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v. Conclusions

Two of these novels about the fall of Diem were published two or three years after the actual coup and the other one (Vaughn’s) nearly a decade later. The events of the coup and probably even its motivations had by this time been established, but the novels have been discussed here in this particular order, not according to dates of publication but to the respective “distances” of their fictional protagonists from Diem’s person and destiny. In this perspective, the distance proportionally decreases, although even in the first two novels discussed (Hempstone and Vaughn), close ups of Saigon’s palatial politics are given whenever Diem himself appears as a character. The details of the execution, which took place inside an armored military vehicle, and the final thoughts and reactions of the victims had to be imagined by the novelists. In every case, what Diem and Nhu were actually thinking and planning must be deduced from the results in the historical accounts. In these novels, however, they are given voices and personal motives, which account for the differences in these works of political and moral emphases.

It has been argued that the first and best of the novels discussed, Smith Hempstone’s A Tract of Time, is furthest from the events leading up to the coup in Saigon, although those events will come to determine what happens in the highlands of central Vietnam, where most of the action takes place. Coltart, the CIA operative who works with the mountain tribes, is caught in a conflict of allegiance between these indigenous people, whose confidence he has gained, and the representatives of his own government, who have their own priorities. He discovers to his sorrow that Diem’s government has, historically and culturally, little sympathy for its montagnard allies, and even less so in the confusion generated by the president’s imminent fall.

The second novel, Robert Vaughn’s The Valkyrie Mandate, views the coup from closer up, through the eyes of an US Army officer who is directly involved as the liaison between the US mission and the rebel Vietnamese generals. There is here another conflict of loyalties. Like the protagonist of Hempstone’s novel, the conflict between the protagonist’s position as an American officer and his devotion, in this case, to Vietnamese culture and its people, proves fatal. If Hempstone seems to be saying that it is impossible to be a man of honor and serve the South Vietnamese government, Vaughn is saying that it is impossible to serve the Vietnamese people by serving its government.

The third novel, Morris West’s The Ambassador, gets even closer to the central crisis of the time by putting the reader inside the mind of the American ambassador who is directly involved in the coup that ousted Diem, showing the political crisis with more complexity and greater moral nuance than the other examples and creating various characters based on actual participants. The main problem with West’s version as historical fiction is the misrepresentation of his historical models. It has been shown here how Amberley is far less complicit in the coup than Lodge was, but Cung’s statesmanship is also exaggerated if it is meant to represent Diem’s. The ambassador recognizes Cung’s achievements in reconstructing his country, including agricultural reforms, expanded commerce and industry, and increased news communications; what is not admitted are the fear of nationwide elections, the rigged referendum, the fact that the vaunted agrarian programs were perceived as “unmitigated disasters,”48 or that the massive influx of American aid that maintained South Vietnam did not prepare it to be an independent nation of industry and commerce.49

Nor can Cung’s achievements, modest as they are, outweigh his defects as a leader, all admitted by Amberley: he is an elitist, a Catholic who persecutes Buddhists in a largely Buddhist country, a president dependent on American aid but resentful of interference, a man who isolates himself from his people and delegates responsibility only to his family, and a politician singularly inept at handling crises. As for the prosecution of the war, the ambassador admits that “military operations were hampered by political considerations” (161): offensive operations did not take place because military commanders and provincial governors did not get along, and the president was more concerned with threats to his regime than fighting the Communists.

It is as if the insistence of all these authors to portray Diem as a flawed but well-intentioned leader was a means of upping the ante on the conspirators’ (and the ambassador’s) moral dilemma. In all three novels, Diem is represented as a sympathetic human being, even a strong leader, who has unfortunately clung to misguided political policies or undemocratic methods. By contrast, his ruthless and conniving brother Nhu becomes a sort of scapegoat for the regime. None of the novels voice any suspicion that Diem may have relegated the dirty work of his autocratic regime to his brother intentionally, that their collusion may have been their modus operandi, a union of divergent roles necessary for the project of sustaining their family in power.

