What Are You Currently Reading? 2013

[Backwards Observer]

Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1941-1960 by Ronald H. Spector.

The idea that the appropriate use of American power will provide a satisfactory outcome to even the most intractable problem in the Third World is far from a novel one. It was succinctly, if inelegantly, expressed in the slogan which one saw everywhere in Vietnam, “Once we have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” The work presented here suggests a fundamentally different conclusion, but one which was also embodied in an expression commonly heard in Vietnam, “You can’t make somethin’ out of nothin’.”

...

Added to this propensity to make something out of nothing was an American ignorance of Vietnamese history and society so massive and all-encompassing that two decades of federally-funded fellowships, crash language programs, television specials and campus teach-ins made hardly a dent. In Chapter 1 of the present work I attempt to show how infrequent and tenuous were American contacts with Vietnam before 1945 and what little knowledge of IndoChina there was in the U.S. even among specialists. U.S. contacts with Japan and China, however distorted by mutual suspicion, ignorance and prejudice, were rich and varied in comparison to those with Southeast Asia. (from the preface to the 1985 edition)

Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1941-1960 - amazon



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Something For Nothing (Rush) - youtube

[davidbfpo]

A "lurker" lent me a slim AUSA book, 'Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot' by Howard E. Simpson. It is a long time since I read on the French Indo-China war, notably Bernard Fall in 'Street Without Joy'. Originally published in 1994 and my edition 2005:http://www.amazon.com/Dien-Bien-Phu-...America+Forgot

Simpson writes well, although the editor missed some strange spellings and grammar which jarred an easy read. He has interviewed on both sides, including General Giap and clearly has admiration for the stoicism of the French (including a good number of non-French nationals and local tribesmen). Some new information was found; the UK & US official visits, the extent of US civilian pilots flying most of the transports and the use of quad .50 cal. machine guns.

I still marvel at those who volunteered to parachute in the last days, many with just a few days training:

800 French, 450 Legionnaires, 400 North Africans & Africans and 150 Vietnamese - only 681 jumped in.

Finally the author was there, as a diplomat, before the siege began.

[ganulv]

I still marvel at those who volunteered to parachute in the last days, many with just a few days training:

I read Peter G. MacDonald’s biography of Giap earlier in the year. Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

[davidbfpo]

Ganulv asked:

Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

Simpson refers to:

11,000 French Union able-bodied and wounded being captured, approximately 3,300 were returned.

The possible factors that caused their motivation is mentioned, multi-faceted yes and now too late to research properly. No doubt other examples in military history exist.

[jmm99]

After the war, Pierre Langlais ("Gars Pierre"; CO of the 2nd Airborne Brigade at DBP) carried on a 2-year battle with the French Army to award parachutist badges to the surviving "first jumpers" into DBP, despite their (obvious) lack of regulation airborne training jumps, etc. Bureaucratic indifference to combat courage won out (as is usually the case).

On DBP (the "pi$$pot" battle): Bernard Fall, Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu; Jules Roy, The Battle of Dienbienphu; and Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam. Windrow's is the latest academic work - and very comprehensive. Fall and Roy were there at the time.

Background (Franco-American viewpoint): both by Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle In Indochina; and The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (essential and cheap).

Regards

Mike

Chants Des Appelés.Le Gars Pierre (YouTube)

[carl]

I read Peter G. MacDonald’s biography of Giap earlier in the year. Didn’t that jump land all of them in POW camps (and from to their graves for many of them)?

That is what David marveled at, me too. They knew what the odds and they went anyway.

Maybe the motivation was what I read motivates most things like that, they can't stand to leave their mates unaided.

[carl]

I am just finishing Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Applebaum.

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Curtain-C...tain+applebaum

The book is excellent. It is comprehensive and very readable. More than readable really. The author manages to convey what those people went through in a deeper sense than a mere recounting of history.

The Soviets managed to subjugate, pacify if you will, a number of disparate countries with disparate cultures in a very short time. And a lot of those countries didn't have much use for Russians or Communists. That was a remarkable achievement.

The book recounts how they did it and some of things critical to that accomplishment are a bit surprising to me. For example the mass rapes helped them. Those along with all the other brutalities functioned to terrorize the populations right from the start. Also all the ethnic cleansing and ethnic killing that we see in so many places today, was seen in Eastern Europe at the end of the war, on a vast scale.

I recommend it highly, for several reasons. First, modern people tend to forget what brutes the Soviets were. Second, despite that, they pulled off a hell of a trick in subjecting all those countries and I think it important that we realize that. Third, though ultimately all they did depended upon the Red Army being there, there was a lot more to it than that. Fourth, it is darned interesting.