An Interview with Bernard Fall
The Small Wars Journal / Small Wars Council has been given permission to republish several articles from the archives of the Marine Corps Gazette (1916 – 2005).
We have been researching COIN related articles from the Vietnam War era and there is an outstanding selection to choose from. We certainly do not want to take advantage of the Gazette’s kind offer and will be selective in what we publish in the SWJ Magazine and post here at the SWC and to the SWJ Library.
Articles address many issues to include insurgency / counterinsurgency, cultural considerations, the Combined Action Program (CAP), the Kit Carson Scout Program and much more. We enjoin you to post Vietnam-related topics (remember the MCG is a USMC publication and will center on Marine issues) that you would like posted and we will see what we can come up with through a data-base search.
Again, we will be selective to ensure we do not abuse this most gracious offer and request you honor the original copyright.
We begin by linking to this 1967 Marine Corps Gazette article – An Interview with Bernard Fall. The article is the text of a taped interview with Dr. Fall shortly before his death 12 February 1967. Dr. Fall was killed by a land mine while accompanying a Marine patrol 14 miles north of Hue. He was a professor of government at Howard University and the author of Street Without Joy, The Two Viet-Nams and Hell in a Very Small Place. The interviewer is Marine Sgt. Roy Johnson of Combat Info Bureau, Da Nang.
Quote:
Q. Since your arrival in "I" Corps, Dr. Fall, have you visited any of the Combined Action Companies?
A. Yes. I visited with CAC-31 over at Marble Mountain.
Q. What did you think about them, sir?
A. That's an interesting experiment. I've seen it while the French were fighting here in Viet-Nam in 1953-54. This was done very often in Korea also. We had what was called KATUSAS-Korean and American Army Troops. You have Vietnamese and Americans working side by side in the same units. Usually this works out rather well. The Americans profit from the local experience of the Vietnamese-meaning the Vietnamese know where the ambushes are, or they usually get the word fairly fast and vice versa. The Vietnamese profit from the American know-how, the military technology and the ability to get fire-power when needed.
Volume Four of the Small Wars Journal (January 2006) will contain another article related to Dr. Fall written by Lieutenant Colonel W. G. Leftwich – An Afternoon with Bernard Fall– published in 1969.
Welcome to the Council...
The Council welcomes new member Dorothy Fall - wife of Bernard Fall and author of Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar. We are very glad to have you aboard and hope you participate in our forum.
Here are the editorial reviews from Amazon.com on Dorothy's book.
"Dorothy Fall’s charming, intensely personal portrait of her late husband as a man of vision, courage, and great humanitarian instincts adds to our understanding not only of him but also of an era that spans America’s thrusting optimism in the wake of World War II, its self-discovery in the civil rights revolution, and its disillusionment during Vietnam. Bernard Fall fought with the French underground, investigated Nazi war crimes, and became America’s leading scholar on Indochina as well as an outstanding author and journalist. His life was cut tragically short by his pursuit of truth, but he lived it to the brim."
—Jim Hoagland, associate editor, The Washington Post
"All students of the Vietnam wars know the works of the great historian Bernard Fall. This poignant and unblinking account reveals the life that propelled him to his monumental and ultimately tragic task."
—Don Oberdorfer, former Washington Post diplomatic correspondent and author of Tet! The Turning Point of the Vietnam War
"This is a tale of two love stories: one for a family, the other for a haunting ‘mistress’—Vietnam. As this memoir by his widow vividly illustrates, it remains appalling that Robert McNamara or any of the ‘best and brightest’ architects of the Vietnam War did not heed Bernard Fall’s brilliant accounts of how and why the French failed in Vietnam. It also reveals the riveting ‘made-for-the-movies’ secret risk-taking life of Fall, who saw his parents perish in the Holocaust, shot Germans as a teenage French resistance fighter, became a courageous and famed journalist, and lost his life in the pursuit of truth."
—Myra MacPherson, author of All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone and Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation
"Bernard Fall knew the country, the enemy, and the nature of the war better than any person I met during my long involvement in the war in Southeast Asia. . . . His death was a great tragedy to our nation. He had the power, the knowledge, and the ability to influence the policy-makers and just at the time he died, he was on the ascent. His followers were virtually a quiet army, and I’m proud to say I was one of those soldiers."
—Col. David H. Hackworth, U.S. Army (Ret.), author of About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior
"Surely the Vietnamese people are not the only ones awaiting Dorothy Fall’s memoir written with her heart about the life of her husband, Bernard Fall. He was a great friend of the Vietnamese people, a fighter who sacrificed himself in the struggle for truth, freedom, and peace on our Earth, which so often is not peaceful."
—Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, commander of the People’s Army of Vietnam during the Vietnam War
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Bernard Fall wrote the classics Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, which detailed the French experience in Vietnam. One of the first (and the best-informed) Western observers to say that the United States could not win there either, he was killed in Vietnam in 1967 while accompanying a Marine platoon.
Written by his widow Dorothy, Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar tells the story of this courageous and influential Frenchman, who experienced many of the major events of the twentieth century. His mother perished at Auschwitz, his father was killed by the Gestapo, and he himself fought in the Resistance. It focuses, however, on Vietnam and on two love stories. The first details Fall’s love for Vietnam and his efforts to save the country from destruction and the United States from disaster. The second shows a husband and father dedicated to a cause that continuously lured him away from those he loved.
Fall was the scholar, historian, journalist, and humanitarian frequently cited as the person who very early on had the correct answers about Vietnam -- but to whom the U.S. government would not listen.
Based on thirty years of interviews by his widow and on recently released U.S. government documents.
Echo from across the Atlantic
Tom,
I can echo the admiration for Bernard Fall; on my bookshelf is 'Street Without Joy', bought in 1972, a 1967 Pall Mall edition. A good read then - when Vietnam was fresh in the news. Looking forward to reading his wife's memoir.
Davidbfpo
Memories of a Soldier-Scholar