In an interesting contrast to these fictional versions, important historical accounts of the war portray Diem as directly responsible for his own destruction and even cite a lack of personal qualities that partly explain his political failures. Stanley Karnow, for example, refers to Diem’s “inflexible pride” and his style of “ruling like an ancient emperor.”50 In a chapter devoted to Diem, Frances FitzGerald calls him “the sovereign of discord.”51 George C. Herring argues that Diem was an autocrat, who merely to please his American advisors “occasionally paid lip-service to democracy but in actual practice assumed actual powers.”52 Bernard Fall points out that Diem thought that political “compromise has no purpose and opposition of any kind must of necessity be subversive.”53 Robert D. Schulzinger notes Diem’s “inability to generate popularity in the countryside and his adamant refusal to delegate responsibility to anyone other than his brothers.”54 Finally, Marilyn B. Young sums up the relationship of the US government and the Diem regime in this way: “what the United States had labored mightily to produce was not a democratic, independent new nation-state but an autocratic ruling family held in place by a foreign power.55 Mutual dissatisfaction led inevitably to Diem’s fall.

1 Short, Anthony, The Origins of the Vietnam War (London: Longman; 1989) p. 263.

2 Bowman, John S. (ed.), The Vietnam War Day by Day (Hong Kong: Brompton Books Corporation, 1989), p. 14.

3 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 14.

4 Short, Origins of the Vietnam War, p. 193.

5 Short, Origins of the Vietnam War, p. 196.

6 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 16.

7 See Short, Origins of the Vietnam War, p. 203, for the confrontation with the sects, and p. 206, for the battle with the Binh Xuyen.

8 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p.16.

9 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 17.

10 Boettcher, Thomas, Vietnam—the Valor and the Sorrow (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1985), pp. 149-150.

11 Qtd. In Boettcher, Vietnam—the Valor and the Sorrow, pp. 407-408.

12 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 17.

13 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 18.

14 Short, Origins of the Vietnam War, p. 215.

15 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, pp. 18-19.

16 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day , p. 18.

17 Young, Marilyn B., The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (New York: Harper’s, 1991), p. 332.

18 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 18.

19 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, pp. 19-20.

20 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, pp. 20-21.

21 Herring, George C., America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975. Second Edition (New York: Knopf, 1986), p. 68.

22 Qtd. in Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 102. See Short, Origins of the Vietnam War, pp. 246-247, for the equally optimistic Taylor-Rostow report.

23 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 22.

24 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, pp. 22-23.

25 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 23.

26 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 24.

27 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 27.

28 Short, Origins of the Vietnam War, pp. 205-206.

29 Schulzinger, Robert D., A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 118-119.

30 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day, p. 27.

31 Schulzinger, A Time for War, p. 122.

32 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day p. 27-28.

33 Bowman, The Vietnam War Day by Day pp. 28-29.

34 Karnow, Stanley, Vietnam—A History (Rev. Ed., New York: Viking Penguin, 1991), p. 694.

35 Hempstone, Smith, A Tract of Time (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1966). Page references to this edition will be inserted within parentheses in the text.

36 Berman, David. M., “Montagnards,” in: Tucker, Spencer C. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War—A Political, Social, and Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 276.

37 Berman, “Montagards, p. 276.

38 Fitzgerald, Frances, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970), pp. 238-239.

39 Berman, “Montagnards,” p. 276.

40 Tucker, Encyclopedia, p. 435. According to Berman (in: Tucker, Encyclopedia, p. 277), the montagnards through a United Front Organization for Oppressed Peoples (FULRO is its French acronym) carried on open revolt against the government for years, which in turn became concerned about the montagnards’ military strength. FULRO even staged several uprisings at Special Forces camps in 1964, which resulted in the program being abandoned. The CIDG strike force then came under the control of the US Army patrolling the Laotian and Cambodian borders, but these developments came after those narrated in the novel.

