Inside the VC and the NVA [Mass Market Paperback]

Col. Michael Lee Lanning (Author), Dan Cragg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 1993

"An intimate, candid portrait of the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army...An absolute necessity for Vietnamese-studies collections."
During the war in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese communists had to place their trust in the oldest and most reliable tool of warfare: the individual soldier; America believed that firepower, lgoistics, and technology would be sufificent for victory. The North Vietnamese won. INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA, written by two veterans with six-and-a-half years combined experience, shows how.

A Dual Main Selection of the Military Book Club

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Written by two U.S. Army veterans of the Vietnam War, this study blends history, eyewitness accounts, and data from a RAND Corporation study and other military sources to draw an intimate, candid portrait of the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army that is unexpected and often startling. Under a capable leadership and remarkably effective logistical network, these volunteers, draftees, and even dragooned subjects displayed resolve, tenacity, and, most impressively, patience; a selection of comments from the American officers and enlisted men who fought against them bears witness to the respect they inspired. The authors also provide a short history of the country since American withdrawal. An absolute necessity for Vietnamese studies collections and a revealing document for anyone connected with this conflict.
- Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A look at the other side, by Vietnam vets Lanning (Inside the LRRPS, 1988 paperback, etc.) and Cragg (The Soldier's Prize, 1986 paperback, etc.). Lanning and Cragg draw upon some 2600 Rand Corporation interviews with VC/NVA POWs and defectors, Defense Department documents, and their own knowledge to present a unique portrait. In letters home, NVA regulars expressed loneliness, fear of dying, great discomfort, and weariness--exactly like their American counterparts. But, apparently to a man, they believed in their cause--unlike the Americans they fought. Most were conscripts who went through a three-month period of training and political indoctrination and then were committed for the war's duration. The unit that trained together walked down the Ho Chi Minh trail together and engaged the enemy. The NVA were constantly on the move among a series of well-camouflaged complexes. They had hot meals, but their rations were poor, little more than dried fish, and they often were in ill health, if not from their diets then from lack of sleep. While a key to the Communist victory lay in their total mobilization and resolve, just as vital, say the authors, were their remarkable logistics. Even as peace accords were drawn up in 1954, Viet Minh cached weapons in the South, in jungle enclaves. The Chinese and the Soviet bloc provided still more munitions, and medical supplies. Cadres of civilians bicycled supplies to 26 locations along the Ho Chi Minh trail, to Laotian or Cambodian sanctuaries; one youth corps laid a pipeline through the DMZ, often beneath streambeds, to fuel the eventual tank assault toward Saigon. Impeccably researched, unbiased, and revealing. This fills a gap. (Eight-page photo insert--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (December 4, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804105006
• ISBN-13: 978-0804105002
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,489,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well researched and yes detailed- so what?, June 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside the VC and the NVA (Mass Market Paperback)

Lanning and Crasgg produces a well researched tome drawing on numerous NVA/VC prisioner/ defector interviews. The book is excelent and offers a salient reminder to the naivete of so many who still romanticize the VC/NVA as noble, black pajama clad part-time farmers.

In fact they were very tough troops, living on a supply package incomprehensible to Western armies, and very well motivated. Fighting on their own home ground, amidst a friendly or intimidated local population, and with favorable terrain and relatively secure sanctuary areas,they were given, they were well equipped, well organized and skillful adversaries. They were also a murderous, vicious and ruthless force as the hail of well documented assasinations, terror bombings, and massacres they carried out shows - a reality too often forgotten by the naive or apologists for Communism.

Some reviewer complained that: "Lanning does such a good job, that I think he overdoes it. Parts of the text read much like accounts of Caesar's struggles in Gaul. Doe we really need to know what a bunch of stuffed-shirt REMF generals thought of the VC and NVA? Do we really want to know the political struggles that took place behind closed doors in Hanoi? "Inside the VC and NVA" reads like a school book. "

Yes friend we do really need to know. We need to know that these people, vicious and ruthless as they were, were not merely "gooks" but also human beings who wrote letters home and yes, composed poetry. The books adds a human dimension to the VC/NVA often missing in discussions about the 'Nam.

