Derailed in Uncle Ho's Victory Garden [Paperback]

Tim Page (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1999

Follows Page's odyssey - 20 years after the liberation of Vietnam - through the land that dominated his life as a war photographer. His job used to be to record the horror, now he can tell of the country's supreme beauty, and mourn the agony of the killing fields.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684860244
• ISBN-13: 978-0684860244
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,119,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Moving Memoir of the Indochinese Conflicts, September 1, 2004

By 

Matthew P. Arsenault (SW Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Derailed in Uncle Ho's Victory Garden Pb (Touchstone) (Paperback)

Many years ago I saw Tim Page's stunning photographs in his seminal work, Nam. The pictures were extremely moving and that Page shot his film so close to the horror's of war was remarkable. He truly has a gift for the camera and a thirst for adrenaline.

Although Page is markedly better with a lense than a pen, Victory Garden does provide valuable insight into South East Asia and the wars that plagued this beautiful region.

Page's book begins with his time spent with Sean Flynn and other corresopondents covering the Second Indochina War. He combines sorrow and the horror of war with an almost guilty desire to return to those intense, adrenaline-packed days. He seems to truly relish the comaraderie forged in blood and fear, then polished with adventrue and laughs.

Although Page had been wounded a number of times, he continued to travel Vietnam, on motorbikes, helicopters and whatever other forms of transport would land him at the center of war. Still, Page is not immune to the stresses and fears of his chosen profession. In a very human passage, Page recalls his final exhaustion of nerves caused by too many close falling bombs and the crack of bullets passing by his ears. He talks of best friend Sean Flynn snapping him from his mini-breakdown and leaving Vietnam for a brief respite. However, it wasn't long until Page found himself drawn back into Nam. This was to be his last stint covering the Second Indochina War.

While leaping from a helicopter, a land mine was detonated a short distance from him, essentially destroying his body with shrapnel. Although losing nearly 200cc of brain matter, Page survived, and after a prolonged convalescence, made a full recovery.

The remainder of the book deals with Page's return to Indochina during the 1980's, partly for journalistic reasons, but also to investigate the mysterious disapperance of friend Sean Flynn.

While Page was recovering from the landmine explosion, Flynn continued to cover the war.

With the conflict escalting in Cambodia, Vietnam and the subsequent bombing campaign of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Flynn headed to Cambodia in order to cover the war from a perviously undocumented angle, that of the enemy, those enduring the massive bombing of Eastern Cambodia. It was to be Flynn's last foray to the front. Sometime in 1970, Flynn and another correspondent disappeared in Cambodia, somewhere near the Vietnamese border.

In the 1980's, Page decided to return to Indochina inorder to discover what happened to Flynn, and to errect a monument in honor of journalists, from both sides, who were killed during the three Indochinese conflicts.

Throughout his search, Page creates a running commentary of the changes that had occured in the region since his own departure. He illustrates the differences that exist between his days covering the war and his return in the late eighties and early nineties.

Being so well educated on the intrcacies of South Eas Asian culture, as well as the history and politics of the region, Page provides an interesting take on what happend then, and what is happening now.

Throughout the work, Page refrains from passing judgment on either side. Instead, Page reminisces about those good times he had during the war, always striving to maintain a positive vein, although occasionaly laced with sadness. It is a strange combination, but Page pulls it off well.

The book could easily be put to music, something that I did while reading the book during travels through Cambodia. Bands such as Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Rolling Stones, etc., echo in Page's writing, providing an interesting background sound to the unique time and place that was South East Asia during the Indochinese wars.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A world-class sense of humor in the face of tragedy, January 28, 2001

By 

R. ARANT "Toun" (Lanesville, Indiana USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Derailed in Uncle Ho's Victory Garden Pb (Touchstone) (Paperback)

Tim Page's return to Cambodia and Vietnam is told with both a unique sense of humor and a deep compassion for his colleagues and friends who did not survive the experiences which shaped Tim's life. Those who have suffered through the seediest hotel accomodations of Southeast Asia will admire Tim's descriptive vocabulary and tact. Never forgetting his special comrades, Dana Stone and Sean Flynn, Tim Page lays out some detail of his investigations in Cambodia which did not fit into his outstanding documentary film on the incident "Danger On the Edge of Town". While the American government talked about "highest national priority" from Washington DC, Tim was in the field in Cambodia and Vietnam taking concrete action. Page's work on the memorial for correspondents lost in Indochina and his book "Requiem" are outstanding contributions to be added to this book and the earlier "Page After Page".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Vietnam was an addiction, hard to kick...", April 6, 2011

