World of War by William Nester

Historian William Nester relegates the Vietnam War to a mere second act in a long play about the Cold War. In setting the stage for his latest book, World of War: A History of American Warfare from Jamestown to the War on Terror (Stackpole, 472 pp. $39.95, hardcover; $28.99, Kindle), Nester analyzes the attitude of Americans toward the world at large. He begins by saying, “Americans are among history’s most war-prone people.”

At the same time, Nester cites the foundation of American culture as humanism and individualism, fortified by idealized and romanticized history. Hero worship, he says, has motivated many Americans in many ways. Nester also recognizes imperialism and hegemony as American traits.

A professor of government and politics at St. John’s University in New York, William Nester has written more than three dozen books on national security, military history, and the nature of power.

In World at War, he contends that Americans never lacked reasons for entering into warfare, but says that how commander-in-chief presidents justified entering conflicts has significantly differed, particularly in scale. War entails what Nester classifies as physical (hard) and psychological (soft) powers. In equal physical battles, he says, the “side with greater soft power will win.” In essence, diplomatic, economic, and political power complement military power. These truths apply to revolutions as well as wars between nations.

Speaking of leadership, Nester says that politics and psychology are as inseparable as war and peace. He quotes Henry Kissinger saying it is delusional “to believe that leaders gain in profundity while they gain experience…. The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.”

Within this framework, Nester deconstructs the nation’s array of wars during four centuries of American history.

He argues that the Vietnam War provided a wealth of mediocre and dismal examples of civilian and military leadership. At times, Nester relies on multiple sources to prove this point. For example, when he says, “Eventually nothing ultimately discredited the global containment strategy [of France and the United States against communism] worse than the Vietnam War,” he lists thirteen books that buttress that conclusion. He examines strategy from a lofty level and blames America’s missteps on a lack of insight by those with the power to rectify it.

World of War reviews the many American strategies we pursued in the Vietnam War from the time of Harry Truman’s administration through Richard Nixon’s. For people well-versed in the history of the war, reading accounts of U.S. actions from the Battle of Diên Biên Phú in 1954 to the communist takeover in 1975 is like reading headlines of the era.

“Only three American programs achieved some success because they tried to balance hard and soft power,” Nester says: the Combined Action Program (CAP), the CIA counterinsurgency Operation Phoenix, and the strategic hamlet Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) program. Two of the three were soft actions.

A Vietnam War CAP Marine on a “soft action” job

By categorizing the Vietnam War as but one episode in the Cold War, Nester foretells a diminishing of America’s hard and soft powers as a world leader. For anyone interested in American history beyond the Vietnam War, World of War offers 400 years of interesting and colorful drama with plenty of good and bad actors.

–Henry Zeybel

Courageous Dissent by A.S. Kyle

Four 9th Regiment U.S. Marine Corps junior officers who served in the Vietnam War in 1968-69 have written Courageous Dissent (184 pp. $14.50, paper; $5.99, Kindle), a small book with large ideas about U.S. military strategy. The book relies heavily on the thinking of USMC leaders, which merits the subtitle, The History Behind the Vietnam Warfighting Strategy and the Five Marine Generals Who Advocated Alternatives, 1965-1969.

The book’s authors—A.S. Kyle, G.M. Davis, Robert Packard, and John Cochenour—open with biographies that introduce themselves and the five generals—Wallace Greene, Victor Krulak, Wood Kyle, Lowell English, and Raymond Davis—along with justifying the rights of military dissenters. The book’s “dissent” primarily examines the difference between U.S. military strategies in the Khe Sanh and Dewey Canyon operations (the four authors all took part in Dewey Canyon).     

A review of the multiple failures of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara vividly portrays the ineptitude of politicians as military strategists who opposed dissenting suggestions of Marine leaders.

The authors do not stack the facts. They examine the pros and cons of war plans year by year. Mobilization planning took place in 1965. Differentiating between a Combined Action Program (a defensive hearts-and-mind scheme based on American troops living in small towns) and search-and-destroy tactics (offensive attrition of the enemy) came in 1966.

In 1967, McNamara’s plan to build a barrier parallel with the DMZ to prevent North Vietnamese infiltration into South Vietnam overrode all others. The barrier’s cost in money and manpower defeated its usefulness–not to mention the fact that the NVA already had more than a division of infantrymen in I Corps.

Analyses of what happened at Khe Sanh and during Operation Dewey Canyon comprise the best parts of the book. They magnify the difference between conventional attrition and counterinsurgency, according to the authors, who present a nearly-day-by-day analysis of the two campaigns.

