This post is being published on the 29th April 2025, the day before the fiftieth anniversary of the surrender of South Vietnam and the ending of the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese by the way refer to it as the American war. The choice of this book amongst several that I have on the conflict was pretty well certain as over half the book consists of photojournalism and the balance a series of essays detailing in chronological order what led up to the war and the first ten years of the fighting. Even though Greene was a British journalist the book was first published in 1965 in America, with still eight more years of American involvement and beyond that two years of the slow push down the country by the North until they finally prevailed. That this book was written roughly half way through the war would have horrified its author who, at least partly, hoped that exposing just what was going on might have hurried the end. My copy is the 1967 British paperback edition by Penguin Books.
By going back to the French Indochina colonies pre WWII and taking the story of how America came to be fighting there the twenty two essays that make up the second half of the book largely follow a historical progression. So how did America get into this mess? Well it turns out that when the French were kicked out by the invading Japanese during WWII they were determined to regain control of their colonies just as the Vietnamese, along with the populations of Cambodia and Laos for that matter, saw an opportunity to gain independence at the end of the war. There was a short lived declaration of independence for all of Vietnam but the French did re-invade in 1946, however they needed American assistance, which was forthcoming as part of the anti-communist sentiment in American politics through the 1950’s and this led to them supporting the extremely unpopular puppet president Diem with ever increasing military power initially in the guise of ‘advisers’ and ‘trainers’. The French eventually gave up and left leaving the Americans, who by then were financing roughly three quarters of the military push and supplying arms despite the Geneva accords of 1954 which said that foreign forces should not be in Vietnam and there should be elections within two years leading to reunification of Vietnam. America and France, despite being signatories to these agreements had no intention of allowing them to happen.
And so we ended up with America fighting the Vietnamese under the guise of preventing North Vietnam gaining control of the south but in fact the National Liberation Front, known outside of the country as the Vietcong, set up in 1960 was entirely composed of people from the south who wanted the foreign forces out of their country and the weapons they used were almost entirely from deserters from the American backed Vietnamese troops.
I have been selective in which photos to use from the book as a lot of them are far more shocking than the example of American torture shown above and include the famous picture of the monk, Thich Quang Duc, sitting and burning in the road as he set fire to himself in protest at the ongoing conflict in June 1963. In truth the photographs are far more telling than the essays, especially when juxtaposed with quotes which clearly don’t match the images such as the destroyed houses below.
There are clearly books that look back on the war with the benefit of hindsight which I could have reviewed but I was drawn to this work written during the middle of the conflict. It may not be the most dispassionate summary of what was going on but Greene was trying to make sense of what he witnessed whilst reporting and for that it is a fascinating book.
I travelled the length of Vietnam in 2007-8 and was lucky to have three very different guides which could provide alternate viewpoints. Starting in the south the guide was an older gentleman who had lived through the defeat of the south a a civilian and could talk about the pulling out of the American forces and the advance of the troops from the north leading to the surrender. In central Vietnam our guide was an ex Vietcong fighter who still walked with a limp from a war injury sustained in Hue, whilst the north was explained by a man in his early twenties who had never known anything other than a unified country. I doubt it is possible to have such an interesting selection of guides nowadays fifty years on from the end of the conflict and I’m glad I went when I did.
Ramblings on my bookshelves 