Vietnam

Review: Tucker’s Last Stand

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Cover image of "Tucker's Last Stand" by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Tucker’s Last Stand (Blackford Oakes, 9), William F. Buckley, Jr. MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (ASIN: B0116EBXKY) 2015 (first published in 1990).

Summary: Blackford Oakes teams up with mercenary Tucker Montana to block troops and arms flowing from North to South Vietnam.

The story opens early in 1964 in the jungles of Laos. Blackford Oakes has teamed up with soldier-of-fortune Tucker Montana to explore the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Ostensibly at this time, the conflict in South Vietnam is a “civil war” between government and rebel forces. But North Vietnam has been supplying men and material with plans to move 20,000 men over the Trail every month. These two men have to figure out a way to stop it, and extricate themselves before they are caught and killed, which they barely do.

Montana thinks he knows a way to stop the flow of men and material. In addition to surviving against incredible odds, he has a knack for designing devices that work. He believes he can create sensors at key chokepoints to alert when the North Vietnamese are on the Trail. Eventually, Montana and Oakes will work separately on two supply routes–Tucker on the Trail, Oakes on shipping in the Gulf of Tonkin. Both report to Rufus, their control agent.

Their authority actually comes from much higher, from directives from President Johnson, given on a naked swim in his pool. These two men are caught up in the larger events leading to the later massive escalation of the war. In 1964, blocking the North Vietnamese efforts also play into electoral politics between hawkish Barry Goldwater and Johnson, for whom Vietnam represents the derailing of his Great Society. But he doesn’t want to be the president who “lost Vietnam.”

There is a kind of ticking time bomb in Montana. He was at Los Alamos, and in this version, designed the trigger to actuate the atomic bomb. Not only that, he was on the crew of the Enola Gay. Seeing the destruction, he leaves the Army, and nearly goes crazy, taking refuge in a monastery, before returning to military pursuits, concealing his Los Alamos work. That time bomb is coupled with a healthy sex drive. And he finds a girlfriend in Saigon who turns out to be a spy. The classic honey trap.

Meanwhile, Oakes is up to his own hi-jinks. He’s equipping junks with radar and metal detection equipment. But more than that, he’s part of an effort to go inside North Vietnam;s definition of international waters. Buckley portrays it as a plot worked out at the highest levels, including Johnson friend Abe Fortas. The idea is to trigger an “incident” in the Gulf of Tonkin giving Johnson casus belli to pursue an expanded war.

Both men walk tightropes with their conscience. Do you keep your head down and obey orders? Or must one think of the larger ramifications of what one is doing? In Montana’s case, the girlfriend plays on the hovering cloud of an expanded conflict that could lead to nuclear war, raising the old phantoms for Montana. Oakes faces a situation that is more subtle. He suspects, and Rufus confirms the espionage going on with the girlfriend. But Montana is at a critical point in completing the project and going operational. They don’t want to derail him.

It all comes down to how Montana navigates the pulls of love and duty and conscience. And can Oakes protect both the operation and his friend?

Part of what makes this so interesting is the fusion of history and fictional plot. And even in the fiction, we begin to get a sense of how futile the cleverest U.S. efforts will be to stop a determined enemy. Buckley manages fiction at once instructive and diverting.

Review: The Women

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Cover image of "The Women" by Kristin Hannah

The Women, Kristin Hannah. St Martin’s Press (ISBN: 9781250178633), 2024.

Summary: A historical fiction account of the experiences of women nurses who served in Vietnam war combat areas and what it was like to come home.

Frankie McGrath grew up in a strict Catholic household where military service was honored on a “wall of heroes” in the family library. So when her brother Finley enlisted as a Navy helicopter pilot, she decided to follow him in one of the few ways women could, by becoming a nurse. After completing nurses training, she enlisted in the Army, where she could go to Vietnam right away, ill-prepared as she was, leaving her parents in shock. The only “heroes” were men.

But she wouldn’t follow her brother. She would take the place of one who died in a helicopter crash in which no remains could be recovered. And soon she would discover that this was only the tip of the iceberg. She arrives at mildewed quarters amid a mass casualty event. She sees mangled bodies of young men and blood thick on the floors. Nurses Barb and Ethel, who become steadfast friends, walk her through it. A skilled surgeon, Jamie, teaches her step by step how to close wounds and perform procedures to save lives nurses would not ordinarily perform. She not only becomes good, she discovers a calling. Some men live because of what she does. She comforts many in their dying moments.