Action during Operation Dewey Canyon, January 1969

Several appendices could stand alone as a primer on dissent. They include Vietnam War memoranda, a strategic appraisal, a letter of non-concurrence, an exit interview, and a unit citation.

Even 55 years after the event, the strategic failures recounted in Courageous Dissent disturbed me. My mind repeatedly asked, “Why did nobody listen to the men who knew best—the generals and their staffs?”

Too many actions proved overwhelmingly incorrect. A.S. Kyle closes the book on a similar note: “By following the recommendations of our dissenters, the outcome of the Vietnam War might have changed. Regrettably, we will never know.”

So it goes.

—Henry Zeybel

In the Shadow of the Golden Thirteen: by Gerald A. Collins

“People always notice skin color and make judgments and decisions based on it. They may not be conscious of it, but it happens,” retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Reuben Keith Green once said. “My mind says, ‘The heaviest sin of the matter is that too many people are conscious of it, but continue to make it happen.’”

Gerald A. Collins, a U.S. Navy veteran, confronts that racial dilemma in his new book, In the Shadow of the Golden Thirteen: A Nice Negro Story (1st World, 139 pp. $26.95. hardcover; $18.95, paper).

Collins calmly recounts his successes and subsequent mistreatment due to the bigotry and discrimination he faced in the Navy. I admire his willingness to name names and the quiet fortitude with which he faced foes. His book carries a lot of weight on racial problems that might never be resolved, yet he cleanly and clearly confronted them. The book’s tone is one of disappointment and resignation rather than bitterness. At the same time, Collins displays exuberance injected with appropriate humor when describing public relations programs he originated.

According to Collins, his major accomplishment as an officer was nearly single-handedly planning and coordinating a 1982 three-day reunion cruise on a destroyer for the Golden Thirteen—12 men whose 1944 commissioning created the Navy’s first Black officers (and one chief warrant officer). At that time, the Navy was the most segregated branch of the U.S. armed forces.

Many Navy commanders reacted negatively to Collins’ reunion plan. A few accused him of doing it to glorify himself. One condescendingly told him, “It sounds like a nice Negro story.” When media coverage exceeded expectations, the Navy Secretary feted the Golden Thirteen in Washington following the cruise.   

Success and awards in public relations continued to earn top one percent fitness reports for  Collins until Capt. B. Angus MacDonald took command of his office. MacDonald made Collins his go-fer, assigned him projects far outside his job description, and insultingly criticized the way he solved problems. MacDonald also rid his unit of all the other Black officers.

MacDonald lowered Collins’ fitness ratings to a level that caused him to be passed over for promotion to lieutenant commander—twice. Consequently, the Navy discharged him from active duty in 1986. Assigned to the Reserves, he again was passed over and released from the Navy in 1989 after more than 17 years of active and Reserve service. Collins retired from federal service after nearly 40 years on the job, the majority in emergency management.  

Collins’ role models were his mother, who worked 35 years for the Navy, an older brother who had a 25-year Navy career, and Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, who promised to eliminate discrimination in the Navy during the 1960s. 

Adm. Elmo Zumwalt speaking to the Human Relations Council at Fleet Activities in Yokosuka in Tokyo Bay, Japan, on July 2, 1971. U.S. Navy photo

Collins enlisted in the Navy in 1965 to avoid the draft. He spent two years in London, performing menial jobs outside his rate in a classified communications center. White sailors did not incur such mistreatment, he points out, but does not dwell on that fact.

Returned to civilian life, he earned a BA while completing a directing internship with a local television station. He was working toward an MA when a 1974 Zumwalt announcement convinced him to re-enlist as a Petty Officer Second Class. Collins signed up for a direct appointment public affairs reserve commission and, almost before the ink dried, was sworn in as an ensign.

Assigned to the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, he headed his own TV, radio, and newspaper operation. For years, his many creative programs won high recognition. His fitness reports put him in the top one percent of his grade, and he was recommended for accelerated advancement. Then his world collapsed around him.

In the Shadow of the Golden Thirteen reveals far more about the mindset of misdirected racist leaders than it does about a long-ago victory against discrimination.

—Henry Zeybel

The Battle of Bong Son by Kenneth P. White

The six-week Battle of Bồng Sơn that began on January 24,1966, was the largest search-and-destroy mission in the Vietnam War at the time. Kenneth P. White’s The Battle of Bong Son: Operation Masher/White Wing, 1966 (Casemate, 288 pp.$34.95), a deeply researched and comprehensive book, chronicles the battle in great detail, including all American and allied units involved and some of the enemy units of the NVA’s Sao Vong (Yellow Star) Division. 

