Lucien Bodard is one of the best-known French foreign correspondents and he is an expert on Indochina; he knows the Far East as few Europeans can know it, for not only has he spent a great deal of his working life there, but he was born in Chungking. Indeed, one of his earliest recollections is intimately connected with Asian politics---lopped-off heads in a basket, exposed to discourage the opposition. And as it happens his wife, who is a journalist too, also has an Eastern background, for she was brought up in Saigon. Lucien Bodard, therefore, possesses a vast store of knowledge, the immensely detailed ramifying knowledge that comes from having been there for years and years with open ears and eyes and a sharply intelligent, trained inquiring mind---knowledge of a very different kind from that which is amassed in a few weeks by newspapermen who fly into Saigon with a load of hurried reading and preconceived ideas." (from introduction)
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Passionate Nationalism Of The Vietnamese Will Be An Understandable Emotion,
By Nowhere else will the American reader get a better sense of the Vietnamese people and their aspirations, nor of the immutable forces that have prevented a solution in the past and that are sure to govern the outcome in the future. Our involvement in Vietnam has been poorly understood, as Walter Lippmann has pointed out, because we have so little "deep" background knowledge. The Quicksand War begins to fill that gap. "A French journalist long experienced in Indochina," (N.Y. Times), Lucien Bodard was born in China, and for almost two decades has been the Far Eastern correspondent of the Paris newspaper France-Soir. He has crisscrossed all Vietnam, visiting the wild, opium-growing Meos in their blossoming mountains, flying with crackpot bush pilots to beleaguered jungle "hedgehogs," chatting to the arrogant taxi-girls of Saigon's Rue Catinat and the shabby whores of the "compartment brothels," calling on warlords on the border and terrorists in the plains. He did not "meet," he knew the people whose will (or lack of it) created the lines of force which wound through Vietnam's landscape of corruption: the melancholy, sensuous little Emperor; the self-deceiving commander-in-chief; subtle policemen, romantic patriots, gambline kings, warrior bishops; and finally, the gorgeous and legendary figure of de Lattre de Tassigny, Marshal of France, to whom Vietnam meant a broken heart and an early death. Bodard describes the colonial reconquest, the emergence of Ho Chi Minh, the forging of his revolutionary army, the confrontations with China. He shows how Saigonese prosperity and corruption, the bureaucrats' blindness and the French Army's touchy pride combined to further "the happy war" and what a "dirty war" it was. We see how the Americans, some Quiet and some Ugly, first came to Saigon; and how, through epic battles and filthy deals, the stage was set for a tragic last act. To anyone who reads this book, THE PASSIONATE NATIONALISM OF THE VIETNAMESE WILL BE AN UNDERSTANDABLE EMOTION, not merely an "historical factor." The seeming contradictions in the French Army, of umbrageous chivalry, unblushing corruption, heroism and joie de vivre, will be resolved in a sympathetic human rapport. And Vietnam, this savage "world we never made," will be a familiar country, a lived experience, ever afterwards." [from the cut-off two piece papers inside the book]
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Best Books Written about the Vietnam War,
By Most Americans know about the French experience in Vietnam through Bernard Fall's two masterpieces, "Hell in a Small Place" and "Street Without Joy". Fall's books concentrate on the military aspects of the war. What makes "The Quicksand War" such a classic is that is a first person journalistic account of the conflict. There is no better account of the "feel" of the events. Bodard reveals the truths of the events in the way only a very talented journalist can. Of historical note, the English translator of this book was Patrick O'Brian who later went onto to write the Aubry-Maturin naval stores. "Quicksand War" is a great book and I give it the highest recommendation.
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