The Village

This is a great Vietnam War book, chronicling the action of a combined unit (part Marine, part Vietnamese). It's very well-written, making you feel like you're in the middle of the small fort they operated from. I won't go into details - read the book! One of the better war books I've read.

I found parts of this book very interesting but think the coverage of the actual events did not go into enough detail a lot of the time. I felt that parts of the book covered the action in almost a dry after action reporting type of writing but it also had some very interesting accounts included too. In all a good enough read but lacking the "I was there in the mud and here are the events from my first hand account" kind of story.

This book should be required reading for anyone who is interested in the topic of insurgency and counter-insurgency. The story is starkly at odds with the usual images of Vietnam that Americans have come to accept as the narrative of that conflict -- there are no airstrikes pummelling the enemy into submission, no leaping helicopter air assaults deep into the middle of nowhere on search and destroy missions, no recreational drug use by bewildered draftees and no rock and roll sound track. There is, instead, the story of a small unit of United States Marines who combined with Vietnamese militia to form a Combined Action Platoon. The CAP concept was not of mobile forces overpowering the enemy with American technology and firepower. It was more of an armed constabulary -- forty, fifty men garrisoning a contested village. There was absolutely nothing high tech abouth the CAP or its techniques; the tactics and techniques were timeless: meet the people, treat them with respect, help them when you can, earn their trust, and ensure their safety. This impossibly simple approach very quickly drained away the protective cover of the Viet Cong, exposing them to the death of a thousand cuts as villagers began to provide actionable intelligence to the American and Vietnamese members of the CAP. In reading this book one has to wonder how Vietnam might have turned out had this approach -- and the similar tactics of the Army Special Forces -- been given more support. There was strong opposition to such ideas among the conventionalist leadership within the Pentagon -- too much risk (and, to be fair, the CAP was a vulnerable target, as West's book reveals), too slow a pay off, etc. The worst part, perhaps, is that resistance to ideas like the CAP program was seen as a rejection of dangerous and innovative ideas in favor of the "traditional" American way of war, which for the proponents of such meant World War 2 -- and betrayed an utter ignorance of 90% of the country's military history when ideas like the CAP program were aptly on display in places like Haiti and Nicaragua, etc. Anyone interested in understanding the current US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and getting beyond the simplistic "it's just another Vietnam" trope -- would be well advised to read this book. It is certain that most of the officers and NCOs leading the troops in combat have done so.

This book was recommended to me by a vet well before I found it. It is an non-fiction account of the experiences of one squad of Marines working in the "win their hearts and minds" program. The depictions of the bonds that are formed between the Marines and the Vietnamese villagers is reassuring and fresh. The book tells a very emotional tale of Marines dedicated to their cause and country. It is well written and illustrates some idiosyncrasies of trying to get things done in a military bureaucracy.

This is a wonderful book. It tells the story of 15 marines assignedto defend a hamlet, working with about the same number of Popular Forcemilitiamen. Of that original band, 7 are killed in the first half ofthe book, most of them in a single firefight when their "fort" isover-run. (The PFs suffer losses at roughly the same rate.) But they love the work, get along fine with the villagers, and exact aneven higher toll on the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units sentagainst them.Bing West is a gifted writer. Here he is, describing a marine with a fifty-caliber machine gun: "The drunken soldier was set now, having leaned his body over therear of the gun and swung the heavy barrel upward. It wavered aroundthe fort and then slowly swung out toward the paddies, like a compassneedle coming to rest. Then came the solid, belting jackhammer soundof the weapon firing and the thick incendiary slugs, big as cigars,burned out over the paddies."He also knows what he's writing about: West was a platoon leaderin Vietnam; he visited the village often, and he led some of the patrols he describes, though mostly the book is based on interviewswith the men of the combined-action squad.Later, West was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reaganadministration. He wrote the superlative account of the 2003 IraqWar, "The March Up", which is what led meto this book. I'm glad I had the chance to discover it, and Irecommend it without reservation. -- Dan Ford

"This is the story of a handful of Americans and Vietnamese who lived and fought together in a Vietnamese village. It is not a political book or a critique of national policy.... /// The story is not typical of military operations in Vietnam. Less than one percent of American forces there were employed in the [combined] fashion described in this book. Nor was the combat typical. Throughout Vietnam, one out of four hundred night patrols in the populated areas made contact; in this village, it was one out of every two." (p. xv) (Captain F. J. West, USMCR; from the preface to The Village) /// The Combined Action Program was an unconventional approach to pacification conceived by the Marine Corps and unique to the Vietnam War. Marine infantry squads (10-14 men) integrated with local militia units ("Popular Forces" or PFs) at the village and hamlet level in South Vietnam. Theoretically, the employment of the Marines in this fashion would increase the effectiveness of the PFs and gain the confidence of the Vietnamese by demonstrating a long-term commitment to their security. III Marine Amphibious Force first experimented with combined action in 1965. The experiment yielded positive results. Thus, the Combined Action Program was formally established and centered on the combined action platoon (CAP)-the Program's basic tactical unit. By 1970, more than 1,700 Marines, 100 Navy corpsmen and 3,000 PFs formed 113 CAPs in 102 villages throughout I Corps. This book tells the story of one such CAP stationed in the village of Binh Nghia. /// Binh Nghia was located in a highly contested area south of Chu Lai in Quang Ngai Province. Prior to the arrival of the Marines in 1966, the Viet Cong owned Binh Nghia-controlling five of the village's seven hamlets. The VC garrisoned one of their main force battalions on the far shore of the village's neighboring tidal river and used the waterway to transport their rice and supplies. Seventeen months after the arrival of the Marines, however, the Viet Cong were gone-largely due to the success of the Binh Nghia CAP. /// Four noncommissioned officers rotated command of the Marine garrison in Binh Nghia: Corporal Beebe, Sergeant Sullivan, Sergeant White, and Sergeant McGowan. West cites a key event during the tenure of each Marine as a turning point in the book. Corporal Beebe's rotation home in June 1966 coincided with the deaths of Private First Class Page, the first Marine death in Binh Nghia; Ap Thanh Lam, the village's highly regarded police chief; and Khoi, the younger of two PF brothers serving with the Marines. West asserts that the intended Viet Cong message never reached the Marines: "The Viet Cong had a problem....The villagers and the PFs who knew the history of Binh Nghia could clearly see the power of the Viet Cong manifested in the deaths of Khoi, Page, and Lam. /// Not so the Marines.... not knowing [Binh Nghia's history], they did not view the events as a prelude to the fu

This was one of the first books ever written about the Vietnam War (I have the paperback reprinted in the mid-80's), and it should be viewed as an incredible piece of history. It is about a small group of Marines living, defending, and perishing in a Vietnamese village. So many books written on the War have tainted baggage, either pro- or con- on the War, but West has put together an amazing account of what transipred, and leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. So many people seem to be consumed with "what really happened over there"- I think The Village should be on the list of 3 or 4 books that captures the truth. Plus, the incredible fighting scenes and ultimate ending for the Marines is very dramatic, whether West had intended it to be or not. This should be required reading in college history classes; for the writing, the historiography, and the essence of what happened in Vietnam.