Tactical maps accompany each short chapter, as well as remembrances of participants, footnotes, excellent photos, a bibliography, a short glossary, and an index. Appendices list the names of all Americans killed in the battle and the citations of two soldiers who were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

White, who served as a 1st Cavalry Division LRRP and who helped support the troops in the battle, wisely does not interject himself into the narrative. Yet, his boots-on-the-ground participation must have informed his writing at a most basic level. He is a historian who lived some of the history that he writes about.

The title of the operation changed from “Masher” to “White Wing” because President Johnson thought the name “Masher” had negative political consequences. The memorandum requesting the name change and the reasons why from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Westmoreland, and others appears in the Appendix.

The battle took place in Bình Định Province in II Corps in horrible weather and on terrible terrain. It included both ARVN forces and formidable Republic of Korea troops. They faced off against two NVA regiments and one main force Viet Cong regiment. The U.S. casualties were 245 KIA and 990 WIA. However, North Vietnamese after-action documents contain body count exaggerations reminiscent of some infamous American military reports of enemy casualties. In one of the phases of the battle, the U.S. military listed 10 Americans killed in action. The NVA reported killing 497 Americans KIAs in that same phase.

Luck and karma always attend the soldier. The first casualties of the battle were 46 men who perished in a USAF C-123 Provider troop transport plane crash ten minutes after it took off from An An Khê on the way to Bồng Sơn. The C-123 had loaded a different group of soldiers earlier, but they had to be offloaded because of mechanical problems. Those soldiers were immediately loaded into a different C-123. The first C-123 was quickly repaired and a new group of soldiers took their place on the ill-fated aircraft.

Enemy military documents show a detailed five-prong attack plan by the 407th Viet Cong Battalion against the large American base camp in Bình Định. However, when the attack took place, it failed miserably, once again proving the military adage, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

The Battle of Bồng Sơn was considered a success because the Sao Vong Division was forced to vacate Bình Định Province and enemy losses were estimated at 3,000 killed. Having succeeded in its mission, the 1st Cavalry withdrew from the province. Within a few weeks, two battalions of the 22nd NVA Regiment had infiltrated the province.

A final note: The book’s cover is comprised of a fine photograph of an American Army infantry squad crossing two rice paddies. The men are doing so on the dikes. On the first day of the basic Vietnam War 101 course I learned that this is simply not done because of potential booby traps.

Leeches are far less dangerous than shrapnel.

–Harvey Weiner

They Also Served edited by Howard De Nike and Judith Mirkinson

Howard De Nike and Judith’s They Also Served: Voices of the Overseas Law Projects from the Vietnam War (Imbroglio Publishers, paperback) consists of a group of essays and remembrances of dozen-and-a-half lawyers involved in representing GIs in trouble in Vietnam and elsewhere around the world during the war. The lawyers provided pro bono civilian legal representation where none existed or was quietly not offered. The entries in the book outline the operations and missions of a varied group of mostly fledgling lawyers who represented soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors charged with varied crimes, from Article 15-types to murder.

The lawyers also worked to right wrongs and save the participants in the war from the military-industrial complex. They worked for several organizations including the Pacific Counseling Service, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Lawyers Military Defense Committee.

“We were Americans,” one of the lawyers writes, summing up the tenor of the book, “and our goal was clear: expose the military and end the war. We were white radicals. We had all the arrogance, enthusiasm, and passion of youth, and we were determined to organize as many GIs as we could.” 

The essays occasionally repeat each other, as multiple writers worked during the same periods of time from the same places. They range from being precise and fact-filled to almost a “what-I-did-last-summer” type of essay.

While the bulk of the book deals with the lawyers’ experiences during the Vietnam War, it also contains a section devoted to the activities of some attorneys in Europe, principally with the Army in Germany, as the Vietnam War wound down and many of its veterans were posted there.

This is a unique book that deals with a not-very-well know Vietnam War subject. With a bit of polish, it could have been more readable and more informative. The framework is certainly there.

–Tom Werzyn

Turning Points by Thomas J. Corcoran

“A bowl of jelly” is how President John F. Kennedy once described the U.S State Department. Kennedy was frustrated by what he saw as its amorphous, spineless. and wholly ineffectual manner. In reference to his National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, JFK once said, “Damn it, Bundy and I get more done in one day in the White House than they do in six months at State.”

