From Hell to Hollywood by Hal Buell

One would be hard pressed to find a journalist, Vietnam War veteran, or Baby Boomer who does not know the work of the Vietnamese-born war photographer, Nick Ut, especially his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Kim Phuc, known as “the Napalm Girl.”

Fellow photojournalist Hal Buell’s new book, From Hell to Hollywood: The Incredible Journey of AP Photographer Nick Ut (Associated Press, 216 pp. $35, paper; $11.49, Kindle), younger generations can learn about what a profound impact his photography had on an entire generation—whether they served in Vietnam, reported and photographed the war, or protested it at home.

The book contains 198 pages of photographs Nick Ut shot for the Associated Press in Vietnam from 1965 until he retired from the AP in 2017. There are many stirring photos he shot during the war, in which he was wounded twice.

What makes From Hell to Hollywood even better is Hal Buell’s fine prose, which details Nick Ut’s guarded entry into photography after his older brother, Huynh Thanh My, a well-known actor, CBS cameraman, then AP photographer, was killed photographing an ARVN operation near Can Tho in 1965. He’d been wounded and was killed by Viet Cong soldiers after they overran the battlefield.

“In that moment, the worlds of Huynh Cong (Nick) Ut and Arlette, My’s wife, collapsed. She was now a 21-year-old widow with a 5-month-old daughter,” Buell writes. “He was now a teenager whose mentor, the central foundation of his life, was taken away.”

Nick Ut’s sister-in-law pleaded with AP photo bureau chief Horst Faas to put him to work because his family needed a new bread winner. He was only 16 years old. Faas resisted at first; didn’t want to be responsible for the demise of two people in one family. But Faas relented and put the young man to work in the Saigon bureau’s darkroom.

It was there that Nick Ut became fascinated with the entire photographic process, and soon yearned to go out in the field as his brother had done. AP correspondent Peter Arnett helped make that happen and Nick Ut soon was doing what his brother had done in Vietnam and in Cambodia.

The photo he took for which he remains best known to this day was an image of then 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc as she was running down a road, naked, after her village was napalmed by a South Vietnamese Air Force plane on June 8, 1972. I interviewed Nick Ut about that fateful day for News Photographer Magazine in 2006.

“I saw a little girl running,” he told me. “She had torn off all her clothes. She was yelling, `Nóng quá! Nóng quá!’ [Too hot! Too hot!]. Her body was burned so badly. I didn’t want her to die, so I poured cold water on her.”

He didn’t know that cold water actually spread the napalm gel, exacerbating her pain.

“Then I borrowed a poncho from an ARVN 25th Division soldier because I did not want her to be naked,” he said. “She kept saying, `Chắc con sắp chết! Chắc con sắp chết!’ [I think I’m dying! I think I’m dying!].”

Ut said that Kim Phuc was in shock when he and other AP staffers got her to a hospital in Cu Chi. ARVN soldiers were mostly milling about. In a fit of exasperation, he showed his media pass and screamed: “If she dies, I will tell the story of this hospital.” Thanks to Nick Ut, Kim Phuc did not die.

In exacting, masterful prose Hal Buell tells the story of a photojournalist extraordinaire who went from capturing the horrors of war for the Associated Press to photos of American baseball (as foreign to him as cricket is to Americans), and countless movie stars.

According to Buell, when Nick Ut retired in 2017, he was constantly asked what he would do with his life now. His response? “I will always take pictures. Taking pictures is my doctor, my medicine. My life.”

From Hell to Hollywood will appeal to Vietnam War veterans, journalists, journalism students, and Baby Boomers.

–Marc Phillip Yablonka

Yablonka’s books include Vietnam Bao Chi: Warriors of Word and Film, profiles of 35 American military journalists who plied their trade during the Vietnam War. 

Allies in Air Power edited by Steven Paget; Educating Air Forces edited by Randall Wakelam, David Varey, & Emanuele Sica

Four editors working for the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies have developed a spellbinding format for evaluating the past, present, and future value of military air power. They have put together two books that resemble think tanks of facts and opinions from twenty-two authorities about the worldwide efficacy of airpower. In essence, the two books bond practical and educational approaches to air war.

