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Title: Street Without Joy by Bernard B. Fall ISBN: 0-8117-1700-3 Publisher: Stackpole Books Pub. Date: March, 1994 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A cynical, serious look at a rotten war!
Comment: The late Bernard Fall presents a hard-hitting, cynical history of the French period in Vietnam in the 10 years just after WW2 and an even more critical look at the early U.S. efforts in the early 1960s. This is not light reading and its not pretty.It will give an accurate description of what the "West" faced over there. As any Vietnam Vet would attest, there is nothing "light" or "pretty" about that place and cynical is the only appropriate attitude. It's so obvious now how Ho Chi Minh and General Giap were successful."If only we knew then..." Mr. Fall also does a first rate job in compressing the conflict into less than 400 pages (including notes and appendices). He didn't have to recount every battle to paint his picture. This reader appreciates his account of Viet Cong convoy attacks -from only one first hand experience- they put cook, clerk and grunt alike in equal, sudden and random danger. Its ironic that the author met his sudden death in just that way. Serious students of the French years in Vietnam should read "Street Without Joy" first and then proceed to "Hell In a Very Small Place", which concentrates on the tragic but heroic struggle of the French Army at the garrison at Dien Bien Phu. Were he still with us,I'm sure M. Fall was one of those guys it would be great to hava a few beers with. What stories he could tell! I'd love to know more about the two prostitutes who were commended for bravery and proposed for medals! What would Westy say about that!
Rating: 5
Summary: "Those Who Do Not Remember The Past. . ."
Comment: In this first hand account of the French war in Vietnam, Dr. Bernard Fall provides a critical analysis of French combat operations in a war that lasted from 1946 to 1954. Over 94,500 gallant, French soldiers died in this vain, yet valiant attempt to contain communism in Southeast Asia. What could and should we have learned from this tragedy?
Lessons learned included the folly of employing heavy, road-bound, mechanized/armored forces that were highly vulnerable to Viet-Cong (VC) ambushes, effective use of the jungle as a sanctuary by the VC, underestimating the stamina of the VC, and the ultimate war-weariness that caused the French public to rebel at fighting a seemingly endless conflict for no tangible gain. Add to this, the close coordination of political and military objectives that caused the Viet-Cong to sacrifice people, places and things to achieve a single objective: A Vietnam united under Communism. Does this sound familiar? This book, published in 1961, was readily available in the U.S. If it was read, it was ignored.
Fall gives detailed accounts of communist tactics and the results that accrued to French commanders who refused to recognize the fact that, "the (tactics) book," they had been schooled under simply did not apply in Vietnam. Amazingly, the U.S. then deployed our troops to Vietnam, with our own officers schooled by the same, "book!" Gallantry, esprit-de-corp, machismo, and/or faith in a righteous cause were no more effective against well-laid ambushes in the '60s and '70s than they were in the '40s and '50s. The lessons of history were there for the reading. Why we refused to heed them is a mystery that still calls for an answer.
Street Without Joy is not a left-wing condemnation of western "imperialism," or, the evils of "intervention." Fall neither condemns nor condones the goal of containing communism. He merely analyzes reasons for the French defeat. There was no precedent for fighting a "revolutionary war," prior to the French experience. The same could not be said for the U.S. If the French defeat was borne of ignorance; America's came seemingly from arrogance.
George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it." There are two lessons to be learned here: First, tactical schemes should be derived from the terrain and situation, not from blind adherence to, "the book." Books can be altered. Terrain, climate, and enemy forces cannot. Second, never again should U.S. troops be compelled to walk any, "street without joy," that is combat, without conducting a thorough review of the mistakes made by our predecessors. Reinventing the wheel is not only inefficient; in war, it is deadly! Ninety-four thousand, five hundred eighty-one crosses scattered throughout Indo-china, each bearing the name of a French soldier testifies to the truth of lesson one. Over 50,000 American names on, "The Wall," silently attest to the second.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting in retrospect, of course but not a lively read!
Comment: I can't shower this book with effusive praise as reviewers below have done because I don't believe that this is a particularly captivating read. Yes, Mr. Fall was prescient in the sense that he saw the ultimate futility of a colonial-style war waged against an indigenous population and yes Mr. Fall correctly predicted that USA would be as unsuccessful cowing the Vietminh as the French had been BUT....and this is a huge butt: He did so only by taking a huge stab in the dark; multiple stabs actually as he had a number of different and differing reasons for the inevitability of a French/USA defeat in that theatre. Among them were: inadequate resources thrown into the fight, non-traditional war theatre, a unifying ideology, a near-by haven state(s), a lack of will by the West to pursue a larger war (i.e. to fight Red China and the USSR if necessary). In other words, all of the stuff that all of the rest of us trot out as plausible reasons for the implausible defeat of the world's most powerful nation by a bunch of pajama-wearing, rice farmers. No searing insight here, then. In fact, Mr. Fall tellingly fails to even address the most obvious linked questions, or even to pose them: What is it about the Vietminh political ideology causes it to prevail? What is it about opposing Vietnamese government politics' causes them to fail? Also, Mr. Fall predicates his argument about the safe-haven as victory facilitater upon a model in Algeria-Tunisia that fails the smell test. Are we really to believe that France lost Algeria because Tunisia allowed some revolutionaries to shelter there? Is this good history? I can't speak to the veracity of this line of argument but I must say that reading it in Mr. Fall's book was the first that I'd heard of such a thing. To bolster his 'gotta get tough' argument he cites Israel's response to the Fedeyeen (yup, the Fedeyeen) in 1956 as a successful use of realpolitik muscle to permanently kill a problem. Meanwhile, forty years later Israel is still fighting the same battle only with different players who, ironically, share the same ideology, and as in Vietnam, Israel wouldn't even be able to do so if the USA weren't annually pumping billions and billions of dollars into the economy to ensure that state's viability. All of this aside, I could live with Mr. Fall's premises if only he were a gifted story teller. While the chap does an adequate job of turning French military battle reports into understandable accounts for the lay reader, he does it without the spark of life that causes historical events to come alive for the reader. Furthermore, it is difficult to parse just what it is that Mr. Fall is attempting in this book. For, this is not a comprehensive history of the conflict; neither is it a warfare manual such as might be studied in a War College; it is not a reminiscence, nor is it a journal; 'tis not a polemic nor a paean. Actually, I can't characterize it as anything but moderately interesting footnote commentary about the nastiness that occurred in Vietnam in the late 1950's and which promised to become nastier for the Americans in the 1960's. I really can't recommend this to anyone but the most dyed in the wool Vietnam War voyeurs, such as myself. To others, suffice it to say that this book is about the stuff that happened to the Americans in the Vietnam war only it happened earlier to the French instead.
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Title: Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard B. Fall ISBN: 030681157X Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Last Reflections on a War: Bernard B. Fall's Last Comments on Vietnam by Bernard B. Fall, Don Oberdorfer ISBN: 0811709043 Publisher: Stackpole Books Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Battle of Dienbienphu by Jules Roy, Ralph Wetterhahn, Neil Sheehan ISBN: 0786709588 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 09 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow ISBN: 0140265473 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan ISBN: 0679724141 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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