41 Vaughn, Robert, The Valkyrie Mandate (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1974). Page numbers to this edition will be inserted within parentheses in the text.

42 Cf. Karnow’s summary of the coup in Vietnam—A History, p. 310.

43 West, Morris, The Ambassador (New York: Pocket Book edition, 1975). Page references to this edition will be inserted in parenthesis in the text.

44 Gettleman, Marvin, et al., Vietnam and America: A Documented History (New York: Grove Press, 1995), p. 227.

45 Gettleman, Vietnam and America, pp. 231-232.

46 Gettleman, The United States and Vietnam, pp. 235.

47 Schulzinger, A Time for War, p. 122.

48 Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake, p. 102.

49 Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 63.

50 Karnow, Vietnam—A History, p. 293.

51 Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake, pp. 72-137.

52 Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 64.

53 Fall, Bernard, The Two Vietnams: A Political and Military Analysis (New York; Praeger, 1967), p. 237.

54 Schulzinger, A Time for War, p. 94.

55 Young, The Vietnam Wars, p. 59.

Chapter Three

Advisors & Friendlies: Pro-War Novels

In some cases, the war story endorses

the values of the dominant ideology;

in other cases, it calls them into question

(Milton J. Bates)

i. Optimism in the early phases

A large number of American civilians attached to A.I.D. (Aid to International Development), the C. I. A. and other agencies involved in the war effort, as well as those engaged in construction, training, and other projects intended to advance the South Vietnamese cause, went to Vietnam in the early 1960s. These agencies and individuals generally operated independently of each other, working directly with the South Vietnamese.1 Although US military personnel were present in South Vietnam during this period, they did not constitute combat units, which would be sent over only in March 1965, and were therefore called “Advisors,” as their declared role was to give military advice and assistance to their Vietnamese “counterparts.” The most celebrated of these military specialists were members of the US Army’s Special Forces, whose “counter-insurgency” mission was to aid the indigenous South Vietnamese forces in carrying out their own military operations. According to the Pentagon Papers, President Kennedy’s decision to send the Special Forces to Vietnam was more important than his public statements. “Obviously, the President was sold on their going…and since the Vietnamese Special Forces were supported by the C.I.A., rather than the regular military aid program, it was possible to handle these troops covertly,” wrote the Pentagon analyst.2

In actual practice, many of these American advisors took part in the fighting even though there were restrictions on their participation, as can be seen in the frequent evasions of rules and the secret operations depicted in Robin Moore’s The Green Berets (1965), the most well-known of the many fictional works about military operations during these years. By 1969, there was an effort to reduce the number of advisors, which was said to be impeded by an “advisor cult” among the South Vietnamese: “To rate a U.S. advisor means status to a Vietnamese. To be Vietnamized out of your advisor is to lose much face,” as the American journalist, Peter R. Kahn, explained.3

Examples of fictional narratives whose subject is the work of American advisors in Vietnam will be examined in this and the following chapter. A common theme for all these novels is the nature of military leadership, with its responsibilities, trials, frequent frustrations, and occasional triumphs. Each of the protagonists in these novels comes to terms with the motivations for his own part in the war, with his relation to his superiors and his allies, and with the satisfactions and anxieties inherent in the exercise of command. The novels to be examined in the present chapter, written by Robin Moore (1965), Scott Stone (1966), Richard Newhafer (1966), Gene D. Moore (1967), James Crumley (1969) and Charles Larson (1969), all employ a similar range of characters: American advisors, officers and NCOs of the various branches of the armed services, who engage in war and intrigue in the service of the anti-Communist cause. In addition to their pro-war commitment, these novels tend to be inferior from a literary point of view, relying heavily on formulaic plots, stereotyped characters, and clichéd literary styles, and yet the influence of such works on the popular imagination should not be underestimated.