In Allies in Air Power: A History of Multinational Air Operations (University Press of Kentucky, 314 pp. $70, hardcover; $52.99, Kindle), editor Steven Paget ties together case studies written by ten scholars and himself about coalition performances of air forces around the world. The essays, he says, “predominant[ly] focus on the experience of Western forces, not least because of the frequency with which they have engaged in multinational endeavors.”

Paget is the University of Portsmouth’s director of academic support services at Royal Air Force College Cranwell in the UK, and a member of the editorial board of Air and Space Power Review. In dissecting coalition operations, he follows a historical course that differed from what I expected. His subject matter often parallels the fringes of major events, which opened my mind to situations of which I had no knowledge. All of the entries definitely held my attention.         

The most pragmatic essay in Allies in Air Power is Paget’s detailed analysis of the Royal Australian Air Force Canberra bombers in the Vietnam War which illustrates the pros and cons of coalition operations, in this case with the U.S. Air Force.

Both the Australians and Americans made drastic changes to facilitate cohesion, Paget explains. The Canberra’s drawbacks—an inability to dive bomb, a complicated level bombing pattern, and restrictions against bombing Laos or Cambodia—were offset by its four hours of on-target loiter time and its ability to drop a stick of bombs singly and in pairs at extremely low levels with pinpoint accuracy.

Extensive tactical changes by RAAF Canberra crews and USAF FACs made the bombers highly desired close support aircraft. From 1967-71, the RAAF also used squadrons of Iroquois helicopters and Caribou transports in Vietnam. Although they depended on the USAF for their basic needs, the Aussies nevertheless maintained independence by paying their own way for everything, particularly for rations, fuel, and bombs. Mutual respect sealed the partnership.

Allies in Air Power also includes an essay on the ill-fated coalition between the Royal Air Force and the French Air Force (l’Armee de l’Air) in 1940 and the drastically one-sided pact between the Royal Hungarian Air Force and the Luftwaffe during World War II. These examples confirm that even at high levels personalities have an impact on relationships.  

Paget’s selection of articles about the first Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War could serve as a training manual for coalition operations. Basically, all participants in the operations had a voice and contributed the most they could. The value of combined air power was virtually incalculable. However, the main point is that “the widely differing social, cultural, and religious perspectives of various partners that colored and influenced day-to-day operations and relations” are always a challenge in coalition warfare.

In Educating Air Forces: Global Perspectives on Airpower Learning (University Press of Kentucky, 254 pp. $70, hardcover; $52.99, Kindle), three editors—Randall Wakelam, David Varey, and Emanuele Sica—present the writings of a dozen eminent international military leaders and scholars. Their thesis is that “an understanding of air power education would enhance aviators’ abilities to develop the intellectual capability and capacity of their particular service.”

The three editors possess a wealth of university teaching experience. They present concise histories of past and present “education philosophy and practice” predicated on events from the interwar years, the Cold War, and post-Cold War. By citing experts, they solidify the “logical link between education programs and the development and transmission of air power concepts and practices to members of the profession among European and English-speaking nations.”

Educating Air Forces also offers lessons that broadened my knowledge. From the traditional thinking of in “Giulio Douhet and the Influence of Air Power Education in Interwar Italy” to the near-revolutionary theories of “Square Pegs in a Round Hole: John Boyd, John Warden, and Airpower in Small Wars,” I enjoyed reading everything the book offered. New wars and new types of warfare demand rethinking about what the military too frequently accepts without question.

The experts in Educating Air Forces begin by examining the early development of military-run schools in the United Kingdom, Italy, and France. They go on to note that secret German Luftwaffe programs and training that stressed joint operations were the best approach—one that led to the overwhelmingly successful 1941-45 Stuka-Panzer blitzkrieg. English, Canadian, and Australian military historians describe their services’ approaches to education over the years.  

The book emphasizes the United States’ delays in forging air education schools because of struggles between generals and differences of opinions among politicians. Today, the U.S. Air Force has an array of sophisticated schools for officers of all ranks. The book makes a good case for civilian-run schools that teach graduate-level military history courses to investigate “war and society.”

The book examines the classic issues of “strategic versus tactical employment of forces” and the differences between large and small wars. The arguments come full circle by emphasizing famed Gen. Billy Mitchell’s idea that “the airplane’s role in war is the product of decision-making peculiar to each state.” To be blunt, reading Educating Air Forces left me with the impression that after a century of military air operations, the best approach to teaching its history is still highly debatable.

