Customer Reviews

Goodnight Saigon: The True Story of the U.S. Marines' Last Days in Vietnam

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A great book which reviews the closing days of the Vietman conflict. The author interviews military, political leaders, civilians and press from both sides. It's a fast moving piece with plenty of action.

The downside of the book is that there are no maps or photos of some of the US Marines discussed, which would have been useful in understanding where battles were located. I found a web site, which has photos and also gives additional information at

www.fallofsaigon.org. Great book!

"Good Night Saigon" is an impressive work of military history. Whenever this reviewer believes he has read about the Indochina war from every conceivable angle, he is proven wrong-and wrong again. GNS offers yet one more insight to that protracted conflict. The author was a member of the last detachment of Marines to be extracted from the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975. The scope of GNS is far broader than one fateful day and therein lies its' strength. We are reminded-painfully- that South Vietnam fell apart from North to South. In March, President Thieu made the disastrous decision to abandon Military Regions I and II to the advancing North Vietnamese and concentrate on the defense of the capitol. Any semblance of an orderly withdrawal evaporated as waves of South Vietnamese, both ARVN and civilian, fled south in panicked droves. The sheer amount of supplies and materiel relinquished to the NVA was incalculable. Author Henderson has interviewed some 40 subjects with first hand knowledge of that simmering time. These include media correspondents, Vietnamese military (ARVN, VC and NVA), a Communist Party official, Vietnamese civilians, many U.S. military including a former USMC Commandant, and even Nguyen Cao Ky, former Premier of South Vietnam. That guy escaped a foundering Saigon piloting his own chopper! Thanks to their collective recollections and some skillful reconstructed dialog, the reader gets a grand feeling of doom as the country imploded. We learn that many South Vietnamese fought valiantly to the bitter end, notably General Le Min Dao, commander of the ARVN 18th Division. This reviewer now believes that not all Americans were on the same page. Ambassador Graham Martin's perversely stubborn denial of the impending ruin is monstrous and had to have impeded the evacuation. This being Vietnam, there are doses of black humor: Enterprising Marines swept the Tu Do Street bars of several prostitutes and loaded them on an Air Force C130 and safety. The young ladies faced certain death by a kangaroo court. And a Marine Lance Corporal who helped evacuate 4 suspicious young males, reported to a nearby officer: "Sir, I think I just sent 4 Viet Cong corporals to Guam". There remains the lingering confusion over the order to cease the evacuation. The riddle of how the command to terminate the mission was transmitted may never be solved but Henderson's detachment was stranded for hours till a USMC higher up intervened. GNS gives the impression that most friendly South Vietnamese were extracted. Other accounts paint another picture. That riddle too, may never be solved. The final word for GNS must be negative: My hardcover edition contained NO MAPS! The text mentions many South Vietnamese cities, bodies of water and highways. All were of strategic value. Why must the curious reader follow the action with a World Atlas? This reviewer is geographically sensitive and a served In Country with the 815th Army Engineers. The 815th built Highway 14 North and part of Highway 20. He knows his roads, but what are others to do? Why do publishers pinch pennies with such stupidity? WO Henderson has produced a 5 star work, which must be reduced in rank to 3 through no fault of his. GNS remains highly recommended but readers will need that Atlas handy. If this reviewer were still over there, he would say something smart like "I'm too short to read a book with no maps!"

I initially did not want to purchase this book for two reasons. First, there were numerous books on the last days of the Republic of Vietnam and I thought the author would just plow through the same old stuff. Also, the title implied it would just be about the Embassy Marines in Saigon. I was pleasantly surprised!

Charles Henderson's primary focus is on the Marines at the embassy in Saigon and the consulate in Da Nang. To a lesser extent he looks into final activities in Can Tho and Nha Trang. However, he gives us more to consider.

The author reveals that both the Communist and Republican Vietnamese were essentially on their last legs. America was drastically reducing aid to South Vietnam. But North Vietnam was apparently facing similar problems too! In a last ditch gambit, North Vietnam begins to attack South Vietnam in late 1974. If the campaign goes well, they will likely prevail. If it goes poorly, they will probably never have another chance.

Unlike previous stories of this tragic time, Henderson reveals Communist victory was not a foregone conclusion.....at least not initially. ARVN had ample supplies in its two northernmost corps to weather a large scale attack. Unfortunately, South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu makes the disasterous decision to have I and II Corps fall back and defend key population centers even though these forces were already heavily engaged and would be unable to take most of their supplies with them. This tactial withdrawl resulted in a route that guaranteed the destruction of South Vietnam's military and Communist victory.

Another plus about this book is that its more than just about the last US Marines in South Vietnam. Besides the US Marines, we see RVN and NVA generals, Viet Marines, ARVN officers, etc. Henderson even has room for South Vietnamese artists and an actress to come on the scene! Very comprehensive.

I was close to giving this novel 5 stars but changed my mind. One of the best sub plots is the epic journey of a South Vietnamese Marine battalion commander who leads his men on a month long journey through enemy lines. Once he gets his unit back into whats left of South Vietnam, he disappears! I would really liked to have seen what finally happened to these guys. Other than that, this is a great book.

