Book review – “Vietnam War” by Paul Ham

Masterpiece account of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, the best Australian military history book I have read. It covers all the boxes – history of Vietnam and the conflict, the reason behind Australia’s involvement, the anti-war movement, the role of the press, draft dodgers, the VC, the South Vietnamese government, the hearts and minds campaign, Australian political scene, the fall out.

Many, many vivid characters and stories: the shadowy anti-Commie fanatic Ted Serong (who became a trusted adviser but who remained, in the words of Ham, a better critic than player), the Australian officer who ended up leading his own private army in the hills a la Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, hijinks in Saigon, the excitement and epic that was Long Tan (please make this into a movie), the terror of mines, the ruthelessness of the communist foe. The North Vietnamese were clearly a government worth fighting against... but were the South Vietnamese worth fighting for? Not in its early 60s phase, certainly, with its oppressive police state and crappy army.

One or two places Ham really lets fly – he has particular spleen for the dopey American commanders with their stupid body count strategy and the new settlements scheme (which to be fair worked in Malaya during the emergency – but Vietnam War had two crucial differences: Vietnam’s population wasn’t split into Chinese and Malay like in Malaya, and the Malayan communists never had a North Vietnam to flee to). He also hates the stupider anti-war protestors, especially those who attacked the vets when they came back, accusing them of baby killing and child raping (some even rang up the rellies of a dead soldier and said “he got what he deserved” – unbelievable).

Ham takes on some of the powerful myths of Vietnam. There’s the baby boomer we-stopped-the-war myth, the press-as-moral conscience myth (Ham argues the media were mostly pro war until 1968 then jumped on the growing anti-war bandwagon, and that most journos in Vietnam were incompetent charlatans), the Australians-won-all-its-battles myth (Operation Bribie was arguably a defeat), the Australians-were-good-fighters myth (mostly true but they came up a dopey “impregnable line of mines” strategy which was disastrous).

Sometimes he’s a little unfair, I think – why shouldn’t the Allies drop South Vietnam like a hot potato in the 70s? They spent a lot of money and blood in the country – they weren’t wedded with them til death. And of course politicians shift with the wind, that’s what democracy is all about. But this is still a brilliant book.