She re-ups when her friends go home to help the younger nurses. But something is wrong. The war is escalating and young men rushed into service come in droves to her evac. One day, napalm victims come to the hospital and she holds a napalm burned child as it dies. She watches Jamie, wounded severely under attack take off in a helicopter and a medic stopping CPR.. She falls in love with a helicopter pilot, Rye, who she learns died just before he was due to come home.

The second part of the book is about what happened after her tour ended and she returned home. People curse and spit on her when she arrives at the airport. Her parents don’t want to hear about her experiences. They want life to go on as if she hadn’t been in Vietnam. She learns they had given out the story that she was studying abroad in Florence. She’s not a hero to them. Rather, they are ashamed of her.

Then the nightmares begin. She has flashbacks when she hears a loud noise at a party. She can’t keep nursing jobs. Drink and drugs help her self-anesthetize. Frankie seeks help at the VA and is told women didn’t serve or see combat in Vietnam. She cannot find help. Something is broken inside, but she doesn’t understand what. She tries to pull herself together, with the help of Barb and Ethel, only to lose it all when a triggering event sends her spiraling out of control

We watch her self-destruct, despite the people, including her parents, who try to care for her. We wonder as we read if she will get the help she needs to pull out of the death spiral she is in.

Kristen Hannah captures a story too-seldom told. It took nearly twenty years to unveil The Vietnam Women’s Memorial in 1993. It depicts a combat nurse caring for a wounded soldier.

Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Washington, D.C. Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

I have a friend, a former colleague, who was a nurse in Vietnam. She has never talked about her experiences in the war or coming home. I wonder if they were anything like this book. Kristin Hannah helps me understand why she may have remained quiet. She also helps me understand the debt we owe to all the women who served. I grieve the painful things they saw and the horrible ways many were treated when they returned. I grieve hearing “no women served in Vietnam” when 265,000 did in military and civilian roles. Thanks to Kristin Hannah’s fine account that affirms that “they were heroes, too.”

Review: Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties

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Cover of Remembering America, by Richard N. Goodwin

Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties, Richard N. Goodwin. HarperCollins (ISBN: 9780060972417) 1995.

Summary: A personal history of the 1960’s, written by an adviser to President’s Kennedy and Johnson.

Richard N. Goodwin was an adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and to the 1968 campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy. This personal history/memoir offers his insider perspective to some of the most important events of the 1960’s from the hopes of the Great Society to the tragedy of Vietnam and the retreat from a vision of what America could be.

Goodwin begins with his studies at Harvard law and his clerkship with Justice Felix Frankfurter. We see a young man with a promising legal future drawn to politics, beginning with the quiz show investigations of the late 50’s, giving him his first connections with the Kennedys, leading to becoming a speechwriter for Kennedy as he ran for president.

He was awarded with an appointment as Deputy-Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. He describes the development of the Alliance For Progress, including his contribution to its naming, and the tremendous hope it raised for America’s relationship with Central and South American countries. A conference of leaders ends with an off-the-record meeting with Che Guevara, who asks him to convey his thanks for the Bay of Pigs debacle and for how it solidified Castro’s support in the country. He narrates the growing engagement with civil rights and social programs, tragically cut short in Dallas.

He describes being recruited from a backwater job with the Peace Corps to be a speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson and his work on some of Johnson’s most famous speeches on voting rights and the Great Society, and the exhilaration of Johnson’s breathtaking vision and political savvy in enacting legislation. And then Vietnam and the dawning realization that it could not be won, that the dream of the Great Society was going down the drain, and his own judgement that Johnson was becoming increasingly unstable, leading to his decision to leave his position for a series of academic jobs and writing gigs, while becoming more vocal in his own opposition to the war.

He chronicles Bobby Kennedy’s indecision about entering the 1968 race, and his own to join the McCarthy campaign because McCarthy was the only one campaigning on his opposition to the war. He takes us inside the army of youth who were “clean for Gene” in New Hampshire, achieving a near victory in New Hampshire and beating Johnson in Wisconsin, leading to Johnson’s withdrawal from the race. Then Kennedy jumped in, and because of the longstanding friendship, Goodwin joined the campaign, which rapidly gained steam until that fateful night of his victory in the California primary, that ended on a hotel hallway floor.

