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Title: The Village by Francis J. West, James R. Schlesinger ISBN: 0-299-10234-3 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: May, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Gripping. Action-packed. Top-five book on the Vietnam War.
Comment:
This book tells the story of a village and the marines and militia who defended it during the Vietnam War. It is filled with first hand accounts of fast paced fire-fights and battalion-sized battles. The action is riveting, and the story is endearing and heart-wrenching. A squad of marines and platoon of PF militia men fight night-after-night against local guerillas, and at times, VC main force battalions. The Americans become members of the village, eat in families' homes, play with their children, attend weddings, funerals, and holiday festivities. Their emotional ties hearten them, motivate them, and ultimately betray them.
The book was written by Francis J. West, a marine officer and RAND Corporation researcher sent to the village in the late 1960's to study its marine defenders. The marine squad -- seldom numbering more than a dozen -- was known throughout the Marine Corps. It encountered communist units more often than any other unit in the Corps; its members often fought twenty to thirty engagements a month, more than most U.S. battalions.
I've recommended this book to several men in the military, including my brother, a captian in the 10th SF group. All of them, in turn, recommended it to their friends, commanders, and subordinates.
"The Village" is as good as "Bravo Two Zero," "A Bright Shining Lie," and "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young." You won't put this book down until you're finished, and then, you'll read it again and again and give copies to your friends for Christmas.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Classic Study Relevant to Modern Challenges
Comment: Anyone interested in understanding the challenges of security in Iraq and Afghanistan would do well to read Bing West's "The Village." This is the classic study of small unit anti-guerrilla activity in Vietnam.
The Marines had a model of intervention built around their justly famous Small Wars Manual (originally written with considerable help from the Army based on its Philippines experience from 1898-1913). Where General Westmoreland and the senior Army favored large units sweeping across areas and hunting for large Vietcong forces, the Marines had developed a small unit action program, which was uniquely effective.
"The Village" is about one squad of Marines in Binh Nghia village (actually a collection of villages numbering about 6,000 people.) As Bing West notes, "This is the story of fifteen Marines who lived and fought for two years inside a Vietnamese village. There was shooting almost every night: from across the river a seasoned Viet Cong battalion attacked repeatedly. In the village, the South Vietnamese farmers planted rice during the day and after dusk patrolled with the Marines....at the height of the Vietnam War a dozen U.S. Marines did live in the village and were generally accepted by 6,000 Vietnamese farmers."
West was sent by the Marine Corps to study this process in 1966. He writes, this is "what war is like when you fight guerrillas, and of how Americans behaved when they volunteered to fight among the people. It was a bloody and intensely personal war." West went back to the village in 2002 and has a new closing chapter on the memories of Americans that remain despite a generation of Communist dictatorship.
This book is a useful introduction to policing in third world settings and establishing security through small-unit, intensely local efforts that build knowledge of the community and a network of personal relationships.
Anyone interested in better understanding how to win societal wars at the tactical level will find this a helpful book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Well written
Comment: Explains the "other" war...what has been documented to have been the only program that actually ever worked during the Vietnam War.
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Title: The March Up : Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division by Ray L. Smith, Bing West ISBN: 055380376X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Pepperdogs: A Novel by Bing West ISBN: 0743235894 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 24 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Hill Fights : The First Battle of Khe Sanh by Edward F. Murphy ISBN: 0891418105 Publisher: Presidio Press Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq by Karl Zinsmeister ISBN: 0312326637 Publisher: Truman Talley Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Hill 488 by Ray Hildreth ISBN: 0743466438 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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