Separating theory and practice has always been a formidable task. In the early 1960s, I was both a student and faculty member at squadron Officer School and Air Command and Staff College. Many times, I questioned exactly what we were teaching our students and why.

–Henry Zeybel

Floater by Martin Robert Grossman

Floater (Koehler Books, 246 pp. $26.95, hardcover; $17.95, paper; $7.99, Kindle) is former Green Beret Martin Robert Grossman’s third action-thriller featuring Jerry Andrews, a retired police detective who was a Special Forces sergeant in Vietnam during the war.

The idea driving this novel is conveyed in the dedication, which is to the men and women of our armed forces who fight and sometimes die to protect our freedom, “even in the face of protest.” The dedication goes on to say that antiwar demonstrations by hippies and other war protesters “crushed the morale of the American soldier!” And that “the idle rich and famous played the most demoralizing role.” So, in this story, which takes place 20 years after the communist takeover of South Vietnam, justice against what Grossman calls “turncoats and traitors” is “dispensed by those betrayed–REAL JUSTICE!”

Several characters feel they were betrayed while at war and again after returning home to an ungrateful nation, and they have not been able to terms with that. They “quickly found that civilian life for a Vietnam vet was a nightmare,” Grossman writes. The men—Claymore, Meat Cleaver, Short Arm, Super Mex, Terminator, and others—are drawn into a plan to take out a “who’s who of war protestors.”

One of their main targets is the movie star Brandy Forester. She began as a child of privilege and wealth, becoming an acclaimed actress who always seemed to be in the shadow of her more famous father. She then began protesting the war and, in 1972 traveled to North Vietnam where she “sat for photographs with the enemy.” She’s described as having a “small chest,” in contrast to Army nurses with their “big racks.” The men don’t want to just kill her; they aim to send her straight to hell.

A rival group may be going after the same targets, including Sen. John Kershaw, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and served in Vietnam on a brown-water Navy patrol boat. Grossman writes that after intentionally wounding himself in order to get a Purple Heart, Kershaw then denigrated American troops when he testified before a congressional committee. Grossman says “he became hated by all soldiers” who were fighting for their country and their lives.

The leader of the group of enraged vets lives on a large ranch in Arizona and feels increasingly isolated from a world he thinks has rejected him. His goal is to put together a new A-Team, drawing men from VA clinics. He thinks of them as his “band of merry men.” Meanwhile, former detective Jerry Andrews volunteers to help law-enforcement with the cases.

I suggest reading this novel about murdering prominent people who protested the war as a fantasy. If that sounds like your thing, the story is well written and moves fast.

–Bill McCloud 

Thunder: Stories from the First Tour by Jack Heslin

In Thunder: Stories from the First Tour (Outskirts Press, 284 pp. $19.95, paper), Jack Heslin presents a thoughtful, often hypnotic, account of his experiences as a UH-1 Huey assault helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War in Kontum Province in 1967-68. With an engaging and nuanced style, Heslin conveys the practical and emotional—and even sometimes the metaphysical—aspects of his first tour of duty. He informs his readers—and puts them in the cockpit beside him. 

Heslin attended Providence College and then was commissioned in June 1965. After Airborne training at Fort Benning, he joined the 82nd Airborne Division. Then came Rotary Wing School at Fort Wolters, after which Heslin joined the 57th Assault Helicopter Company at Fort Bragg.

When he arrived in Vietnam, Heslin learned that the 119^th Assault Helicopter Company at Camp Holloway in the Central Highlands needed an aviation platoon leader. He immediately volunteered and got the job. During the next twelve months he flew hundreds of missions, was promoted to captain, and then became the company operations officer.

The 119^th made many long flights during the Battle of Dak To, bringing troops and supplies to remote areas and taking out the wounded. Heavy enemy fire at the landing zones destroyed several helicopters and damaged many more in the Central Highlands’ rugged terrain. 

Heslin instills his words with warmth and humor, yet he readily acknowledges the fear that went with the work. He accepted it as an immutable condition, and acknowledged that if the worst happened, it happened..

Of exceptional interest are Heslin’s recollections of one supply mission to troops on a ridge line south of Dak To. Reaching them required making a vertical descent through a “hover hole” in the jungle canopy, barely wide enough to accommodate the ship. Any contact between the rotor blades and the trees could mean death.