Goodwin captures the sense of these years, at least for a “brief shining moment,” that America could realize its dreams of liberty and justice for all, a society where all would flourish and poverty be banished, and that America could lift other nations as she lifted herself. He also captures a growing sadness that pervades the latter part of the book as that dream vanishes.

Richard N. Goodwin was the late husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of my favorite historians. Her new An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s is on my “to read” list, as it appears to weave together this story, that of her husband, and the treasure trove of documents from these years, a story only partially rendered in Remembering America–one they reflected upon together in his last years.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Petty Officer, 2nd Class Bruce Arthur Manton

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Picture of Bruce Arthur Manton

I grew up in Youngstown watching the Vietnam War on the evening news. Meanwhile, young men from Youngstown were serving, fighting and dying in Vietnam. The war was unpopular, and sadly, we took it out on the returning soldiers, who, living or dead, did not always receive the honor they deserve. Each year, on Memorial Day, I remember one of those who died, representing the sixty-four from Youngstown who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Until May of 1967, North Vietnamese troops used the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the countries as a sanctuary and staging area for attacks into the South, assuming they would be safe for attack. That changed on May 18 when Marines, along with South Vietnamese troops were sent in to clear the DMZ of North Vietnamese troops in what was called “Operation Hickory.” They succeeded in heavy fighting with the largest death toll up to this point in the war, 337 Americans killed.

One of those Americans was Bruce Arthur Manton, of Youngstown. He was a Navy hospital corpsman, Petty Officer 2nd Class assigned to the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division and they were engaged in combat in Quang Tri Province. He was fatally wounded on May 20, 1967 while treating wounded servicemen during “Operation Hickory.”

Bruce Arthur Manton was born November 22, 1945 in Berea, Ohio. He and his family moved to Youngstown around 1960 when his father, a Methodist pastor became pastor of Belmont Methodist Church. He graduated from The Rayen School where he he sang in the boys octet and chorus. He was active in his church and a district officer of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan University but interrupted his studies after his sophomore year to enlist in the Navy in May 1965.

After basic training at Great Lakes, he went to Bethesda Naval Hospital, and then on to Camp LeJeune for further training as a hospital corpsman. He arrived in Vietnam in August of 1966.

Petty Officer Manton was awarded the National Defense, Vietnam Service, and Vietnam Campaign medals as well as being awarded the Purple Heart posthumously. His name appears on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall on Panel 20E Line 63. He gave his life saving the lives of others.

Rayen classmate Harry Kidd, who suggested this article, wrote this about Bruce Manton on the Wall of Faces:

FRIEND, CLASSMATE AND FELLOW NAVY VETERAN

Bruce and I attended the same high school – The Rayen School, Class of 1963. He and I separately both joined the Navy and are Vietnam Vets. I was lucky enough to come home. Bruce was remembered his fellow classmates at our class reunions.

Who do you remember this Memorial Day?

WE REMEMBER.

Other servicemen remembered in this series:

Lance Corporal Charles F. Azara, Jr.

SP4 Robert Thomas Callan

SP4 Patrick Michael Hagerty

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Lance Corporal Charles F. Azara, Jr.

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Lance Corporal Charles F. Azara, Jr. (USMC)

I grew up in Youngstown watching the Vietnam War on the evening news. Meanwhile, young men from Youngstown were serving, fighting and dying in Vietnam. The war was unpopular, and sadly, we took it out on the returning soldiers, who, living or dead, did not always receive the honor they deserve. Each year, on Memorial Day, I remember one of those who died, representing the sixty-four from Youngstown who made the ultimate sacrifice.

This year I focus on Lance Corporal Charles F. Azara, Jr. He served with H(otel) Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine
Regiment, 3rd Marine Division.

Charles F. Azara, Jr. was born to Charles F. Azara and Rose Adams Azara Ranno on September 8, 1942. He graduated from North High School in 1960, where he played football and was a member of the school band. After graduation, he worked for Strouss-Hirshberg, Simco Shoe, and then the Edward J. Debartolo Construction Company.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps in November of 1965 at the Cleveland recruiting office. After bootcamp, he was deployed in Vietnam at the end of May 1966. On August 24, 1966, he was on combat patrol in the mountains approximately 14 km north northwest of the An Hoa Airfield, a Marine Corps Combat Base in Quang Nam Province. At about 1100 hours local time, his patrol came under small arms fire and he received a gunshot wound to the neck from which he died before medevac could arrive, approximately at 1200 hours. He died less than a month before his 24th birthday.