Ambassador Thomas J. Corcoran, author of Turning Points: The Role of the State Department in Vietnam (1945–1975) (Casemate, 288 pp. $37.95; $17.49, Kindle), would have agreed with Kennedy’s sentiments. Corcoran, who died in 1994, was a career Foreign Service Officer and the last ranking diplomat to serve in Hanoi before the embassy closed in 1955. In the mid-1980s he set out to understand how the United States, and in particular the State Department, failed so completely in the Vietnam War.

Part I of the book covers 1945-54 and examines the policies of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower during the First Indochina War. Corcoran excoriates the State Department during that time for its inability to discern Ho Chi Minh’s strong communist intentions.

The aftermath of the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ and the subsequent obstacles to American policy as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords are covered in Part II (1955-63). Corcoran also writes about Kennedy’s growing economic and military commitment to South Vietnam, but curiously does not examine the State Department’s role in the pivotal 1963 assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm.

Part III (1964-68) deals with what Corcoran says were the disastrous Vietnam War policymaking policies of President Lyndon Johnson. Corcoran cites the many failures of the State Department to offer alternatives to the president.

The final section, Part IV (1969-75), centers on President Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Like Kennedy, Nixon and Kissinger did not trust the State Department, a mistrust that Corcoran believes was well-earned.

Notwithstanding his many years of service to the State Department, Corcoran objectively analyzes its many failings. He saw the U.S. mission in Vietnam as well-intentioned, and, in contrast to historians and others who see the war as unjustified and unwinnable, believed the conflict was justified but woefully mismanaged.

Corcoran, right, next to Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam

Despite his insider perspective, Corcoran relies heavily on notoriously self-serving memoirs and biographies to support his case. This is unfortunate because Corcoran’s best analysis comes when his personal knowledge provides fresh insights into contentious topics.

Corcoran left one key mystery of the Vietnam War unsolved. While adeptly describing his State Department colleagues as experienced and intelligent, he does not explain why no Foreign Service Officers or foreign policy experts understood the fanaticism of the North Vietnamese. Despite all evidence to the contrary, expert after expert believed there was a negotiated path to a settlement.

Credit is due to Bill Stearman, Corcoran’s colleague and friend, for bringing this important manuscript to publication. Thomas Corcoran’s book is a valuable addition to Vietnam War historiography.

—Daniel R. Hart

Vietnam: Right? or Wrong? by J. Randolph Maney, Jr.

\J. Randolph Maney, Jr., an attorney by trade, puts the United States of America on trial in Vietnam: Right? or Wrong? (BookLocker, 419 pp. $21.95, paper; $2.99, Kindle). A half century after the fact, with the war in Afghanistan behind us and the Russian war in Ukraine continuing, he says his book is not about the beginning of a second Cold War, but about the Vietnam War and its role in ending the Cold War. He wants to determine if the United States did the right thing by fighting in Vietnam.

After earning a law degree, Maney served a 1969-70 tour of duty in Vietnam as a trial lawyer and Chief of Military Justice with the U.S. Army’s 4^th Infantry Division.

Maney presents his case as a lawyer would: setting the stage, laying out facts as he sees them, arguing the case, and making a summation. Including a short autobiography struck me as an apology for delving into a complex problem. He explains his views somewhat gingerly. Nevertheless, his calm and calculated approach to what has become an endless debate is admirable.

Maney opens his case in 200 BC. He shows that from then through 1955 the Vietnamese existed through periods of independence interrupted by conquest and reconquest by China and invasions by Spain, France, and Japan. The period ends with the Soviet Union and China vying for Vietnam’s political favor before and during the American war.  

He portrays the rivalry over Southeast Asia as if it were a three-handed chess match between the major powers, while the real combatants—North and South Vietnamese and American troops—were almost spectators. He suggests that Vietnam was a proxy war. The bigwigs bartered, and as a result, millions of service personnel and civilians died. Hanoi accepted large body counts, he says, because large-scale battle actions influenced the American public’s attitude about the war.

He includes stories about combat and the continued use of search-and-destroy tactics because, he says, they validated “the integrity of American commitment” to “the principle of peace throughout the world” to its “42 allies” created by mutual security agreements.

He reviews activities from 1956-75 step by step, from the Eisenhower Doctrine, to The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and Vietnamization.Vietnam: Right? or Wrong? is a primer for the uninitiated and a thorny walk down memory lane for old timers.              