These six novels share several important assumptions: first, that the local war being fought in South Vietnam is really aimed at the perceived global threat of Communism; second, that the evil of Communism, whether as a doctrine or embodied in a political regime, is self-evident and need not be questioned; third, that the people in charge of how the war is being waged do not so much facilitate as interfere with the war effort (the single exception is Newhafer’s novel, in which higher-ups connive with perpetrators of unauthorized actions and actually seek to enlarge the war); and fourth, that despite staff impediment to effective action the war can still be won.

Two of the novels were written by journalists (Robin Moore and Scott Stone), both of whom make special claims to having access to the truth. As shown by the publication dates, most of these novels were written in the mid-1960s, shortly after the historical time period in Vietnam that they represent.4 Their optimism about the outcome of the war reflected official thinking in Washington about the possibilities for victory at a reasonably early date. By the same token, in one of the most recently published of these works, Charles Larson’s, the outlook is somewhat less enthusiastic. James Crumley’s novel, although published in the same year as Larson’s (1969), deals with the first group of Regular Army non-combatants to arrive in Vietnam, a communications detachment. His protagonist is therefore not an advisor but the NCO in charge of this detachment, which runs into trouble on its very first night. Crumley’s novel, however, offers no predictions about the eventual outcome of the war.

The protagonists of these six novels share a number of features. During the early period of the American war, the tendency was to assign officers and NCOs as individual commanders or as members of teams rather than as a part of the hierarchically organized units of the Regular Army. In their roles as advisors to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN), these characters are both convinced anti-Communists and competent professional soldiers who are deeply concerned with the men serving under them. One might say, in the rather sentimental perspective of these novels, that they are tough enough to kill but sensitive enough to care—a description that also fits Crumley’s protagonist even though he is not an advisor. As this sentimental formula might suggest, all these novels revolve around a certain concept of masculinity insofar as their protagonists are preoccupied with upholding an accepted standard and admiring its manifestations in other men, especially courage under fire: “there goes a man who is very much a man,” is how such admiration might be expressed.5 This assertion of masculinity unsurprisingly makes these men attractive to the women characters in the novels.

The protagonists also have good relations with their Vietnamese counterparts, the “Friendlies” (the exception here is Robin Moore, who reflects the usual hostility of the US military to the ARVN). The advisor-characters are represented by their authors as better men than their superior officers precisely because they avoid the pitfalls of the “ugly American” abroad: they sincerely like their military allies, whether South Vietnamese or montagnard tribesman, and they show it by taking the trouble to learn the language and familiarize themselves with the culture of the people they are trying to help. Such a positive attitude also reflects optimism toward the military objective of “saving” South Vietnam from Communism, and the cultural good-will generated seems to give them the right to love, and be loved by, a Vietnamese woman who is inevitably beautiful and usually of a higher social class—perhaps to distinguish her from the prostitutes with whom the ordinary G.I. consorted. These relationships reflect the fantasies of warriors who feel they are welcome and needed. Finally, it is declared or implied in these novels that despite occasional setbacks and certain structural and command difficulties, with men like these, victory against North Vietnamese “aggression” is probable.

ii. Robin Moore, The Green Berets (1965)

This most widely known work of fiction on Vietnam is not strictly speaking a novel, or even a continuous narrative, but a series of vignettes or short narratives in which author Moore becomes a character, playing the part of reporter-participant. The book’s acknowledgments reveal that it aimed at being an “authorized version” of the actions of the Special Forces. For his part, Moore cites a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Army’s Chief of Information office, a Major-General at Ft. Bragg’s Special Warfare Center, the Commanding Officer of US Special Forces in Vietnam, who he claims made it possible for him “to see the war at first hand all over the country,” the 7th Special Forces Group, with whose members he made a night parachute jump on training maneuvers, as well as other high-ranking officers—colonels and generals—in various capacities, all of whom he says were of assistance to him in the pursuit of telling the truth about the work of the Special Forces in Vietnam. It is therefore rather surprising, given all this aid and access to the higher command, to learn that the Pentagon found fault with the book, alleging sixteen security violations and allowing it to be published only with a yellow band on the cover that declared it a “fiction stranger than fact,” which is itself an unwittingly correct statement.6