Funeral services were held on Saturday September 3 at the Immaculate Conception Church followed by interment at Calvary Cemetery, where he lies at rest.

He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense, Vietnam Service, and Vietnam Campaign medals. He served with honor, dying in action. His name appears on the Vietnam War Memorial on Panel 10E, Line 32. I honor and remember him, and all who died in service to our country.

WE REMEMBER.

Other servicemen remembered in this series:

SP4 Robert Thomas Callan

SP4 Patrick Michael Hagerty

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — SP4 Robert Thomas Callan

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Image source: The Wall of Faces, “Rob in Vietnam,” photographer unknown.

Memorial Day is America’s day to remember those who died in service to their country. Last year, I began what I hope will become a tradition, of remembering one of the many who paid “the last full measure” from the Mahoning Valley. In my post from last year, one of the comments remembered Robert Thomas Callan. I thought I would see what I could find and tell a bit of his story.

Robert was born on February 12, 1950, the son of Thomas and Anne Christoff Callan. He and his family were members of St. Dominic’s Church. His sister Nancy described him as “a quality person, so kind and generous and courteous and polite.” Elsewhere, his three sisters wrote: “In life, Bobby taught us to laugh, to ride a bike, to play football and how to open Christmas gifts before Christmas without anyone knowing we already saw our gifts.”  He was a Cardinal Mooney graduate. After high school he worked at the Republic Rubber Division of Aeroquip for a year before he was drafted by the Selective Service.

He began his tour of duty in Vietnam on April 14, 1970.  He held the rank of Specialist Four and was an Aircraft Maintenance Crewman attached to the 101st Airborne Division, 101st Aviation Battalion, C Company. He hoped to begin a carpentry apprenticeship after completing his tour of duty.

After returning from a leave to Hawaii on December 10, his helicopter crew was on a mission on December 16, 1970 when it came under hostile fire in Thua Thien Province in what was then South Vietnam. He was posted as a door gunner at the time, a vulnerable position. He died of wounds in the subsequent crash of the helicopter, his body being recovered and returned to Youngstown for burial. He lies at rest in Calvary Cemetery.

He was honored in death, being awarded the Purple Heart, Air Medal, National Defense, Vietnam Service, and Vietnam Campaign Medals. His name appears on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Panel W6, Line 124. Robert Thomas Callan served with honor and died in that service. He is one of many from the Mahoning Valley who has done so. He, and they are worth honor this Memorial Day.

Who do you remember for their faithful service to country this Memorial Day?

We remember.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Nothing Is Impossible

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Nothing is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam, Ted Osius, Foreword John Kerry. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Summary: A memoir by former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius, describing how a former enemy became one of America’s strongest international partners, and the important role diplomacy played to bring that about.

The story begins with a conversation between two Vietnam veterans on a flight to Kuwait. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam for six years was sitting with John Kerry, a swift boat captain, highly decorated for his actions in an ambush and later reviled for his testimony questioning America’s war aims. Senators from two different parties began talking about getting accounting of POW/MIA servicemen and the restoration of relations with Vietnam that would facilitate that accounting. Their collaboration led to the passage of a measure re-establishing formal relations during the Clinton administration.

That was just the beginning of rebuilding the trust between these two countries shattered by war. This memoir by former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius, gives an account of the diplomatic work that has led to Vietnam now being a strong international partner of the United States, resulting in the recovery of remains of many of those missing in action, cleanup of dioxin sites, honoring of the dead who fought with the U.S. as well as establishing vital trade, defense, and environmental collaboration..

Ted Osius was working in the State Department when the mission was established in Vietnam that preceded full diplomatic relations, working with charge’ d’affaires Desaix Anderson as a junior political officer. His work involved establishing everything from military exchanges to assisting Americans in Vietnam when they needed help. He learned the language of Vietnam, and as a cycling enthusiast, toured the country on bicycle, a practice he continued as ambassador, for the access it gave him to ordinary people. His friendship with John Kerry began when they toured part of the country on bikes. When Pete Peterson, a former POW, became ambassador, he told the team: “You’ll get it right 98 percent of the time. As for the other 2 percent, I’ll eat it!” He urged them to take risks and build a new relationship with Vietnam.