Maney’s then reaches beyond the war’s ending. He writes that in 1986, “all of Vietnam’s wartime leaders resigned from its politburo” and a new communist General Secretary “introduced free-market reforms to save the state.” Furthermore, with American assistance, Vietnam’s debts were forgiven and embargos lifted so that by 1995 the country became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

As he lays out facts, Maney’s tempo accelerates and his arguments reache a reasonable crescendo of what-ifs. His summation is a masterful display of questioning his analyses of the diplomacy and combat that he set out earlier in the book.

LBJ and Robert McNamara

Here’s how Maney reached me as a jury of one: The U.S. defeated itself by making incorrect political and military decisions that thwarted its opportunities for success. The nation, furthermore, had too many indecisive high-ranking military and civilian leaders who lacked principles beyond their personal perspectives.

Maney’s conclusion: The United States did the right thing fighting for South Vietnam against North Vietnam. It was obligated to do so under the SEATO treaty. However, the United States failed by abandoning South Vietnam in 1975. On the other hand, the United States achieved a geopolitical victory because our intervention on behalf of South Vietnam caused disruption between China and the Soviet Union, which eventually ended the Cold War.

—Henry Zeybel

U.S. Seventh Fleet, Vietnam 1964-75 by Edward J. Marolda

Amazingly, Edward J. Marolda’s short book, U.S. Seventh Fleet, Vietnam ,1964-75: American Naval Power in Southeast Asia (Osprey, 80 pp. $23, paper; $17.99. Kindle), does a full-scale job of examining U.S. Naval operations in the Vietnam War.

Marolda holds a doctorate in history and has served as Director of Naval History at the Naval History and Heritage Command and as the U.S. Navy’s Senior Historian. Among his 20 works, he has written, co-written, and edited nine books about the U.S. Navy’s role in the Vietnam War. He served in Vietnam as an Army officer in 1969-70.

In his latest book, Marolda makes arguments that are barely contestable, if at all. He begins by establishing the Seventh Fleet’s anticipated employment at the dawn of war and goes on to describe the power of naval aviation, surface vessels, amphibious capabilities, and submarine activities. He then sets out the Fleet’s command and control, intelligence, and logistics operations.

A lofty thinker, Ed Marolda never loses sight of the big picture—namely winning the war. He uses facts and logic in a manner that makes his arguments easy to follow. His analyses lead a reader to understand how Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford negated the recommendations of Navy commanders. The result: Too much of the Seventh Fleet’s activity in Vietnam was reduced to a learning experience as a result of having to cope with unrealistic rules of engagement set by Johnson, his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and by the Nixon Administration, Marolda says. Too often, the end game was unproductive.

Although most Vietnam War Navy history books put aviation at the forefront of naval combat activities, this one also examines ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore encounters. In the final section, Marolda gets down in the trenches (or should I say “waves”?) by describing wartime actions of the sailors. He delivers messages that required entire books by other authors.

For example, I am a big fan of Thomas Cleaver’s The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club and Kenneth Jack’s Eyes of the Fleet Over Vietnam. But I readily admit that Marolda summarizes everything those books say about naval flying and intelligence activities in a couple of pages.

U.S.S. Canberra in action in the Tonkin Gulf

After writing about many naval victories and defeats, including horrendous fires on three aircraft carriers, Marolda describes the Seventh Fleet’s excellence during the war’s final offensive—Linebacker I and II.

Along with Navy aircraft bombing targets in North Vietnam, the Fleet’s cruisers and destroyers shelled targets along the entire coastline and mined the entrance to Haiphong harbor.

In 1972, the Fleet’s aircraft kill ratio soared to 13-to-1 against North Vietnamese MiGs.

Marolda completes his picture by explaining that after the Paris Peace Accords went into effect, two carriers remained on station for 28 months to attack North Vietnamese forces in Laos and Cambodia. And then came Mayaguez.

Adam Tooby complements Marolda’s writing with the usual Osprey array of dynamic graphics that includes three double-page paintings of classic military actions.

—Henry Zeybel

On Warriors’ Wings by David Napoliello

David Napoliello came close to knocking me out with the gravity of his history about U.S. Army helicopters named after Native American tribes and warrior chiefs. In On Warriors’ Wings: Army Vietnam War Helicopters and the Native Americans They Were Named to Honor (Global Collective/Casemate, 425 pp., $34.95) he brings eleven helicopter models front and center and decorates them with the accomplishments of the men who flew them in the Vietnam War and the histories of tribes and leaders for which they were named.