Jack Heslin

Heslin relied on his door gunner and crew chief for constant guidance, such as “down two feet, now slide left three feet and come down ten feet.”  As they approached the ground, the canopy closed above them, blocking out the sky and immersing them in a shadowy world of green. 

“It was the most intense flying I had ever done up to that point,” Heslin writes. “I’d graduated from flight school with top grades for my flying ability, but nothing had prepared me for this kind of combat flying. I was at the extreme edge of my abilities and the capability of the Huey aircraft we were flying.”

Thunder illustrates the launch of Heslin’s extraordinary career as a pilot, operations officer, flight instructor, and more. Readers seeking a thoughtful, personalized account of flying over unforgiving terrain at the height of the Vietnam War should have Jack Heslin’s memoir on their bookshelves.

–Mike McLaughlin

Rogue Diplomats by Seth Jacobs

“Diplomacy,” said the writer and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce, “is the patriotic art of lying for one’s country.”

In Rogue Diplomats: The Proud Tradition of Disobedience in American Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 406 pp. $34.99, hardcover; $17.20, Kindle) Seth Jacobs examines the role and conduct of diplomats in the shaping U.S. foreign policy. American diplomacy—often overlooked by historians and political scientists who concentrate on executive power and the military—has had a profound impact on the many achievements that have helped establish contemporary America.

Seth Jacobs is Professor of History at Boston College. His books include Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam and America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia.

Jacobs’ opening thesis statement is striking; he contends that the most important triumphs in American history came a result of American diplomats disobeying orders. Using a case-study approach, Jacobs uses six examples:

• John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin negotiating the Paris Peace Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War
• Robert Livingstone and James Monroe bargaining for the Louisiana Purchase
• Nicholas Trist ending the 1946-48 war with Mexico
• Walter Hines Page as Ambassador to England during the World War I
• Joseph P. Kennedy in the same post in period immediately preceding the Second World War
• Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963.

In all five of the six cases, Jacobs argues, insubordination was ultimately the correct course of action.

Of particular interest is the case study on Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. The patrician Republican Lodge was a curious choice for the Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, as the new U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963. Aside from their party differences, Kennedy had defeated Lodge for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1952, and again when Lodge was Richard Nixon’s running mate in 1960.

When Lodge arrived in Saigon in August 1963, the embers of the Diem Administration’s raids on Buddhist pagodas in South Vietnam were still smoldering. A lone wolf who kept his own counsel, Lodge soon dominated the diplomatic scene in South Vietnam and forged his own policy in the wake of vacillation from Washington.

Henry Cabot Lodge looming large over Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon in 1963

In Saigon, the South Vietnamese populace had tired of Ngo Dinh Diem’s autocratic rule, and there were as many as twelve coup d’état plots against his government. Lodge delicately walked the tightrope of not thwarting any of the coups while maintaining plausible deniability of American involvement.

Jacobs overstates the case of Lodge’s perfidy, but there is no doubt that he, as much as any American, helped cause the overthrow of the Diem government.

Lodge’s rogue quality rested more on his unmanageability than dishonesty. Despite Jacobs’ characterization of Lodge’s tenure as U.S. Ambassador as one rife with disobedience and insubordination, he credits Lodge with ultimately making the right choice in helping oust the Diem government.

Jacobs’ book is an original piece of scholarship that is written in a manner that makes it entertaining, informative, and relevant. It is a rare book of American foreign policy that is accessible to both the casual reader and the academic.

The diplomats he writes about were both a reflection and a refraction of the culture of their times, rendering a distinctly American approach to foreign policy. In the end, Jacobs proves his provocative thesis that America was made by knaves and scoundrels who went their own way.

–Daniel R. Hart

The Ballad of the Three Dollar Lover by Jack Tucker

Jack Tucker says his novel, The Ballad of the Three Dollar Lover (220 pp. $24.95, paper), which is set in California, Thailand, and Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is based on people he knew, things he did, and stories he heard. It’s a wild story centered on film editing and the sexual adventures of a young man turned loose on the world.

Tucker himself is an accomplished Hollywood film editor  who joined the U.S. Air Force at 19 and served in the Vietnam War at Korat Royal Thai AFB and Tan Son Nhut Air Base analyzing bombing and gun camera footage taken by cameras on U.S. aircraft. In his spare time, Tucker and another airman made a short film called The Hunter.