Moore claims that his work is a “book of truth” based on his personal observation and experience. At the same time, he admits that he had to settle for the truth “in the form of fiction,” because events given in isolation “would fail to give the real meaning and background of the war in Vietnam.”7 As a result, on the first page he claims that “each story basically is representative of a different facet of Special Forces action in wars like the one in Vietnam,” a highly qualified statement that raises the question of the status of such representation: did the incidents narrated happen just as they are reported, or are they meant to be somehow “representative” of a number of incidents whose details may vary? And how does the phrase “wars like the one in Vietnam” relate to the actual war in Vietnam he claims to have observed at first hand? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Moore’s work is not only “presented as a work of fiction” (2) but is a work of fiction.

For the US Army, Moore’s authenticity as a serious observer had to be established by his willingness to undergo the rigorous training of the Special Forces (three week parachute training school and a three month course in guerrilla warfare) and he gives a blow-by-blow account of himself, a 37-year-old civilian, successfully going through these routines. He affects throughout the book the tone of the knowing insider, a kind of Old-Boy professional who is on friendly terms with military men of high rank and broad experience. He may well have gained their respect by making a point of always volunteering to go along on dangerous missions, but as a narrator he plays down what must have been considerably more resistance of old soldiers to a civilian writer playing at war. In his narration of individual episodes, moreover, he sometimes has to relinquish the pose of observer, as in an episode where he describes events where he was clearly not present (for example, an advisor’s intimate relations with a montagnard woman). In this episode, did the advisor simply tell him the story? If so, his claim as direct witness to the truth must be countered with an objection of hearsay.

The first section of the book provides a lot of information about the organization and special training of the US Army Special Forces, the elite group whose original training base was Fort Bragg, North Carolina. These units were known as “green berets” for the distinctive part of their uniform authorized by President Kennedy. The “green berets” was a term popularized by the press, the cinema and, not least of all, by Moore’s novel, but in their early days at Fort Bragg these troops were informally and collectively known as “Sneaky Pete” (later, they would be referred to derogatively by members of the Regular Army, who tended to resent their special status, as the “green beanies”).8 The First Special Forces Group, stationed in Okinawa, arrived in Vietnam in 1957. In response to the infiltration of men and arms from North Vietnam into the south, Kennedy, who took a particular interest in counter-insurgency warfare, sent 400 of these men there for covert operations in 1961.9 Thereafter, various Special Forces units were rotated to Vietnam from different bases, reaching their maximum strength of 3,500 men in 1968.10 In 1965, the Special Forces lost much of their autonomy when they came under the control of MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam), a circumstance that is lamented at several points in Moore’s work. The transfer of command resulted in these forces concentrating more on paramilitary operations (long-range reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and covert operations for the SOG-Studies and Observation Group) than on the “pacification programs” they had been engaged in previously.11

As Moore relates in his first section, the Special Forces were not organized into the conventional infantry units of companies, platoons, and squads, but into A and B teams: A is the operational team, consisting of a mixed group of specialists cross-trained in complementary skills, while B is the support team. The usual hierarchy of officers and enlisted men tends to be underplayed in such small, relatively independent units, but the ranks were distributed as follows: CO (commanding officer) was a captain, the XO (executive officer) a first lieutenant, and the team’s ranking NCO (non-commissioned officer) a master-sergeant, with the other team members also NCOs. The members of the A-team are each given specialized training, with one other member cross-trained in a similar specialty: intelligence, medical, communications, engineer-demolition, light and heavy weapons. Additional training in languages and hand-to-hand combat are given to the entire A-team, which is meant to serve as an autonomously functioning unit in the field.

