi and its U.S. supporters. War, oppression, and
misery, not peace, came in the wake of the 1975 ignominious
defeat. In his introduction, far more engaging and thoughtful
then the insipid blather found in many works, Santoli makes his
objectives clear: he forthrightly states the war was worth
winning, it was morally justifiable, that forces of idiocy doomed
the effort to defeat, and that voices and views such as his have
far too often been excluded from the national discussion on Viet
Nam, more accurately described as an allied effort to stop
Hanoi's Indochina theater war.
Santoli describes his service with a small combined intelligence
platoon, relying on stealth and (surprise!) the assistance of
common village people, people who detested VC depredations yet
had no means to defend themselves. He also expresses his firm
underlying beliefs and convictions about those he honors and
respects as people who did not burn villages and butcher
innocents but who instead developed great personal conviction in
opposing what they viewed as forces of barbarity and mindless
totalitarianism:
"This is a book about values. We who remember invite you to look
back with us, behind the veil of myth and rhetoric. Though at
times we must swallow our pride and examine tragic mistakes, the
common humanity of the forty-eight people here is a shared
triumph of the human spirit. In no way do we claim to represent
the whole story. But we hope to bring to light some of the
complicated realities that have often been overlooked. Please
allow our truths to be a part of the larger discussion and
debate."
These truths, almost unknown and ignored for decades, are clearly
spelled out in this superior oral history.
Cross-woven into the general chronological flow and structure of
the book are several recurring themes familiar to anyone who
spent time in Southeast Asia and actually bothered to learn
something – many did not. Interspersed throughout are
examples and damnations of an incompetent U.S. leadership at the
highest levels, the insidious and diabolically effective
communist propaganda, the deluded Southeast Asians who believed
Hanoi's brilliant lies, complaints about an utterly obtuse and
ignorant news media, and experiences of real, live SE Asian
people whose intelligence and dedication, even if at times
erroneously channeled into supporting the communists, erases the
too typical depiction of Asian people as either illiterate
dunces, or victims, or thieves, or liars or, with the exception
of communists, cowards.
Most revealing to some readers will be the trajectories followed
by those Southeast Asians who once believed in the ostensible
beneficence and supposed benign democratic nationalism of Ho Chi
Minh, later to run aground on the shoals of bitter
disappointment, if not shame at having been so gullible. Mrs. Le
Thi Anh was 19 years old in 1945, when the prospects of ejecting
the despised French colonialists ignited the patriotic
aspirations of most Viet Namese:
"In the spring of 1945, when the Japanese put the French in jail,
a people's government was formed everywhere. That was such a
happy time. Everyone was swept up in a tidal wave of patriotism.
The rich people, the students, organized defense and prepared to
rule the country."
Despite betrayals by their supposed co-equal communist brethren,
costing the deaths of non-communists also fighting the French, Le
Thi Anh continued to support anti-Saigon forces, and was involved
with anti-war protests in Viet Nam. In 1964 Mrs. Anh
left Viet Nam to study in the United States, where she was
involved with anti-war efforts until 1971 when her
mother's illness dictated return to Viet Nam. Somewhat reluctant
and fearing retribution for her political activities, Mrs. Anh
finally decided to go, and saw a Viet Nam unreported in the
press:
"I found so much had been exaggerated in the United States. The
authoritarian regime of Mr. Thieu was not that bad. It was
corrupt, yes. But it did allow quite a great deal more democratic
liberties than we had seen under Mr. Diem or surely what we have
not seen under the Communists. ... The rural areas especially
enjoyed great benefits from the American presence. Telephones,
new roads and bridges – we never had those kinds of things
before. From the time I came home in 1971, the people were
rallying to the non-Communist side."
Hoang Van Chi saw the light much earlier, when he served with the
Viet Minh in North Viet Nam and witnessed the barbaric
people's courts used by Ho's communists to intimidate
villagers and discourage peasant aspirations of land ownership.
Horrid kangaroo courts were held:
"At first the accused is only denounced with minor crimes of
exploitation. If the victim denies this, the next night he is
accused of bigger crimes by neighbors and relatives – rape
or murder. If he does not confess, on the third night he is
accused of serving French intelligence. That is treason to the
country, which means death."