Here’s a summary of the plot of The Ballad of the Three Dollar Lover: Frank Jones serves four years as a film editor in the Air Force (as his creator did), including months at bases in Thailand and South Vietnam. After coming home, he goes to work in southern California making porn movies. While he’s at it, he has sex—lots of sex. We get many descriptions of the physical attributes of the women he has sex with, as well as descriptions of many sex acts.

While in the Air Force he learns filmmaking, focusing on editing. He’s taught that “every cut should show something new,” and “you’re telling a story with pictures.” He volunteers to serve in the Vietnam War to get off of Vandenberg Air Force Base. When he meets a young woman who tells him she is in the Peace Corps, he replies: “Really? I’m with the War Corps.”

He describes Bangkok as a city constantly emitting a “sickening smell of rotten garbage,” he’s quickly taken by Thai women, deciding he will “try them all.” He becomes aware of a popular saying, “You know anyone can be a great lover here for three dollars,” which inspired the book’s title. He is not ashamed to drive the price below that on occasion.

Once at his duty station at Tan Son Nhut he starts each day with a shot of Jim Beam in his coffee. His job is to review, and occasionally make prints of, film footage from bombing runs and other flights. The book includes details about film editing.

Jack Tucker

As for Jones’ thoughts about the Vietnam War, Tucker writes: “I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t hate this place, but I hated our being here. History and politics had conspired to place us at the wrong place, at the wrong time and on the wrong side.”

Jones’ adventures are told in a crude manner, as if Tucker were sharing them with his buddies at a bar after a few beers. I imagine this was intentional.

The book does include insights into what it was like to serve in a support unit during the Vietnam War. It has value as presenting one slice of the U.S. Air Force’s role in the Vietnam War.

–Bill McCloud

Moral Imperative by Darrel D. Whitcomb

Darrel Whitcomb’s Moral Imperative: 1972, Combat Rescue, and the End of America’s War in Vietnam (University Press of Kansas, 368 pp. $27.95, paper; $20.49, Kindle) 2021 is a well-written, researched, detailed, and informed book filled with accounts of incredible search and rescue missions. Whitcomb, a USAFA graduate who served three Vietnam War tours as a cargo pilot and forward air controller, begins with the earliest phase of American involvement in Southeast Asia as a backdrop to the evolving SAR mission. That quickly leads to the 1972 NVA Easter Offensive and Operations Linebacker I and II, the centerpieces of the book. 

Reading the details of these rescue missions I was repeatedly awestruck by the courage and perseverance of the rescue crews—especially when so many were shot down, riddled with fire, killed, or captured. 

On the eve of the 1972 Easter Offensive North Vietnamese antiaircraft units were heavily equipped with the latest Soviet technology and concentrated around sites targeted by U.S. forces. Facing an array of weaponry that could defend at all altitudes and weather, attacking aircraft were always in danger of being brought down.

The Russians had supplied the North Vietnamese with an abundance of artillery and SA-2 surface-to-air missiles with supporting radar, as well as fighter aircraft. Most telling was the large-scale introduction of portable, heat-seeking, shoulder-fired SA-7’s. Those weapons brought about U.S. losses practically every time they engaged attacking American aircraft. And nearly every attempted rescue mission took place in a high-risk environment.

The North Vietnamese monitored the American radio net, and set traps for inbound rescuers using downed flier as bait. Many rescuers and pilots consequently were hit by intense fire.   

The questions then arose: When is this tradeoff too costly to continue a rescue effort? Is it ethical not to try to rescue a downed crew?  If so, what was the morale impact on others who continued to fly high-risk missions? 

Perhaps the BAT-21 episode, which is described in this book, has been written about extensively, and was the subject of a Hollywood movie, best illustrates cost-versus-gain. BAT-21 was an EB-66 electronic warfare aircraft that was shot down. Only one crewmember, the navigator, survived, and he wound up in a highly dangerous sector saturated with ground-to-air missile sites, SA-7s, and antiaircraft artillery.  

