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Worth a Second Look ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army. By Robert K. Brigham. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. ISBN 0-7006-1433-8. Photographs. Tables. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 178. #29.95.
The unwary purchaser might expect a volume entitled ARVW to provide a general treatment. Instead this is, explains the preface, a "social history" that is "primarily concerned with the soldier's experience outside battle" and "not the story of men and maneuvers during the Vietnam war, or even the story of the ARVN in battle."
What follows virtually defines a "slim" work. In five chapters comprising only 136 pages of text, plus six pages of mostly very dark photographs, the author treats selected aspects of the topic-conscription, training, morale, battles, and families. This does not inhibit the publisher from charging #29.95 for the volume, but renders laughable a blurb calling the work "comprehensive."
This approach leaves no room for the heroic performance of ARVN during the 1968 Tet Offensive and after, for its increasing effectiveness as it is finally given modern weaponry equivalent to that fielded by the enemy, for its successful replacement of withdrawing American forces, or for the beneficial integration of expanded and upgraded territorial forces. Nor does it acknowledge that it was only after the Americans-the American Congress, to be specific-withdrew financial and logistical support that South Vietnam succumbed to an enemy still robustly supported by its communist backers.
The author repeatedly criticizes the ARVN for having "grown dependent on U.S. aid," but fails to acknowledge that North Vietnam was likewise totally dependent on outside support from communist sponsors for its military viability. This one-sided approach permeates the work, as does heavy concentration on the early years of the war, the years when ARVN was shunted aside by the U.S. command and largely ignored.
In the chapter on battles, for...