Executions followed, as did another form of death:
"When the family is branded landlord nobody in the town
is allowed to communicate with them. The family must live inside
the house with nothing to eat. As a consequence, many people died
of starvation, children and old people first."
Truong Nhu Tang, former PRG Minister of Justice, had
dedicated his entire adult life to supporting the NLF, spending
years in the primeval squalor of VC bunkers, subjected to
bombing, infantry assaults, and overall misery. He was a true
believer who finally saw the betrayal after 1975:
"...the Communists twist ideology. They always use words like:
freedom, peace, democracy. And the better of impulses of people
who truly want peace are manipulated into a popular movement
against the free world's defenses. ... This is not to say that
America did not make mistakes in Viet Nam, or that war is
anything but a horrible thing. But I can assure you that not only
were the South Viet Namese and American public lied to by the
Communists. Even those of us who lived in the jungle and
sacrificed and fought for true independence and concord were made
victims of the Communists' lies and deceit.
Readers are provided with rare views of Viet Nam and Cambodia in
the mid-1950s, when the seeds of American involvement were
planted, and the chaotic internecine warfare and political
struggles were beginning. Rufus Phillips and General Edward
Lansdale were there from the beginning, and discuss their efforts
to build something from nothing, in a maelstrom of competing
political factions and the then quiescent Viet Cong in Viet Nam,
as well as the early formation of the Khmer Rouge under Hanoi's
direction and training. Their experiences and recollections
provide a rare, in-the-rice-paddies view of a turbulent time.
All of Santoli's subjects share one feature: a belief that what
they were doing was important and that the experience has left an
indelible imprint on their lives. This outlook is encapsulated by
Ken Moorefield, whose years in Viet Nam and Southeast Asia
included military and civilian roles. In looking back over the
years – and blood – he invested in Viet Nam,
Moorefield concludes:
"I'm sure that Viet Nam will always live within me. And I don't
want it not to be there. Viet Nam veterans experienced something
that transcended ourselves. Despite the fact that we suffered a
political defeat, the values for which we fought are larger than
each of us and the fundamental reason for our willingness to give
and to serve."
Oral histories can be, at worst, a disjointed pastiche of
anecdotes, some insightful, some absurdly irrelevant or otherwise
unimportant, that fail to provide any significant understanding
of just what the hell was going on, and why. At best, they do not
and cannot substitute for logical and factual historical analysis
and narrative, yet this work provides a mosaic of experiences and
thoughts which, taken together, reveal a very real Viet Nam and
Southeast Asia that is too often obscured by many best-selling
and supposedly authoritative histories. Santoli did a masterful
job of learning about his subject, and then identifying people
whose insights and experiences provide memorable, worthy, if not
sometimes emotionally moving commentary. It is a superb book for
anyone new to the subject, especially younger students,
expressing an interest and asking "What was it all about?" Of
additional benefit is the fact that uninformed readers may be
inoculated from the curse of being Karnowized or
Sheehanized, seduced by the white noise of
simplistic and frequently insipid drivel passed off as
history. It will also be welcomed by Southeast Asia
veterans who may have served in Laos, yet do not grasp Viet Nam's
intricacies. Likewise, the CTZ-I/MR-I combat U.S. veteran, or
USAID folks, will gain insight into what happened before and
after he or she served, as well as a glimpse of things Laotian or
Cambodian. This reviewer has not encountered anyone who has read
the book and not found it a valuable bookshelf addition.
The Dutton edition includes sixteen pages of photos, and the
useful chronology and brief biographies of all interviewees is
believed to be also contained in the later Indiana Press reprint.
I recommend that you get a copy for your own library, and pick up
an extra one for any local high school libraries that need one to
balance the simplistic melodramatic ravings of people posing as
Viet Nam historians.
[editorial note: as stated in this review,
Santoli's efforts to preserve an authentic history of the Second
Indochina War was well received by many veterans, and his work
was an inspiration for this publishing project; we acknowledge
our debt of gratitude for his pathfinding so this
project could establish a Forward Operating Base. /s/Ed]
contributed by William S. Laurie
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