This book overly dramatizes a situation that was already dramatic on its own. It uses obscene language just for the purpose of being obscene. The editing is terrible. I found mistake after mistake, even on the back cover of the book. Frank Snepp's "Decent Interval" and David Butler's "The Fall of Saigon" are both far superior to this almost fictional account. This book reminds me of a modern action movie. It is written for twelve-year olds who want to see lots of special effects, but no substance.

The book is exactly what I expected. Bad time in our past, but well documented.

I make that rather pungent judgment on the basis of errors of omission and commission by the author. In the former category, we have a complete absence of maps, photographs, and footnotes. For me, leaving those things out of a military history is inexplicable and inexcusable. Why couldn't the author have included diagrams or maps of the Embassy Compound, Saigon, and Vietnam? How in the world can a reader be expected to follow the narrative? The absence of photographs is just as bad. The fall of South Vietnam and the end of the Vietnam War were profoundly photogenic events. Why couldn't the author have provided a few of the iconic images from that time (having just one picture on the cover of the book does not cut it)? Why couldn't he have provided photographs of all the people he interviewed for the book. And the absence of footnotes and endnotes is galling. I know that they are a pain to have to include, but how else can a reader determine what sources shaped the book?

In the latter category (omission), there is an even more grievous error. Like a lot of popular histories, the book includes lengthy conversations between individuals that feature in it. How could the author reconstruct these? A few might have been televised, but what about the rest? How can the author quote word for word what was said at an event that took places thirty years ago? Even for the ones that he was present at, how could he do this? I served in the military, and I have trouble remembering single sentences from conversations from just fifteen years ago under fairly memorable circumstances as well. The obvious conclusion --absent detailed notes explaining why entire conversations are reproduced-- is that the conversations were "reconstructed." They may be the gist of what was said, but having the gist of something does not entitle the author of any history to create dialog from it.

So that's why I think this book amounts to being a historical novel. Novels, after all, don't have endnotes, footnotes, pictures, and much of what happens in them may reflect actual history but is not that history itself.

Bottom line: I think there undoubtedly books about the momentous days of "Cruel April" that do not have the manifest faults that this book has.

I enjoyed this book, for the most part. Think it is fairly accurate and includes some excellent research.

This book falls into a category I heard someone else refer to as 'historical novelization'. As one would do with a screenplay, the author attempts to recreate dialogue between various characters that captures the essence of what was, or might have been discussed at particular moments in time. If you prefer the dialogue of a novel over the traditional 'dryness' of historical books, you may enjoy Goodnight Saigon. I prefer 'dry' historical tomes, thus the reduction of 1 star.

As has been mentioned extensively by other reviewers, there are no maps, diagrams, or pictures. This makes some of the action difficult to put into perspective in terms of time and distance. Yes, I know maps can be downloaded on the internet. That does me little good when I take the book to the beach. Besides, I should not have to find my own map. Dropped another star for this reason.

Goodnight Saigon is an excellent book for anyone who ever served in Vietnam, or has a strong interest in the subject matter. I also believe that if you are a fan of the Tom Clancy or W.E.B Griffith writing style (large cast of characters, frequent cuts between scenes in different locations to maintain time continuity), you may enjoy this book.

Overall impression--Wow! A real tour de force. The Vietnam War was complicated, and writing a book about it is like trying to write a flow diagram for a large plate of spaghetti. And yet, Henderson has done it--at least as far as the end game goes. I give it an enthusiastic five stars.

Why required reading? As George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are destined to repeat it." And we might be repeating that history today with George Bush's so-called war on terrorism. You can't really answer that question unless you have something from the recent past to compare it with. Goodnight Saigon makes for a fine litmus test.

There are some books that are meant to be read once and discarded (e.g., the typical Stephen King novel), some that are meant to be read multiple times at differenct times in your life (e.g., Huckleberry Finn), and some that are meant to be studied (e.g., Hamlet.) Henderson's work falls somewhere between read-multiple-times and studied.

The most profound thing about the book is the Interview Notes wherein Henderson details the many players--American and both Vietnams--he interviewed first hand. It punctuates the fact that these people were real and these things happened and none of this should ever be forgotten.

Some comments on the other reviews:

<u>No maps</u>--true, the book could have used some maps. On the other hand, it is very easy these days to download and print a map from the Internet. Try the site at www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/maps.htm, or for even more detail, try Jim Henthorn's excellent site at www.nexus.net/~911gfx/sea-ao.html. To do less is just plain lazy. And to mark Henderson down for this oversight is to obscure his more important achievement, the enormous body of research he collected in order to tell this tale.

<u>The 'unended' sub-plot of LTC Tran Van Toan</u>--See p. 302. (Also in the index) LTC Tran made it, his force of 450 men intact, and was assimilated into the defense of Saigon Under RVN Marine Corps commandant, General Bui The Lan.

--Ejner Fulsang, author of A Knavish Piece of Work, www.AarhusPublishing.com.