A big part of his work, and a theme running through his efforts, was working with the Vietnamese to establish U.S. and global trade relationships. This involved delicate and ongoing negotiations about labor conditions (a major breakthrough came with reforms at a Nike factory) and human rights. They also began the effort to addressing POW/MIA accounting, and for the Vietnamese, the cleanup of dioxin sites, dioxin a chemical used to clear brush that caused numerous birth defects and other health problems. Another theme was developing a collaboration to counter China’s growing regional influence.

Later, in the Bush administration, he served as a science officer, helping with environmental issues on the Mekong River, with disease prevention (including SARS, which led to Vietnam’s strong public health response to COVID-19). His return to the U.S. brought him in contact with other U.S diplomats who were gay including his husband Clayton Bond. When the ambassador role to Vietnam came open in 2012, around the time of the Obama administration’s shift on marriage equality, it became a serious option to pursue the appointment to Vietnam, the country he had come to love. It took until 2014 but he was appointed.

The latter part of the book describes his bicycle diplomacy and the trust that was built through respecting Vietnamese cultural traditions including releasing carp on the Day of the Kitchen Gods. He worked with the country and U.S. experts in clearing unexploded ordinance from the war and on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One of the major efforts was to negotiate with Vietnam’s leadership for TPP membership, which would open up the country to global trade. He helped arrange a visit of the party secretary to Washington, and an eventual visit of President Obama to Vietnam, as well as a visit of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He participated in the establishment of a Fulbright University in Vietnam. And he was able to find a way to renovate the Bien Hoa Cemetery, where many South Vietnamese soldiers were bury in a neglected burial ground, an important desire of Vietnamese-American ex-pats, but politically sensitive.

He stayed into the early Trump administration, when his advice differed from administration priorities, resulting in a sudden replacement. Shortly afterwards, Osius retired from the State Department.

The memoir is an education in the work of an effective ambassador, both representing American policy with due diligence, supporting American business interests and caring for American citizens in country while building respect and trust in the host country. Osius’s willingness to learn the language, cycle the country, honor cultural practices and places, and listen carefully to high officials led to working on military, economic, environmental, and human rights issues. Vietnam became an important partner as both the U.S. and Vietnam faced a growing Chinese presence in the South China Sea. Osius learned and respected the David and Goliath history of Vietnam, that included its defeat of the U.S. in conflict. He learned that we get farther honoring David than reprising Goliath.

Vietnam still honors human rights in the breach but Osius could point to progress. The government is Communist, a single party dominating the government. But during the twenty-year period the book covers, one sees how two former adversaries could develop amicable relations while remaining different. They could work on common interests and try to persuade the other where they differ, while benefiting the people of both countries. That is diplomatic work at its best. Would that it were so everywhere!

____________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book via Edelweiss from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Spec. 4 Patrick Michael Hagerty

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Life magazine, on June 27, 1969, ran a feature story titled  “The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” The article ran ten pages and simply featured face after face, 242 in all, of Americans who died “in connection with the conflict in Vietnam” in one week. One of those faces was listed as “Patrick M. Hagerty, 19, Army, SP4, Youngstown, Ohio.” He was a field wireman and the picture in Life shows him on a pole, with safety belt and protective gloves, doing his work.

I came across the Life article searching for a story of one of those from Youngstown who died in Vietnam to remember on Memorial Day, the day this country sets aside to remember those who died in uniform in service to our country. According to the Virtual Wall, he is one of sixty-four from Youngstown who died in Vietnam.

Patrick Michael Hagerty was born on July 27, 1949 to Mr. and Mrs. Harold Hagerty who lived on N. Garland Avenue. He was a member of Immaculate Conception Church and attended East High School. He enlisted in the Army in September of 1966. He began his tour of duty in Vietnam on August 11, 1968 as a field wireman. He was attached to the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry, B Company.

On May 31, 1969 his unit was about 10 kilometers south of Kontum City, located in the central highlands of what was then South Vietnam, not too far from the borders of Laos and Cambodia. During a hostile action, he suffered multiple fragmentation wounds (wounds resulting from the fragments of an explosive device) which he did not survive.

