Memories of the Vietnam war
M. KESAVA MENON
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It captures the varied aspects of the epic struggle against imperialism
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VIETNAM — The definitive Oral History, Told From All Sides: Christian G. Appy; The Random House, 20, Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2 SA. £ 19.99
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of works of non-fiction have been written about the Vietnam War. This epic struggle against imperialism has also generated much literature and cinema, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. With so much already available in print and on celluloid, can there be any space for yet another book on the subject? Christian Appy's work — "Vietnam, the definitive oral history, told from all sides" — answers that question most definitively.
This book is a reviewer's delight because it takes him right into the subject, throwing enough light, even when not fully illuminating the shadows to which his attention is drawn. The task of reviewing it is, however, challenging because it captures the Vietnam experience in its varied aspects. In quite a few instances, people who were touched by the war in different ways reveal secrets they have not spoken of before. The victims, soldiers, commanders, and political leaders who were directly involved obviously have their say. But so do those who were at the opposite end of the spectrum — the dissenters, the war-protesters, draft dodgers as well as the super-patriots, many of whom still hate those they perceive as "traitors."
War-torn society
Where the book falls short, in the opinion of this reviewer, is in attempting a comprehensive account of the ways in which the war affected the Vietnamese as a whole. Quite early in the book, Mr. Appy does bring home the point that Vietnamese society was an extremely family-centred one. So much so that in chapter after chapter mention is made of the amazing truth that families forced to evacuate villages in "free-fire zones" would return within days because they wanted to be close to the places where their ancestors were laid to rest. To what extent was such a society torn apart by a war that often pitted brother against brother and lasted over a decade?
Hints are thrown here and there but the book betrays a maddeningly self-indulgent attempt to show that the Vietnamese have forgiven their foreign enemies. This urge appears to be all too common among American writers on the subject and it seems to be born out of a belief that their country is essentially a force for good, although it did once inflict a horrendous war and did fight the war in horrible ways. In other words, to them the War still remains an American story and what it did to the Vietnamese has yet to move out of the periphery.
Damage
What explains this shortcoming? The author might not have been able to move about and interview people as freely as he would have liked after the Communists reunified Vietnam. But there are millions of refugees in the United States itself. Surely they could have shed light on the damage an Asiatic society suffered when the institutions at the core of its being, the extended families, are pushed to the brink of destruction. The book just does not provide enough insight into whether or not, and if `yes' how, the Vietnamese who remained in the country were able to put the war behind them. In this context, the chapters on the re-education camps seem like a cheap-shot — as if the author were saying, "we, Americans, committed a grave sin in Vietnam but at least give us credit for standing up to a brutal political movement."
The Vietnamese interviewed in post-liberation Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City — the winners that is — do present themselves largely in sepia imagery rather than with the vibrancy as most Americans do. In their words, the veterans of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Armies do often appear stilted as if they were reciting passages that properly belong in school textbooks. But Indians born in the first couple of decades after independence can readily recognise these voices. It is almost exactly the same as listening to old freedom fighters narrating their brushes with the British — the memories of the brutalities inflicted on them and the terror they felt steadily fading even as the heroism of their resistance gets continuously burnished. While reading some of these passages, this reviewer truly understood the meaning of the slogan of the late 1960s and early 1970s — "Amar naam, tomar naam, Vietnam, Vietnam."
Reflection
The significance of this book goes beyond the examination of various aspects of the events that occurred over three decades ago. It reflects, in an anticipatory way, processes that are under way in the present. David Halberstam, leader of the pack of American journalists who did so much to expose the mismanagement of that war brought out in his book, The Best and Brightest, the arrogance mixed with ignorance that led the stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to try and transform a distant and ancient civilisation against the wishes of the indigenous people. It is a wonder that a country such as the U.S. with its myriad think-tanks and proven academic excellence could have committed in 2003 the same blunder it made in the 1960's. Ignorance and arrogance were displayed in abundance when George W. Bush despatched his army to Iraq to the cheers of an American public that once again were fooled into the belief that their President had set out to kill a dragon.
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