Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic Study Relevant to Modern Challenges, January 14, 2004
This review is from: The Village (Mass Market Paperback)
Anyone interested in understanding the challenges of security in Iraq and Afghanistan would do well to read Bing West's "The Village." This is the classic study of small unit anti-guerrilla activity in Vietnam. The Marines had a model of intervention built around their justly famous Small Wars Manual (originally written with considerable help from the Army based on its Philippines experience from 1898-1913). Where General Westmoreland and the senior Army favored large units sweeping across areas and hunting for large Vietcong forces, the Marines had developed a small unit action program, which was uniquely effective. "The Village" is about one squad of Marines in Binh Nghia village (actually a collection of villages numbering about 6,000 people.) As Bing West notes, "This is the story of fifteen Marines who lived and fought for two years inside a Vietnamese village. There was shooting almost every night: from across the river a seasoned Viet Cong battalion attacked repeatedly. In the village, the South Vietnamese farmers planted rice during the day and after dusk patrolled with the Marines....at the height of the Vietnam War a dozen U.S. Marines did live in the village and were generally accepted by 6,000 Vietnamese farmers." West was sent by the Marine Corps to study this process in 1966. He writes, this is "what war is like when you fight guerrillas, and of how Americans behaved when they volunteered to fight among the people. It was a bloody and intensely personal war." West went back to the village in 2002 and has a new closing chapter on the memories of Americans that remain despite a generation of Communist dictatorship.
This book is a useful introduction to policing in third world settings and establishing security through small-unit, intensely local efforts that build knowledge of the community and a network of personal relationships.
Anyone interested in better understanding how to win societal wars at the tactical level will find this a helpful book.
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
superlative book, October 23, 2003
This review is from: The Village (Mass Market Paperback)
This is a wonderful book. It tells the story of 15 marines assigned to defend a hamlet, working with about the same number of Popular Force militiamen. Of that original band, 7 are killed in the first half of the book, most of them in a single firefight when their "fort" is over-run. (The PFs suffer losses at roughly the same rate.) But they love the work, get along fine with the villagers, and exact an even higher toll on the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units sent against them. Bing West is a gifted writer. Here he is, describing a
marine with a fifty-caliber machine gun: "The drunken soldier was set now, having leaned his body over the
rear of the gun and swung the heavy barrel upward. It wavered around
the fort and then slowly swung out toward the paddies, like a compass
needle coming to rest. Then came the solid, belting jackhammer sound
of the weapon firing and the thick incendiary slugs, big as cigars,
burned out over the paddies." He also knows what he's writing about: West was a platoon leader
in Vietnam; he visited the village often, and he led some of the
patrols he describes, though mostly the book is based on interviews
with the men of the combined-action squad. Later, West was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan
administration. He wrote the superlative account of the 2003 Iraq
War, "The March Up", which is what led me
to this book. I'm glad I had the chance to discover it, and I
recommend it without reservation. -- Dan Ford
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping. Action-packed. Top-five book on the Vietnam War., December 15, 1997
By A Customer
This book tells the story of a village and the marines and militia who defended it during the Vietnam War. It is filled with first hand accounts of fast paced fire-fights and battalion-sized battles. The action is riveting, and the story is endearing and heart-wrenching. A squad of marines and platoon of PF militia men fight night-after-night against local guerillas, and at times, VC main force battalions. The Americans become members of the village, eat in families' homes, play with their children, attend weddings, funerals, and holiday festivities. Their emotional ties hearten them, motivate them, and ultimately betray them. The book was written by Francis J. West, a marine officer and RAND Corporation researcher sent to the village in the late 1960's to study its marine defenders. The marine squad -- seldom numbering more than a dozen -- was known throughout the Marine Corps. It encountered communist units more often than any other unit in the Corps; its members often fought twenty to thirty engagements a month, more than most U.S. battalions. I've recommended this book to several men in the military, including my brother, a captian in the 10th SF group. All of them, in turn, recommended it to their friends, commanders, and subordinates. "The Village" is as good as "Bravo Two Zero," "A Bright Shining Lie," and "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young." You won't put this book down until you're finished, and then, you'll read it again and again and give copies to your friends for Christmas.
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