On Warriors’ Wings examines the creation and evolution of each helicopter according to the Army’s needs and production capabilities. It explains the specialized tasks of each aircraft in the Vietnam War before segueing into a history of the Native Americans related to them. Nine honored tribes and two paid tribute to chieftains.    

The book is a wonderment of research with its 37 pages of notes and 29 pages of bibliography. Napoliello supports his secondary sources with interviews with Army aviators who flew in Vietnam and with current-day members of Native American tribes. He also includes his own observations about helicopters in action.

Napoliello wraps his discussions of aircraft and people around stories about the helicopter crews and Indian namesakes that often take the reader back to the beginnings of America as a nation. His vivid history lessons resurrect tribal leaders. The attitudes of men from today and yesterday are rightfully overlaid with pride.    

David Napoliello In-Country

Napoliello devotes a section to obituaries of 19 Native Americans who died in helicopters in Vietnam and statistics on 237 others who perished in the war. Photographs of people and machines enhance the text.

David Napoliello’s credentials are lengthy and impressive. A Vietnam War veteran, he spent much of his military career in artillery units, including the 94^th Field Artillery and 108^th Field Artillery Group in Vietnam.

He served many subsequent overseas tours in Europe and the Middle East. His key assignment was as a Senior Military Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense. He retired as a colonel after serving 28 years in the U.S. Army.

On Warriors’ Wings definitely proves that Napoliello knows how to do homework.

—Henry Zeybel

The Brown Water War at 50 Edited by Thomas J. Cutler & Edward J. Marolda

Can this Massachusetts resident be objective when reviewing The Brown Water War at 50: A Retrospective on the Coastal and Riverine Conflict in Vietnam (Naval Institute Press, 272 pp., $34.95, hardcover; $19.22, paper) with a Foreword written by Tom Kelley, an acquaintance and the only living Massachusetts Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient? And with a back-cover blurb by The VVA Veteran’s Arts Editor Marc Leepson, who assigned this book to me and who edits my reviews, in which he says the book is “an achievement of the highest order?”

I’ll try.

This well-written and deeply researched history is comprised of twelve essays, each written by a different U.S. naval historian and each of which covers different aspects of naval involvement on the rivers, Delta, and coastlines of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It’s edited by Tom Cutler and Ed Marolda, the authors of the first two essays, both of whom are veterans of the Vietnam War and accomplished Vietnam War Navy historians. Marolda was the long-time Senior Historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command. Cutler is Chair of Professional Naval Literature at the U.S. Naval Institute and Distinguished Fleet Professor of Strategy and Policy with the Naval War College.

Their book’s essays cover an enormous range of naval involvement in depth. They include a general history of the U.S. Navy in the war, as well as histories of the River Patrol Force, the Mobile Riverine Force (the first joint Army-Navy operation since the Civil War), the Accelerated Turnover to the Vietnamese, the Operation SEALORDS, and the Helicopter Light Squadron, among others.  A glossary would have been helpful, but there are excellent photographs. 

There are also separate essays on the U.S. Marines, the South Vietnamese Navy and Marines, U.S. Navy medicine, the use of unmanned electronic sensors, Navy air support, and Chinese arms shipments and other Chinese support of Hanoi. The latter was written by a former Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldier who became an American historian and includes sources available for the first time. The essay concludes that North Vietnam could not have won the war without the support of China and the Soviet Union. 

Although the book is mainly factual history, there are a few amusing anecdotes. One writer was a psyops officer in the war and helped create well-thought-out propaganda leaflets to distribute by air around his province. He would go up in a Bird Dog scout aircraft and scatter the leaflets, some of which were destroyed by the plane’s propeller.

One day, he was at a village market and noticed that all the fish were wrapped in the leaflets he had thrown out of the plane. He subsequently learned that some locals would learn when he was going up to distribute leaflets and would venture out to collect them. They would then sell them to the fish merchants for wrappers. Perhaps that was their best use.

A SEAL team about to engage the VC from a Riverine Patrol Boat in Kien Hoa Province

The Americanized nicknames for local landmarks as seen from the air rang a bell with me.  One bend of a river was labeled “Snoopy’s Nose.” In my province, we called a distinctive double bend of the Snake River “Mickey’s Ears.” 

The authors are unanimous in their unqualified praise and respect for Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt, Jr., as an officer, as a tactician, and as a person. It is unusual to find such unanimity among historians about a single military figure.

This book is an achievement of the highest order and well worth reading.

–Harvey Weiner