An HH-43F hoists a downed airman in Southeast Asia. U.S. Air Force Photo

The effort to save him resulted in the loss of five additional aircraft and the deaths of eleven airmen. What’s more, U.S. planes scheduled to help embattled South Vietnamese troops in desperate need of airstrikes were diverted to the rescue effort. After an extensive effort the navigator was rescued by a determined and courageous two-man SEAL team backed up by South Vietnamese Navy commandos.

Was saving the navigator worth the losses? As Air Force Gen. John Vogt said about ordering highly risky SAR missions: “The one thing that keeps our boys motivated is the certain belief that if they go down, we will do absolutely everything we can to get them out. If that was ever in doubt, morale would tumble.” Hence, the “moral imperative” of the book’s title.

One comes away from this book with a deep-felt admiration for the crews who willingly put everything on the line to rescue others in the Vietnam War.

— John Cirafici

Saigon Kids by Leslie Arbuckle

Saigon Kids: An American Military Brat Comes of Age in 1960’s Vietnam (Mango Media, 308 pp. $19.95, paper; $10.99, Kindle) is a tell-all book about the adventures of some self-proclaimed military brats, the sons and daughters of the American military service members, Foreign Service officials, and civilian families who lived in South Vietnam in the early 1960s. The book is an amalgam of accounts of teen-aged antics, along with a bit of gunfire, mortar fire, oppressive heat and humidity, Saigon traffic, and Buddhist Monk self-immolations.

Arbuckle, the second oldest of four sons of a U.S. Navy Chief Journalist who managed the Armed Forces Radio Station in Saigon from 1962-64, takes us along with his posse of friends as they navigated the heat, sounds, and smells of Saigon before the big buildup of American troops. His narrative toggles among angst-filled teenage dialogue, contemporary commentary about the U.S. war in Vietnam, and general philosophical impressions of what it was like living in the South Vietnamese capital at the time.

Arbuckle also regales us with tales of his family’s dealings with “just another duty station” in a “very hot place.” We get descriptions of his high-strung mother, his stern and demanding father, his two younger brothers, their Vietnamese maid, and how they interacted.

Some of Arbuckle’s stories about his social life—such as his quest for cigarettes and his visits to brothels and bars on To Do Street—border on the tedious. His stories of the goings on at the American Community School, however, enliven the narrative.

Arbuckle, who joined the Army in 1968 and was assigned to the 50th Army Band at Fort Monroe, Virginia, went on to became a professional musician. He played the saxophone and had a successful career. He writes about this talent in the book, but not to a great extent. We hear more about that in his author’s note at the end of the book.

Interestingly, in the Epilogue Arbuckle speaks of his own “struggles” with what we have come to recognize as post-traumatic stress. Some of what he has experienced does not differ from what those who fought in the war have gone through emotionally.

This is a well-written book with a cast of interesting characters.

Arbuckle’s website is lesarbuckle.com

–Tom Werzyn

Logistics in the Vietnam Wars by N S Nash

“Logistics,” the British Field Marshal Viscount Wavell of Cyrenaica once said, “are a function of command.” In the Logistics in the Vietnam Wars, 1945-1975 (Pen and Sword/Casemate, 224 pp., $34.95) N S Nash examines the processes, resources, and systems involved in generating, transporting, sustaining, and redeploying or reallocating materiel and personnel in the twenty century wars in Vietnam. Nash looks at three distinct wars: the war of the Vietnamese against the French (1946-54), the Vietnamese against the Americans (1956-73), and a civil war pitting North Vietnam against South Vietnam (1973-1975).

N S “Tank” Nash received his MA in Military History from Birmingham University and was a member of the British Army Catering Corps for thirty years, rising to the rank of Brigadier. He is the author of several books on military history, including Valor in the Trenches. This is his first book on the Vietnam wars.

Nash presents this work in an accessible, colloquial manner, often employing derision and sarcasm while analyzing the actions of French and American military and political leaders. During the First Indochina War, AKA, “the French war,” Nash details how France’s initial use of wheeled transport proved vulnerable given the terrain, climate, and, ultimately, the adaptability of their enemy. The French military leadership’s desire to engage the Vietnamese in a set piece battle ended disastrously when they were routed by General Vo Nguyen Giap at the famed 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

After the partition of Vietnam as a result of the Geneva Accords that year, the Americans supported the pro-Western South Vietnam government. The mobility of American forces with the use of helicopters solved most of the logistical problems the French had encountered. The American problems in Vietnam proved to be more tactical than logistical, with the only logistical issue being an overabundance of amenities and comforts for the troops.  The use of chemical defoliants and bombing proved ineffective against the guerilla tactics used by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

In the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal in 1973, Nash describes the civil war between the North and the South as a fait accompli, noting that the North Vietnamese Army was far better prepared for the largely conventional war that ensued.

