This book’s title is somewhat misleading. “Viet Cong” (VC) was a term generally applied to the military arm of the National Liberation Front (NLF). Author Truong Nhu Tang (1923- ) was active in the political work of the NLF and related organizations; he did not take part in military actions. (For a good general account of the military side, see
Inside the VC and the NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam's Armed Forces (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series)
. ) Tang argues that Americans should have a better understanding of internal Vietnamese affairs—in particular, most westerners know little about conflicts within the VC. Tang warns readers that his view of events is “a partial one, . . . that needs to be filled out by other accounts.”
Tang came from an affluent Saigon family. His father ran a plantation and a printing business. Tang and his 5 siblings each had a governess. His school lessons were conducted in French, and dealt with French history, not Vietnamese history.
When Japan surrendered and withdrew from Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent. In Paris, where Tang went to continue his education, he met Ho, who “had a galvanizing effect on almost all the Vietnamese students in France.” Tang became Ho’s “fervent partisan”—“a turning point in my life.” Tang was active in the movement for Vietnamese independence. His time in France taught him to appreciate its democratic system. But he “was struck by the complete absence of support among the democracies for the colonized and oppressed peoples.”
When war broke out between the French and the Viet Minh, Tang joined the anti-war movement in France. Teaching at a provincial school back in Vietnam, Tang found that nearly all the local people favored the Viet Minh; he supported the Viet Minh with medical supplies and agitation. Later, back in Saigon, Tang worked as a bank comptroller and then as director general of the Société Sucrière (the Vietnamese national sugar company). He watched Ngo Dinh Diem warily. Tang hoped for a government representing nationalists, Viet Minh fighters, former pro-French Vietnamese, and disaffected peasants. He looked for eventual reunification of the country. But Diem proved to be a brutal ruler, whose policies presaged “a despotic regime, continued subservience to foreigners, a politically polarized people, and an iron curtain between North and South.” Tang responded by organizing opposition to Diem. This opposition included both Communists and non-Communist nationalists. Many of them looked to Ho for guidance and aid. During these years, Tang helped to create the NLF, hoping for a general uprising that would lead to negotiations between the NLF and the South Vietnamese government. Tang describes his indirect contacts with the generals who plotted the1963 coup; and he devotes an entire chapter to the activities of “master spy” Albert Pham Ngoc Thao.
“For better or worse,” Tang writes, “our endeavor was meshed into an ongoing historical movement for independence that had already developed its own philosophy and means of action.” At this time, Tang was not very worried about disagreements between nationalists and Communists. A greater concern was that forcible action against the South Vietnamese government might trigger U.S. intervention; and he did not expect the U.S. to recognize the NLF. Even after the U.S. became engaged in Vietnam, the Vietnamese opposition continued to advocate negotiation. But, as the conflict escalated, political tactics gave way to military strategy, and more northern cadres became involved in both military and political activities.
As a result of his work against the government, Tang was arrested, imprisoned and tortured. After years of imprisonment, he was released through a prisoner exchange, and fled to NLF bases in the jungle. Here the NLF came increasingly under the influence of the Communist Party. Perhaps surprisingly, Tang reports that there was “a thriving business” between the NLF and the 5th and 18th Divisions of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which supplied the NLF with cigarettes, radios, motor bikes, typewriters, and even weapons and ammunition. Tang gives an interesting account of life in jungle bases. Most feared were the B-52 attacks, which caused “undiluted psychological terror.” But the B-52s produced almost no casualties among the NLF leaders, because Soviet intelligence trawlers in the South China Sea and NLF units in Thailand provided warnings of imminent attacks.
As the military conflict escalated, the NLF became more closely tied to the Communists; and the Alliance of National, Democratic, and Peace Forces was created as a political organization with less obvious ties to the Communists. During the war years of conflict, Tang continued to show little concern about possible conflicts with the Communists. In any case, for years, the only support for Vietnamese nationalism came from the Communist International. Eventually, “we were locked in.” In any case, where else could they find allies seeking an independent and unified country?
After the Communist victory, Tang and others in the PRG felt their efforts had been subverted. Some observers then and later thought members of the PRG must have known that they were being used as a propaganda front group. But why would they have exposed themselves to imprisonment, torture, and years of life under attack in the jungle merely as pawns in a Communist deception scheme? It appears that most of them were western educated, affluent, urban professionals, motivated by nationalism. Their alliance with the NLF seems to have been a marriage of convenience. In retrospect, they appear to have been rather naïve. But at times, the evident military stalemate raised the possibility of a negotiated settlement, which might result in a coalition government in which they could play a meaningful part. It is worth noting that, in May 1967, Robert McNamara recommended that the U.S. move the South Vietnamese government to “reach an accommodation with the non-Communist South Vietnamese who are under the VC banner; to accept them as members of an opposition political party, and, if necessary, to accept their individual participation in the national government.”
Regarding the future of Vietnam, the 1973 Paris Peace Accords were very indefinite. The 17th Parallel was not to be a permanent territorial boundary. Reunification was to be carried out gradually “through peaceful means, based on discussions and agreements.” None of the participants took this language seriously. The North Vietnamese, having fought off and on for two decades after the reunification provisions 1954 Peace Accords were disregarded, were not likely to honor the much more ambiguous terms of the 1973 Accords. Their failure to do so surprised some members of the PRG. But, historically, there had been some antagonism between northern and southern Vietnam. In 1975, some northerners, including those who had lost family members in the war, were seeking revenge. Northerners were conscious that many in the South had been living in relative affluence while civilians in North Vietnam and Communist soldiers in the South had been on very meager rations. And the PRG represented, not just the South, but also what northern ideologues viewed as possible class enemies. Northern cadres gradually took over positions in the new South Vietnamese government and were not sympathetic to the South Vietnamese or the PRG. Tang was appalled by the new government’s arrests, re-education camps, and its “ideological ruthlessness and a contemptuous disregard for human dignity.” He suffered from “devastating disillusionment” and “close to a physical revulsion” for those in the new government. Eventually, he escaped from Vietnam in a hair-raising voyage.
Writing in 1985, Tang hoped that his work for “an independent Vietnam at peace with its neighbors, glorying in its own cultural and political diversity, and achieving the dynamic economy its people are capable of creating, has not been completely in vain.” Perhaps he would feel that modern Vietnam has gone at least part of the way toward that objective.
Interspersed in Viet Cong Memoir are 4 maps and 46 photographs. The back matter includes a glossary of names, a list of PRG officials, a 10-page index, and copies of the NLF Manifesto and Program (December 1960), the political program of the Vietnam Alliance (July 1968), and the Action Program of the PRG (June 1969).
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A good view of the other (political) side in the vietnam war
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The Vietnam War, a view from the other side.
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