He was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously. The Purple Heart is awarded for “Being wounded or killed in any action against an enemy of the United States or as a result of an act of any such enemy or opposing armed forces” Sadly, Spec. 4 Patrick Michael Hagerty, qualified. His name is engraved on the Vietnam War Memorial Panel W23 Line 27. At the Virtual Wall entry for PVT Patrick Michael Hagerty, you can see a virtual rubbing of his name on the memorial.

[After posting this article Patrick’s nephew pointed me to this comment about Patrick which may be found at The Wall of Faces under his name, possibly written by his Platoon Sergeant]:

I’ve tried to track down all of our Platoon, Patrick, and to post some small note of Remembrance…

You’re one of the last for me, although I visited you once again down in DC last month, for Veterans Day. I remember that you were assigned to my Platoon from another outfit, and that you were VERY ‘short’, possibly within two weeks of going back to The World. I recall that I asked if you wanted to become an RTO for awhile, and perhaps ‘coast’ a little, until we could get you sent back to the Rear…

You wanted no part of that, Patrick, and you took your assignment as part of Bravo’s flank security during our movement… When the contact ensued, you were in the middle of it all…

Everyone who reads this should know what a brave young man you were, Patrick, and a damned fine soldier as well.

See you soon,
Murph

He was 19 when he died. He enlisted and so chose to answer his country’s call. He represents both what is noble and tragic in war. His is only one of sixty-four Youngstown stories of those who died in Vietnam, and one of many more from Youngstown who died in America’s wars. Each one is worth remembering. I chose this Memorial Day weekend to remember Spec. 4 Patrick Michael Hagerty. Who do you remember?

We remember.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Finding the Dragon Lady

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Finding the Dragon Lady, Monique Brinson Demery. New York: Public Affair, 2013.

Summary: A biography of Madame Nhu, part of the ruling family in Vietnam (1954-1963) based on the author’s personal interactions with Madame Nhu before her death, allowing her to obtain memoirs and a diary of her life.

She grew up in a distinguished Vietnamese family in Hanoi under the French, receiving the typical French education, with the expectation of being married off into another distinguished family. At nineteen Tran Le Xuan married Ngo Dinh Nhu, in the middle of World War 2 as the Vichy French enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Japanese. At the end of the war, the French assumption that they could resume control of the colony was upset by nationalist forces under Ho Chi Min and the Viet Minh. Madame Nhu engages in a harrowing flight with her children, only reunited with her husband later. They take refuge in the mountain retreat of Dalat while war goes on between France and the Viet Minh. The French lose a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu, resulting in a division of the country into north and south with Madame Nhu’s brother-in-law Ngo Dinh Diem heading the government with her husband as his right hand man.

At first it seems the model family, buttressed by Diem’s austere integrity. Madame Nhu raises children and leads efforts to help women while the men run the country. Increasingly as dissatisfaction arises and Communist insurgency by the Viet Cong grows, Madame Nhu asserts herself increasingly at points where the two men waver, sometimes courageously against opposition. She becomes known as the Dragon Lady, not to be crossed. When Buddhists use self-immolation to protest government restrictions on their religious freedom, she tells those threatening to go ahead and she would bring the matches. Her efforts to strengthen the government lead to the disaffection of the people, and confounds the US Kennedy administration, now committed to the success of the Republic of South Vietnam. Increasingly the conviction is that the Diem government must go, and the Kennedys and ambassador Lodge conspire for a coup to bring down the government, succeeding at the end of October 1963 when Nhu and Diem both are killed. Madame Nhu, touring the US to drum up support for the government escapes death to live in exile for the rest of her life.

One may find much of this in any history. The unusual element of this book is Monique Brinson Demery’s narrative of her attempts, beginning in 2005, to connect with Madame Nhu to hear her side of the story. After numerous efforts received no response, she got a call one day laying down strict conditions. Then more calls in which Madame Nhu tested her to see if she could be trusted. There were invitations to meet. Madame Nhu never showed up. Meanwhile the author obtained a diary in Madame Nhu’s hand from a serviceman, filling in more of her personal narrative and leading to more questions. Madame Nhu dangled a manuscript of a memoir in front of her in exchange for more favors and more strict conditions. Finally she obtains it, a manuscript in very unfinished form that she must publish as is.

