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A new book about the Vietnam War was introduced to readers last week. It is a memoir of a former South Vietnamese lieutenant general telling what he knows during the 25 years of war he was fighting against the Communists. In many pages are his comments concerning matters of politics and war with quotations and footnotes as in any book of a scholar.
The book is “The Twenty-Five-Year Century” by former Lieutenant-General Lam Quang Thi, published by thee University of North Texas.
General Thi and his older brother Lam Quang Tho enrolled in the newly established Vietnam National Army in 1950 after the March 8, 1948 Agreement signed by the late President Vincent Auriol of France and the then former King of Vietnam, H.M. Bao Dai, recognizing the independent Vietnam non-Communist state in the French Union. Thi and Tho attended the first class of the Vietnam Military School of Inter-Arms at Dalat and graduated as second lieutenant in 1951. Thi was assigned to the Artillery Corps.
Since 1951 to 1954, he was fighting against the Viet Minh as a battery commander, then a battalion commander in North, Central and South Vietnam. After 1955, he continued serving the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam, the South Vietnam state founded by the late President Ngo Dinh Diem. He was a 33-year-old brigadier general in 1966, commanding the 9th Infantry Division, before he was appointed Commander of the Military Academy in 1968. He graduated the U.S. Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth in 1963. He was promoted to three-star general in 1972 when he was I Corps deputy commander, in charge of the Corps forward C.P. at Hue, age 39. In this position, he was directly commanding the Northern Theater Task Force, defending Hue and Quang Tri areas to the last days in late March, 1975.
With experiences from his jobs, he has sufficient authority to tell readers what he learned about the war and related issues.
The book has 15 chapters; the first of them is about the general’s family background and his childhood with his well-to-do parents. His grand father was one of the Cao Dai Sect founders, who was fighting against the French and the Viet Minh. In this chapter, General Thi tells readers why many people in South Vietnam as well as in other regions were against the Viet Minh after they had lent much support to the Resistance, and joined the French-backed nationalist government fighting the Communist Viet Minh. The French colonialists were also their enemy but not as dangerous to the ultimate interests of the Vietnamese people as the Communists.
Most of the book content are his experiences from years in military service. The first thing readers may be interested in is about how the Western media was reporting the Vietnam War. The Ap Bac battle is an example.
On January 2, 1963, ARVN 7th Infantry Division task force failed to seize the objective area in Ap Bac village, with three H-21 helicopters downed by enemy guns, and a score of ARVN soldiers killed. The enemy battalion escaped with little loss, as reported by the American media. Panicked American advisors, politicians and reporters jumped on the Ap Bac “debacle” and “painted a bleak picture” of the Vietnam War. (Not long after the battle, many VC defectors and POWs asserted that nearly 200 of the 400-strength VC battalion had been killed and their bodies were dragged away by the fleeing comrades. Western media did not report the information. Note by VQ.).
One year later in 1963, General Thi as the Deputy C.O. of the 7th Inf. Division, planned an attack at another enemy battalion in the same village Ap Bac. After a full day fighting, the enemy suffered over one hundred dead. Although it was a significant victory of the time, “the U.S. media remained curiously silent.”
The media also kept silent on his other important victories in his 9th Division Tactical Area, including the battles of Tan Ngai, Vinh Binh province, of Thay Cai Canal in Kien Giang province, and the Mang Thit waterway reopening. They were true victories that were confirmed at the time by ARVN Joint General Staff.
General Thi believes that the media played a major role in the final downfall of South Vietnam. He quotes North Vietnam General Vo Nguyen Giap as stating in a French TV broadcast that Giap’s “most important guerrilla during the Vietnam War was the American press.’’
During his 25-year service, he hadn’t been adhered to any faction in the RVN army or to any political party. Though President Nguyen Van Thieu did not like him, Thi was promoted to lieutenant general.
He is not reluctant to admit acts of corruption among the high ranking leaders and their wives in the South Vietnamese government and military. General Thi has been considered one of the many “clean” (incorruptible) officers in the ARVN.
However in his book, General Thi strongly criticized the American strategy of “graduated response” as well as the “enclave” concept that failed to win the enemy guerrilla warfare. According to him, the American Army forgot that “the most important factor in a war is man, not technology, and victory requires traditional leadership, not bureaucratic management.”
Also claimed as a failure was the American military concept of fighting for space, not time whereas a war of attrition requires fighting for time, not space, and the military leaders of our side were reacting more than acting.
According to General Thi, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War because Washington did not have guts to use mightier military power to strike Communist forces right in North Vietnam to destroy Hanoi’s will to fight, and did not have enough patience to support South Vietnam to fight a long and protracted war either.
His book may be successful in proving that the South Vietnamese soldiers, despise some weaknesses, were not the cowards. Though they were serving under a government with widespread corruption, with low salary, with ceaseless operations without relax, facing relentless hostility from the unfriendly media, were still fighting like any army in the free world until American supports were all cut off by Washington.
He highly praises the brave American advisors who provided great assistance to the ARVN units, although some Americans - General Taylor ... - showed arrogance and condescension in relation with the Vietnamese military leaders.
The last two chapters of the book are about the tragic withdrawal and the chaotic situation in the northern part of the republic that later spread all over the country in April 1975. They also prove that the indecisiveness and wrong options of South Vietnam top leaders in the last days of March and April 1975 was the major reason leading to the fall of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. General Thi is honest in telling all of what were going on during the last days of Hue and Da Nang, hiding nothing.
His book, in fluent English, may contributes a significant part to reconstructing the true image, good and bad, of the heroic South Vietnamese soldiers who had been fighting in the longest war in the history of Vietnam and the United States as well. Many things about his life are told, but the core of the work is the different aspects of the Vietnam War in the eyes of a ranking combat soldier.
So far, the Communist regime in Hanoi has spent a lot of money, allegedly at millions of US dollars a year to publish all kinds of publication that serve its schemes of propaganda. Hanoi‘s books can be found in almost every library in Western countries. The former Republic of Vietnam had spent only about a few thousands of dollars a year for the same purpose. Therefore, one more book of the Vietnam War written in a foreign language by a non-Communist Vietnamese writer is extremely useful to scholars, researchers and historians in the world.
The book is worth reading to all, including those who have been Vietnam War protesters or supporters, especially to the younger generations.
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