A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath

" A Viet Cong Memoir" is an intriguing historical account of the "other side" of the Vietnam War. Mr. Truong was a member of the National Liberation Front, as opposed to an actual military guerilla. The media always referred to the NLF as "the political arm of the Viet Cong". That always struck me as a dark, typical Vietnam type mystery. With "VCM", the NLF has a human face to go with the mystery. Right from the outset, any Vietnam vet as myself must take a story told by a VC with several grains of salt! Mr. Troung is beyond a doubt engaging in a bit of revisionist history, painting the indigenous (Southern) Vietnamese NLF in a fairer light than the more taciturn, hard core Communist Northern invaders. (...) A decent awareness of the conflict is needed to fully appreciate the book. With all these constraints aside, "VCM" rates as 5 star history. This should be required reading for serious students of the War, almost on a par with Bernard Fall's epic "Street Without Joy". The reasons are many: Troung is an excellent writer, both at once engagingly formal yet abidingly down to earth. Well educated, well connected and intelligent, he was involved with the NLF from the early 1950s-the French era of the War. The reader senses Troung's commitment to Ho Chi Minh's cause right from the time he meets "Uncle Ho" as a student in Paris. I believe that he believed in Ho's aphorisms- "liberty sweet liberty", "victory great victory", etc. Since Troung was not a jungle guerilla, the military side of the conflict is not emphasized here. Four major aspects of the War are mentioned; these are the book's strengths. 1) The reader will understand how the nation of South Vietnam ran and eventually disintegrated. The author paints a grim picture of a string of venal, petty and authoritative Saigon regimes. Troung came from an upper class Southern family and was well placed to report accurately.He even does time in a dank Saigon prison. Typical for Vietnam, his wife springs him with a bribe! 2) For a foreigner, the author had an excellent (!) grasp of the American political scene. The Vietnamese must have seen the U.S. letting the War slip away long before we did. 3) "VCM" is the only place I have read a fair, balanced and nuanced version of the back room deals at the 5-year debacle known as "The Paris Peace Talks". There was actually an ebb and flow, a system of sorts. Did Henry Kissinger blink? Was he outfoxed? Or, as the author seems to suggest, were he and Nixon just out of maneuvering room? 4) Critically, Troung takes pains to paint the South Vietnam oriented NLF as a kinder, gentler "third way" between the real bad guys (the Saigon regimes and their American cronies) and the hard core Marxists from Hanoi. The NLF wanted to set up a quasi-independent government in Saigon that would allow for the obvious differences between the 2 Vietnams. The infighting was intense and the "good guys", if that's what they really were, got stiffed good and hard. I chose to t

I read this book when it was first published and have used it as a reference as both a student and teacher of the Vietnam Conflict for many years. Before having traveled to Vietnam, this was one of the first sources I'd encountered that put a human face on a former enemy that other texts and media reports had failed to provide. The text gives the reader an excellent view of one man's perspective in the National Liberation Front and shows its readers an outlook rarely seen from an American political sentiment. Of particular interest to me were the author's personal accounts of espionage during the war and the physical and emotional affect American fire power had on the Vietnamese combatants.

It would seem that some of the negative reviews here result from the reviewer's preconceived notions about the War not meshing with the history presented in this book. But it is precisely the way in which this book challenges our notions about the war that makes the text so great. For example, the author illustrates how much of the ideology that fueled the fight against the French and the Americans came from the French ideals of nationalism and liberty. Communism was seen as a convenient vehicle but not provide much in the ideology department. The author also presents an image of the VC as being somewhat less than the fearless idealists that are presented in much Western media. Some Americans feel compelled to see them as pure and fearless in order to justify our loss to them. But the author describes many instances where the VC avoided engagement with the enemy or lost bodily control during attacks.Another unexpected revelation was that, at the highest levels, the Vietnamese leadership seriously questioned the country's falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. What was the point, they asked, of fighting off one neo-colonialist just to replace it with another? This is the first book (or article, for that matter) to dispel so many of the fundamental myths that have held about the war.In following the story line and characters, it certainly helps to be familiar with the major players in both the North and South. But even without that basis of knowledge, this is an excellent book that tells a gripping tale while questioning our assumptions about the topic. In addition to seriously challenging our "conventional wisdom" regarding the war, the book is full of the kind of subterfuge, close calls with security forces, late night police visits, narrow escapes and suspense that you could find in many of toady's spy novels. But in this case, it is all true.

America's defeat in the Vietnam war was to me a bitter experience. And although I am not given to 'enthusiasms', I believe that the author and his translators have produced a remarkably significant book. The author is a man of intelligence, strength, sensitivity and integrity and he provides insights at many levels. Thru his eyes we see the importance of personal and family connections in Vietnamese society. We witness Ho Chi Minh's magnetic personality and galvanizing importance. We see how difficult it is for left humanist liberals to keep their ideals when they side with communists and, by implication, how hard it is for anti-communists to distinguish left liberals from communists. We see how for many patriotic South Vietnamese, southern nationalist feeling found no outlet with the Western allies and got channeled to the communist side. We are given an insider account of how highly placed individuals such as the author and his friends worked to undermine resistance to the Vietcong and subvert institutions from within. There is a harrowing account of the author's time in prison, his torture and isolation. The book has many photographs of sincere and intelligent people who worked so hard for communist victory. We learn about political organizing, front groups that co-opt the non-communist opposition, transport along the Ho Chi Minh trail, the layout of jungle headquarters, and instructions on how to make a campfire with no smoke. The terror and destructiveness of B-52 raids is made clear as is the usefulness of the Vietcong's early warning network and their evasion tactics. And that's just in the first part of the book. The writing has a casual, easy to read quality. The reader can take away a variety of 'lessons' depending on the opinions and convictions he brings to the book. But the author's honesty and understated directness will have a big impact.

A have read more than a few books on Vietnam (both the country and the war) and I would have to say that this is the most engaging. Unlike so many other books on the subject, it is not an academic exercise or attempt at justification. It is a personal account from a man who was a prime motivator in the NLF, but was not Communist. As such, he has a refeshing objectivity that is not too clouded by his first-hand knowledge of the events. This combination of objectivity and first hand knowledge is a rare find.The objectivity, however, is not perfect and there is at least one point with which the author seems unable to come to grips -- He readily criticizes US administrations for "overestimating" the control Hanoi had over the NLF/VC/PRG. But in the end it seems that the US estimation of that control was closer to the truth than his own assessments were.