Because it has just been reissued, I decided to reread, after decades, my 1972 edition of Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An. Reaction:
Deserves to be read, but I'd recommend doing so in tandem with William Andrews, The Village War; and Eric Bergerud, The Dynamics of Defeat, which happen to treat two adjacent provinces. The book describes how mass organization over more than a decade culminating in 1965, moved the countryside of Long An beyond the reach of meaningful GVN influence. Race's point is that this was possible because only the Party's "the last will be first and the first will be last" agenda of literally capsizing the feudal social hierarchy could generate the requisite popular loyalty. As Race relies heavily on accounts of individuals who attained some standing in the Revolution after sacrificing the better part of their lives to the cause, this may be a somewhat idealized version. Andrews's The Village War, also an interview-based village study, may offer a useful counterpoint, focusing more sharply on such practicalities as the efficacy of "the medium is the message" armed propaganda.
1965 Long An was much different from the post-1970 one of my acquaintance. By then one of the more secure provinces, enemy influence was relatively localized in the minimally populated NW, where, in a reflection of the extant paradigm, it radiated out of a PAVN infiltration route cum base area. This was the Plain of Reeds swamp complex, which extended from Svay Rieng (Cambodia) to within a few miles of Saigon-Cholon. Long An Province Chief Col. Nam (1973) was not reluctant to send his RFs even into this redoubt, on battalion size ops.
Race tries to explain, with less certitude, reasons for the virtual drying up of the enemy's local manpower pool by the pivotal year 1970, a question which, IMO, holds greater relevance to the current conflicts. Having offered land hunger as a problem, he credits the promise of the GVN Land To The Tiller Program...But LTTT wasn't widely implemented until 1972. There is further attribution--to local recruitment of PFs and their assignment to their native villages; and to arming of the PSDF village militia. But none of this would have been possible without elimination of the enemy main force units. Race decries the intensely violent level of warfare of the 1967-'69 phase, and the accompanying, wrenching dislocations, including mass forced relocations and urbanization. But it may be that (as Begerud finds in his work), attrition and coercion proved, after all, to be the sine qua non....Looking ahead from a 1970 vantage point, Race believes the apparent security is ephemeral and will rapidly deteriorate pari passu with US troop withdrawal. True for sure in a number of other places, but Long An is not a good example. The problem was a steady, but manageable, drain--until the province was overrun by PAVN in 1975.
Cheers,
Mike.
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