Tin Nguyen - General Hieu, ARVN: a Military Genius

This biography, a reader would notice at the outset, was not written by a historian, an investigative reporter, or a professional biographer. It originates instead from the pen of a younger sibling seeking to resolve the mystery surrounding his brothers untimely death. This legitimate curiosity has evolved into a collection of articles depicting General Hieu as a family man, a patriot, a military strategist, and a man of integrity.

This collection of articles authored by siblings, friends and fellow military men unexpectedly converges to project a dynamic image of an intelligent soldier and brilliant strategist engaged in the twofold quixotic tasks of overcoming a corrupted military hierarchy and fighting the invading North Vietnamese communist army.

The book presents the reader with glimpses of a man living the yin aspect of the Vietnamese society (egalitarian, flexible, spiritual, congenial) and, at the same time, confronting the yang aspect of the neo-Confucianist military and government hierarchy (male dominant, rigid, self-serving, elitist, concerned with face and status).

Without any claim to being systematic or thorough in his research, the author has nevertheless gathered a number of revealing personal anecdotes, testimonies from living witnesses, declassified documents from the National Archives, letters from former military academy classmates, phone interviews, excerpts from books, and so forth. From this cacophony of voices emerges the image of a virtuous man, caring father, loving spouse, and competent general respected by Vietnamese and American military personnel of all ranks. The reader would no doubt be surprised to discover this unsung hero in the stark background of negative memories of the Vietnam War and betrayal of the people by the neo-Confucianist military and government hierarchy.

Though modest in its presentation, the book managed to do justice to a dedicated soldier and competent general, who was mostly unknown to both the Vietnamese and the American public. After reading this fascinating biography, the reader comes away wondering what might have been had this uncommon general, who epitomized the true Vietnamese people, been allowed to fully exercise his military competence.

Nguyen Van Tri, Ph.D

When I started doing research on General Hieu, my brother, a decade ago, in August 1998 to be precise, he was a fairly unknown ARVN general officer. However, I was lucky in the discovery of a multitude amount of documents concerning his military career stored mainly at the National Archive in Maryland and I used them to build up a website in his honor, www.generalhieu.com.

Through the unfolding of this website, from a relatively unknown military figure, General Hieu has been recognized progressively first as a competent general, then as the best among the ARVN generals; and recently - in April 2010 - a Vietnamese History study group in Europe proclaimed him as one of the four military geniuses of Viet Nam (Tran Nhan Tong, Tran Hung Dao, Nguyen Hue and Nguyen Van Hieu).

Furthermore, although this book focuses primarily on General Hieu, it also indirectly addresses a lot of issues regarding the ARVN, such as its combat effectiveness, its military leaderships corruption and competence, the various reasons for its demise, its relationship with the American Advisors, etc...

My brother and I were not very close to each other: partly because of a 13-year age gap, partly because of our divergent professions (he chose to be a soldier stationed in a remote front-line post; I preferred teaching kids in populated cities). However, due to our brotherhood relationship, I possess memories and experiences about my brother that others are not aware of. Here, I wish to share those personal experiences with the readers, especially those readers who have heard of and held General Hieu in high esteem.

His Youth

My brother was born in Tientsin, China and grew up in Shanghai, in the French concession. That was why he received a multi ethnic and multi-cultural education and came to be quite a polyglot. He was especially fluent in English, French, German and Mandarin. My father told me that he rarely saw my brother study at home as a kid, which did not prevent him from always ranking first of his class, just like that. My father also said that my brother was born with a photographic memory: he wont ever forget what he saw even only once. My brother graduated high school at Le Collge Franais with the Baccalaurat Franais en Mathmatiques (French High School Diploma in Mathematics).

When the Chinese Communists took over Shanghai in 1949, our family repatriated on a French destroyer sailing from Shanghai to Saigon, South Vietnam. That year, my brother was in his first college year, majoring in technology at Aurore University run by the French Jesuits.