Bill,

Herrington's book is an outstanding memoir of what it meant to be an adviser at the time, and your review captures the essence. I was on the CORDS team in the adjacent province, Tay Ninh, at the same time, and I concur in your conclusions. Hau Nghia, also the setting of Bergerud's The Dynamics of Defeat, was a difficult province, with its rubber plantation workers among the earliest (1946) groups to be organized as Viet Minh cannon fodder. I might point out that Phoenix in Hau Nghia Province, as throughout the Region, was largely a failed enterprise. This is confirmed in the Hau Nghia monthly province reports (available on-line), Phoenix input to which is assuredly Herrington's, in which the writer justifiably, bitterly complains about Phoenix being a revolving door, with apprehended VCI routinely given ridiculously light sentences.


You may want to read Herrington's' second VN book, Peace With Honor?, which takes the reader through to the unfortunate 1975 end. I cannot forget my Vietnamese counterparts asking me in those last months, "We don't need your material assistance, we need US tactical air support; will we get it?" It gave me no pleasure to tell them that was out of the question.

Cheers,
Mike.