By 

John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Derailed in Uncle Ho's Victory Garden (Paperback)

I have a soft spot in my heart for Tim Page, despite my normal inclinations. Those inclinations run to skepticism and distain for the numerous reporters who imbibed what we referred to as the "5 o'clock follies," that is, the American military's official version of the war, and simply filed their dispatches uncritically. Of course, there was that minority of reporters who insisted on going to "the field," and seeing the story for themselves, taking the same chances the "troops" routinely did, and making up their own minds. I'd include Neil Sheehan, and in other wars, Dexter Filkins and Sebastian Junger in that category. But even for those in the latter category, I am ever mindful of a line from the movie, Doctor Zhivago (45th Anniversary Edition). It is the beginning of World War I, the straw hats are being thrown in the air, men are enlisting, including Tom Courtney, who played the Red commander, Strinlikov. It was Zhivago half-brother who observed Strinklikov, dissatisfied with his wife (Julie Christie), and he said: "Happy men don't enlist." And then, you have Tim Page, a British photographer, who became addicted, as his subject quote states, and Junger further explored this theme in his book WAR to the adrenalin rush that is war. Much to Page's credit, and I give him much simply for helping assemble the book Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina, the ultimate memorial for those who fought in Vietnam, he also remains obsessed with a Vietnam that is now at peace.

Page has gone back to Vietnam again and again, like a "repeat offender," as he says. This book primarily concerns his visit in 1990, when the country first began to allow foreigners to enter, even in modest numbers. In the first 50 pages he recounts a portion of his experiences during the war, including, literally, his near death experience in April, 1969, when, missing 200 cc of his brain, after other members of the 25th Infantry Division stepped on a 250 pound mine, he was logged in as dead at the medical facility at Long Binh.

The author describes a Vietnam that has long since been transformed. In 1994, during my visit to Hanoi, I was told that ox-carts still travelled the streets in 1990. In '94, the traffic was 80% bicycles, 20% motorbikes, and within two years, the percentages were reversed. By the year 2000, the far northwestern town of Sapa had a 5-star hotel with tennis courts, and by 2008 I read about $750 a night "boutique hotels" in Nha Trang. It is a matter of vital perspective when reading his account of 1990; most of which is impossible to see today.

The topics covered are wide-ranging, and episodic. He visited both Lao Cai, and Cao Bang, border towns with China. The latter was featured in the French war, the former in a war with China, in 1979, which is now almost completely forgotten in the West. China had been backing the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, and when Vietnam finally invaded, in part to end numerous border incursions against Vietnam, China decided to invade in order to "punish" the Vietnamese for ending one of the worst genocidal regimes ever. (Even worse, the United States and China were allied, in not recognizing the new Vietnamese government run by Hun Sen, but preferring to continue to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government. Strange bedfellows, indeed!)

The Khmer Rouge killed many, including Page's friend Sean Flynn, son of the movie actor Errol Flynn. The precise details of his death will probably never be known, but it's not for a lack of effort of Page's part, who documents some of his earlier efforts in the chapter "Danger on the Edge of Town." It was also in 1990 that General Hal Moore, along with the reporter Joe Galloway returned to Vietnam, ultimately to meet with General Giap. Page includes a good picture he took of that meeting. It was Moore, as a Lt. Col, who lead troops of the 1st Air Cav in the first major set piece battle of the war, in the Ia Drang valley, in the Central Highlands. Their book on the battle is We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam In the movie, Mel Gibson played Col. Moore. Page was at the meeting, with his own wry comments about the participants.

For me, Page was prescient, by five years. In '95, I was able to travel overland to Dien Bien Phu, from Hanoi, perhaps one of the first 1000 Westerners to do so. As Page said: "There are few places on this planet where you can get a feeling of virgin turf. The hills in the northwest quadrant of Vietnam may have seen no more than a few hundred white people since the French were hoofed out; the only ones to make it to this remote area have been East-Block advisers or downed pilots. This is definitely not tourist country, though I suspect groups of yuppies and trekkers will be buzzing here before too long..."

For his guts - or his craziness- and because he played the Jefferson Airplane at "Frankie's House," but mainly because he "saw" the reality before us all, and concluded: "We should have come to learn, to liberate ourselves, rather than obstruct their liberation," I'll give him 5-stars.