And yes friend, we do really need to know the behind the scene political struggles- for they expose the naivete of the dupes who envisaged a noble "general uprising" or a simple "internal" insurgency led by "oppressed southern compadres" when in reality behind the scenes the brutal facts of northern manipulation, domination and hegemony held sway.

And yes we do really need to know such details as the typical VC/NVA march formation or how they constructed bunkers. They show that these people, within the parameters of their conflict, and the political limitations imposed on US Forces, knew what the hell they were doing, and were a tough enemy to overcome.

This book should be required reading. It adds a military perspective with a new twist. There are a glut of such perspectives from the American side- helicopters, firebases, Big Iron hitting the Ho Chi Minh trail, etc. Now we have added to our knowledge a little of what it was like on the receiving end, and how our enemies coped and eventually triumphed. It offers lessons not to be forgotten.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NOW THEY TELL ME!!!, June 30, 2009

By 

Joseph R. Calamia (El Paso, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inside the VC and the NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam's Armed Forces (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series) (Paperback)

"Inside the VC and The NVA" by Michael Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg is a Texas A&M University Press publication. The book is obviously a product from Texas A&M' Vietnam studies and is a superb informational guide to all aspects of Vietnam, including it's history, it's climate, it's people, and...it's unique ability to wage war!

I just recently ordered the book and have not finished it. However, this book is not necessarily meant as a readable novel, or biographical sketch to be finished at one sitting. This book is more than that, it is... an astute collection of practical and knowledgeable facts to satisfy your curiosity while giving you "everything you wanted to know about the Vietnamese but, were afraid to ask."

This is a great research tool, and unlike most books of this nature, this is one you will enjoy reading! I only wish our Government would have made this book (or one like it), available to every one of us who got orders to Vietnam 40 years ago (now they tell me!). Perhaps, going into a war zone with this type of knowledge would have made a difference in the final outcome.

If, you research the Vietnam era, teach history, or simply enjoy learning, then... this book is a "Must!"

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, November 4, 2001

By 

Frank (Stockton CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the VC and the NVA (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the Vietnam war. The first review complains that this "reads like a school book. Ideal for the scholar, maybe less than ideal for the casual reader." Well, what did that "casual" reader expect from a book whose cover proclaims that it "fills a huge gap in the historiography of the Vietnam War" ??

This is NOT a dull or difficult book for anyone interested in the subject. The facts, figures, and background the authors include are very helpful in understanding what led the several armed forces to come into battlefield contact, and why they acted as they did. Particularly helpful is the authors' technique of letting participants tell their own stories -- even stories that contradict each other. The book has a helpful index, and extensive source notes and bibliography for those who wish to read further.

Perhaps the major fault of the book is that the authors detail the terror and coercive tactics of North Vietnamese forces, and the failings of North Vietnamese leadership, while omitting any mention of similar tactics and the failings of the US/South Vietnamese forces (except the inescapable acknowledgment of My Lai). By this omission, the authors leave the mistaken impression that South Vietnam had a legitimate and widely-supported democratic government with civil rights, whose secret police, ARVN, and US troops never engaged in abuse of the population and enemy prisoners. The VC/NVA actions should at least have been put in context by mention of the South Vietnamese/USA Phoenix program, corruption, tiger cages, etc. The reader may wish to also read _Our Vietnam/Nuoc Viet Ta: A History of the War 1954-1975_ by A. J. Langguth to get additional perspective on the failings of the South Vietnamese government.

The authors' limited use of their own feelings about the war, combined with a skillful combination of others' personal narratives and official reports and information, results in a very readable, informative and valuable book. Particularly moving is the Afterword, which reads in part, "We questioned each other and ourselves about whether we were 'going soft' on the VC/NVA who were dedicated to the deaths of our friends.... Yet, the more we researched and wrote, the more we learned that the majority of the VC/NVA did their duty as they saw it -- not unlike ourselves and our fellow soldiers....
"Slowly, and despite our efforts to do otherwise, we began to feel more kinship with the VC/NVA than we did with many of our fellow [civilian] Americans.... Even more sobering to us was the moment when we finally realized that we had more in common with our former enemies than with the politicians who had sent us to war."