Though the thesis and title of the book are about the logistics of the Vietnam wars, Nash also delves into the political, diplomatic, and social machinations of the wars. When he sticks with the logistics, the book is solid. His analyses of the 1968 Siege at Khe Sahn and the M-16 are particularly noteworthy. When Nash veers into diplomatic or political history, however, the narrative is less convincing. Errors of fact diminish the storyline and distract the reader.

For example, President Kennedy did not approve 200,000 American advisers in the summer of 1961. He approved providing funding to increase the South Vietnamese Army from 170,000 to 200,000 troops. And In 1956, there were, in fact, many “pressing issues” between the North and South, as evinced by that fact that nearly a million North Vietnamese people fled to the South between 1954-56.

U.S. Marines hunkering down during the 1968 Siege at Khe Sanh

Nash is effusive in praise of Gen. Giap as “the master logistician,” and his plan for the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu is worthy of praise. But Nash also details how Giap lost the Siege at Khe Sahn due to logistical failures, led the disastrous Tet Offensive, and provided logistical support for the failed Easter Offensive in 1972. His side won the war, but his record was far from “undefeated.”

Bum Phillips once explained the brilliance of fellow football coach Bear Bryant, explaining that he “can take his’n and beat your’n, and then he can turn around and take your’n and beat his’n.” Without access to an incredibly devoted workforce of indefatigable porters and without what Nash describes as a “total disregard” for the lives of his own troops, one wonders about the genius of Giap.

Though he would have benefited from a steadier hand, Nash writes with great aplomb in exploring an under researched aspect of the wars in Vietnam.

–Daniel R. Hart

In the Shadow of Green Bamboos by C.L. Hoang

In the Shadow of Green Bamboos (Willow Stream Publishing, 196 pp. $10.95, paper; $4.99, Kindle), by C.L. Hoang is a delightful collection of a half dozen short stories, all of which contain brief but penetrating glimpses into the lives of a cross section of people, Vietnamese and American, who were affected in significant ways by the American war in Vietnam. Hoang was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in the 1970s. This is his third book; all three deal with the country of Vietnam and the wars that took place there.

The opening story, “In a Land Called Honah-Lee,” involves a chance meeting at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a stuffed toy dragon and a connection made between children in both countries. But then there is fatal anti-aircraft fire and the story becomes one of survivor’s guilt.

By the time I was half-way through the next story, “Flowers in the Sky,” I saw that Hoang’s method of storytelling makes his words come alive, consistently—almost like watching a movie. All of my senses were engaged. This story takes place in Saigon in late 1972 and features a six-year-old boy, a red lantern, a harvest moon, and an exciting parade.

It’s a time when the Americans are withdrawing, the boy’s father is away from home fighting, and his mother’s hair is noticeably turning grey. This is a good example of Hoang’s writing at its best and shows off his ability to tell stories in a very moving manner.

In the title story, a Vietnamese woman living in Washington, D.C., thinks back over almost fifty years of marriage to the American she met in Saigon. Her memories stir up secrets, including one about a “mysterious crying woman.”

The title of the fourth story, “Of Crickets and Dragons,” should be enough to entice you into wanting to read this tale of two young boys killing time in 1968 Saigon.

“When Swallows Return” begins with pleasant memories of college life in the early sixties, including with love poems written on fancy stationery. The war then brings a time of separation that becomes permanent when a plane is shot down. But then, almost fifty years later, a mysterious phone call changes everything.

As I prepared to begin to read the final story, “A Cup of Love,” I wished there were a dozen more in this book. Then this one begins with an older Vietnamese woman saying to her young granddaughter, “Do you want to hear a story?” And the voice in my mind drowned out the voice of the young girl as I may even have said out loud, “Yes, Mr. Hoang, another story, please.”

But what I really want is another book full of stories by C.L. Hoang.

The author’s website is mulberryfieldsforever.com

–Bill McCloud