In 2011 Madame Nhu died. The author didn’t publish the manuscript but instead this book of her search for and interactions with Madame Nhu, interleaved with a biography of her life, informed by research and the new materials in Madame Nhu’s hand she received. What emerges is a portrait of a woman in an unhappy marriage longing for so much more who eventually finds it in the cause of the Diem government. We see a mother who loves her children, who acts with courage, but also with ruthlessness, and who pushes the boundaries of what women could do in her society. One also has the sense of a family increasingly isolated from the aspirations of the people, confounding American support, and yet also the first step into the developing American tragedy that was Vietnam. Like Iraq, they were eliminated with no replacement in sight, resulting in a series of weak governments, a growing American involvement propping up that government and the fall of the south to the Communists in 1975.

Demery offers a concise retelling of this tragic history through Madame Nhu’s eyes while remaining objective and able to see her faults, faults that contributed to her family’s downfall and the unraveling of the country. Even in her old age, in her interactions with Demery, we see a woman who uses manipulation to try to tell her story her way, against the grain of reality. She tells the story of a woman alone, fighting to the end to validate her life as meaningful.

Review: The Quiet American

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the quiet american

The Quiet American, Graham Greene. New York: Open Road Media, 2018 (originally published in 1955).

Summary: A novel set in French-occupied Vietnam paralleling the entangled lives of a British journalist and American agent with the entanglement of war in Vietnam.

Thomas Fowler, a British correspondent in French occupied Vietnam in the early 1950’s, arrives at home one night to find Phuong waiting outside. She reports that American  Alden Pyle has not returned home. She has been living with Pyle, supposedly with an American Economic Mission. Before living with Pyle, she had lived with Fowler. She stays the night, and they learn the next morning that Pyle is dead when they are summoned for questioning by the French Sureté.

Graham Greene then narrates the strange conflicted relationship of these two men who love one woman, and the equally entangled and conflicted relationships of all those who get involved in Vietnam. Fowler wants to believe that he is the uninvolved British journalist, whose country is not a party to the conflict. He has a wife at home from whom he is separated but who will not divorce him. Phuong meets his needs and prepares his opium pipes and she benefits materially from his attention but he can offer nothing more, although holding out the hope of a divorce. Pyle, who loves her at first sight, is unattached and due to come into money becomes a rival, candidly telling Fowler his intentions, and yet strangely taking to Fowler as his best friend, He saves Fowler’s life at one point when they are stranded in enemy territory, and steals Phuong.

Fowler gradually learns that Pyle isn’t all that he seems. He discovers that Pyle is doing something with plastics, that turn out to be plastic explosives, being used to undermine the regime in Saigon. He is actually a CIA agent. Fowler is curious, but remains detached until a bombing of a square intended to break up a parade that is cancelled kills and maims scores of innocents, an act with the fingerprints of Pyle all over it. He faces hard choices of what to do with his knowledge of this “quiet American,” his rival in love, yet one in some ways to whom he is beholden.

Fowler has tried to avoid entangling involvements. A conversation with a French pilot who napalmed villages describes the folly of such an attempt, in both love, and in the Vietnam conflict. When Fowler protests, “That’s why I won’t be involved.” the French pilot replies:

” ‘It’s not a matter of reason or justice. We all get involved in a moment of emotion and then we cannot get out. War and Love–they have always been compared.’ He looked sadly across the dormitory to where the métisse sprawled in her great temporary peace. He said, ‘I would not have it otherwise. There is a girl who was involved by her parents–what is her future when this port falls. France is only half her home…’ “

Greene’s tale was prescient, published in 1955, of the troubling future that would face, first the French, and then the Americans, already present, in Vietnam. Fowler discovered that he, too, was involved with Phuong, with Pyle, and that Vietnam was a far more complicated mistress than any understood. He evades his editors requests to return to London. Love and War has claimed him, as it would many others.

Sadly, this was an instance of prophecy ignored, and it could be argued that there have been others since. We are still in Iraq, and Afghanistan, unable to extricate ourselves from commitments made in “moments of emotion.”  The Quiet American is a cautionary tale as relevant in our times as it was in the mid-1950’s. Hopefully, we will not proceed as heedlessly now as we did then.