Customer Reviews

The Twenty-five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

General Thi shares with us the major events of his life, from losing his father at an early age to the Viet Minh, to how his Uncles and Aunts were so instrumental in providing the Extended Family (Confucian) Values that enabled Lam and his brother to pull themselves up by their hard work and many accomplishments in school and later in their adult life.

We see through Lam's eyes the French Occupation of Vietnam, the reasons for the Viet Minh, the Fall of the French, the coming of the Americans, Lam's Army Career and how he so skillfully plays the hand Life has given him, making the best of what he has, leading all the way to making ARVN Lt. General (Three Star General) at such an early age through his sheer abilities and hard work.

The book also allows the Reader to see and experience Vietnamese Culture, from Tet (Chinese New Year), the tasty foods (I still can smell the Cha Gio) cooked in celebration of their various Holidays and Occations, to Confucian Extended Family Values of Respect for Elders and a High Premium on Education as the way to get ahead in Life, and how even later on in their lives when he outranks his Older Brother (who was "only" a Two Star General) that Older Brother still made the Final Decision and was obeyed when it came to Family Matters.

For those of you who did not know, Vietnamese Wives and Mothers, while seemingly docile and obedient, were actually Very Powerful when it came to Family Matters of Finance and Children. Vietnamese Family Values were demonstrated as we watch Lam and his Family when they get to visit with Emperor Bao Dai's Mother, and her demonstrated tenderness towards Children.

An excellent example of what one Vietnamese Life was like from 1950 to 1975, and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I bought this book because I was intrigued by the prospect of reading a memoir from the point of view of a South Vietnamese soldier. Although Gen. Lam Quang Thi was a very high-ranking member of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and attained high rank at a young age, I got the impression that he was one of the truly gifted officers in that army, who was idealistic about serving his country to the best of his abilities.

Throughout the book, Thi regularly takes issue with the corruption and incompetence of many of his fellow officers, and recounts the political situation in the South, where coup after coup after coup left the country of South Vietnam basically a rudderless ship. He tells of how many of his fellow officers attained high ranks, up to and including senior generals, not because of superior soldiering prowess, but because of having the right political connections. Even he (the author) benefitted a little from the political machinations of some of his superiors. In this regard, the book is an excellent source on the socio-political scene in Saigon in the 1960's.

However, as a war memoir, I found the book a little light in descriptions of battle and how he and the men under his command coped with the strain of combat. This is why I give the book only four stars. I suppose that as a general, his viewpoints of battle tend to be more detached and "big picture" oriented, which is reflected in his writing. Most descriptions of battles his units fought were mostly like, "We swept the area with the 1st regiment, while the 2nd was held in reserve. After heavy contact, we suffered 25 dead while the VC suffered 100 dead." None of the harrowing descriptions which can be found in many other terrific war memoirs are present here. Since so many of those other types of books have been written by American soldiers, with American perspectives, I was excited to finally be able to read one written from an Asian soldier's perspective. However, I was somewhat disappointed in this regard. All in all, however, I feel that this is a book that most Vietnam War buffs should read.

I served on the MACV Advisory Team (60) attached to the ARVN 9th I. D. as a radio operator from Dec. 1965 - Jan. 1968, and after reading through General Thi's book I was impressed with the situations as described from his perspective. I also recall that many U. S. officers expressed favorable impressions of the General, his leadership and patriotism. A good read for those of us who were in Sadec. Gary Mason

I was so pleased to get this book today that it went right to the top of my reading pile and I spent the afternoon and evening with it. I lived in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, going through ten coups d'etat as the son of an oil engineer and executive, and Viet-Nam has always been special for me.

Sadly, the book, while full of extraordinary detail at a personal level, is extremely tedious. It *felt* like it took a century to read, and my eyes just glazed over with page after page of names of relatives, classmates, town, etcetera.

The author's first book, Autopsy: The Death of South Viet Nam is probably a much better book for anyone other than a student of the genealogical details.

The photos were disappointing, and while the strategic maps were helpful there was little to enliven the thirteen chapters.

Over-all I formed three impressions:

1) The author was an extraordinary mix of Chinese and Vietnamese, French-educated, and Cao Dai/Catholic in family heritage. He acquired the viewpoints inherent in the French and the Catholic, and strongly perceives Ho Chi Minh to have been a communist puppet of Moscow, and not at all a nationalist. Th

2) The author considers the US to have betrayed South Viet-Nam, leading to the loss of a one million man Army and the abandonment of five billion dollars in equipment, all in part because the US media decided the war was lost, and the US public forced the politicians to give up. While I dispute this personally, the view is strongly supported by one of the best revisionist histories I have read, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965.

3) The author provides excellent context from his point of view on the concurrent ideological splits in Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines at the time, and articulates his view the Viet-Nam was the place where the burden fell for giving the West time to win the Cold War--1.5 million soldiers and 2 million civilians DIED for that time--the wounded are probably ten times that number. In this regard, there are similarities with the Afghanistan point of view presented in The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB

For myself, while acknowledging that the book does indeed fill a void and there are too few books written by South Vietnamese leaders of any sort, I personally found the book very tedious and disappointing. It still merits four stars, there is no contesting the utility of the detail and the perspective, but not for me.

Books have are more consistent with my own experience, both as a young man in Viet-Nam and as a recovering spy, include:
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
War Without Windows
The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Stemme)

The author slams Robert McNamara for his "lucrative" memoires, presubably referring to both Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century and the DVD The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Today we are in Afghanistan and President Obama has fallen prey to the military-industrial complex, which is doing to him what Henry Kissinger did to the American public, killing another 20,000 young men so Richard Nixon could win an election. See The Trial of Henry Kissinger. At Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, see the Event Report on the Counterinsurgency Conference to understand how nothing has changed in Washington between Viet-Nam and Afghanistan.

HAHAHAHHAA What a funny sub-teacher; Mr. Lam is a fierce general, althought he broke the necks of evil vietcongs, he prefers shooting them up with a machine gun.