Moore’s first combat episode, “A Green Beret—All the Way,” relates a field operation in 1964 and defense of an outpost. This episode will be discussed in more detail because it demonstrates the author’s attitude toward his subject and is a type of an event often related in war fiction. It begins with a potentially fatal conflict between field and headquarters commanders that the author believes, or has been told, is at the heart of the difficulties that the Special Forces face. Lt. Colonel Train, the CO of the area’s Special Forces Headquarters Detachment, thinks that Captain Steve Kornie, an aggressively effective A-team leader, is “too damned independent and unorthodox” (18) in his field operations, a belief that strikes Moore as strange, given the Special Forces’ explicit mission of waging unconventional warfare. Train resists sending Moore to Kornie’s camp in Phan Chau because he thinks he could be “greased” (killed), but Kornie’s reputation makes Moore all the more keen to go.

A 44-year-old Finn who fought against the invading Soviets in World War II and later joined the German Army to continue fighting Russians (i.e. US Allies), Kornie joined the US Army in the 1950s to attain American citizenship. According to his legend, the burly Finn was asked to join the Special Forces after a bar brawl in which he took on several members of the 10th Special Forces in Germany. As he had also once killed a spy in a fight (allegedly with a single punch) and was unable to document his claim that he had spent three years at a military college in Finland, it was unlikely that he would be promoted to field-grade rank, (major, colonel) and so remained a captain, but he was considered valuable for his extensive combat experience. Kornie evidently enjoys his job: “fighting, especially unorthodox warfare was what he lived for” (23). His career, therefore, illustrates the inherent conflict between the conventional Army and its invariably mistrusted elite units.

Nevertheless, this relentlessly cheerful war-lover becomes the hero of Moore’s tale of Phan Chau, only three miles from the Cambodian border. Kornie is angry at being deprived through “politics” of his best fighters, two companies of Hoa Hao fighters that were transferred because an ARVN general feared that too many of them together might “pull another coup” against General Khanh (who replaced General Minh, the leader of the coup that toppled Diem, and who is currently running South Vietnam). Another potentially dangerous factor is the presence in the area of the so-called KKK, Cambodian bandits whom Kornie often uses in his operations, which involve illegally crossing the border to get to the Vietcong, who launch hit-and-run attacks and then scurry back across the border refuge. Kornie also has fifty Cambodian soldiers, “good boys,” at his disposal, who are keen on fighting.

The plan is based on Kornie’s knowledge of a large VC camp ten miles into Cambodia from which the VC are expected to launch their next attack. Kornie intends to attack their smaller camp at Chau Lu, which is just inside the border, a staging area. The “Cambodes” will take up a blocking position to ambush any VC running from Kornie’s attack toward the larger camp inland. The loss of many men will presumably make the VC less secure about using their border as a sanctuary, which Kornie sees as a perverse restriction imposed by politicians to hinder him from effectively killing more VC. His illegal violation of border restrictions is to be disguised by the use of “fall guys,” the KKK bandits whom he hires as reconnaissance on the Cambodian side of the border but who are not told of the intended attack. Kornie is not particularly concerned about giving weapons to such men because he assumes that few of them will return alive. His attack, with two companies of Vietnamese strikers, will be designed to drive the VC into the KKK and his XO officer’s previously positioned group of Cambodes, who “will cut both the KKK and the VC to pieces” (31).

The plan is well executed and Kornie is delighted by his success, but he knows that paying off the surviving KKK will be tricky, because they are likely to be dangerously angry at the deception and the ambush, not to mention the loss of their members. He asks with malicious innocence their evil-looking leader if they are not friends of the Americans and the Vietnamese, after having instructed his men to keep their weapons at the ready. Out of the original band of fifty men, the KKK have lost twenty. Kornie offers the leader a cash bonus for each man killed, and he gets receipts of payment and photos of the leader accepting the money so that he can later blame these mercenaries for the illegal operation. The Cambodes are also happy with the operation, displaying bloody ears as proof of success.