Nguyen Công Luan - Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier

MEMOIRS OF A

VICTIM TURNED SOLDIER

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Publication of this book is made possible in part with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency that supports research, education, and public programming in the humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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2012 by Nguyn Cng Lun

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nguyn Cng Lun, [date]

Nationalist in the Viet Nam wars : memoirs of a victim turned soldier / Nguyn Cng Lun.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-35687-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-00548-9 (ebook) 1. Nguyn Cng Lun, [date] 2. Vietnam (Republic). Qun l OfficersBiography. 3. Political prisonersVietnamBiography. 4. Political refugeesVietnamBiography. 5. Indochinese War, 19461954Person-al narratives, Vietnamese. 6. Vietnam War, 19611975Personal narratives, Vietnamese. 7. VietnamHistory19451975. 8. VietnamHistory1975 I. Title.

DS556.93.N5215A3 2012

959.7043092dc23

[B]

2011024044

1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12

As it was being fought, the Vit Nam War was the most thoroughly documented and recorded war in history. It is, therefore, especially ironic that more than thirty-five years after the fall of Si Gn, Vit Nam remains one of the most misunderstood of all American wars, shrouded in a fog of misconceptions, bogus myths, and distorted facts. One of the most cherished of those many false beliefs centers on what was supposed to have been the complete operational ineptness and combat ineffectiveness of the Army of the Republic of Vit Namthe ARVN. The seemingly stark difference between the ARVN of the South and the Peoples Army of Vit Namthe PAVNof the North prompted many pundits at the time and since to ask why our Vietnamese couldnt fight, but theirs obviously could.

Even the leaders of North Vit Nam believed the common wisdom about the ARVN being little more than a house of cards. One of North Vit Nam Defense Minister V Nguyn Gips key assumptions when he launched the 1968 Tt Offensive was that the ARVN would collapse on first contact. But it didnt collapse. It fought, and it fought well. The ARV N again put up a stiff and largely successful fight during North Vit Nams 1972 Easter Offensive. And when the North Vietnamese again attacked with overwhelming force in the spring of 1975, some ARVN units finally did collapse under the crushing onslaught, but many other South Vietnamese units went down fighting. Most of the ARVN soldiers who survived then paid the terrible price of years of brutal treatment in the forced reeducation camps established by the victors.

Most Americans who served in Vit Nam had some contact with the soldiers of the ARVN. Those who served in Special Forces units or as Military Assistance Command, Vit Nam (MACV) advisors had almost daily contact with the South Vietnamese military, and consequently they developed a more in-depth understanding of its particular structural and institutional problems, as well as the intricacies of the broader South Vietnamese culture from which the ARVN was drawn. For those GIs who served in the conventional U.S. units, the contact was more sporadic, and what understanding of their allies they did develop did not run very deep. Thus, while some Americans had positive experiences and still hold fond memories of their South Vietnamese comrades, many others had experiences with the ARVN that were frustrating at best.

In the past ten years, memoirs written by former ARVN officers and soldiers have contributed immensely to our understanding of that military force. Most have been written by South Vietnamese who either escaped after the fall of Si Gn or were allowed to immigrate to the Unites States following their release from the camps. So far, no accounts written by former ARVN soldiers who remained in Vit Nam have appeared in English, if indeed the current Vietnamese government has allowed any to be published at all. One of the most important of those volumes published in the United States is this book, Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier, by Nguyn Cng Lun.

Major Lun starts his narrative by detailing his childhood in North Vit Nam under Japanese occupation during World War II and through the subsequent French phase of the Vit Nam War in the late 1940s and early 1950s. After his family fled to South Vit Nam in the mid-1950s, Nguyn attended one of the first graduating classes of the Republic of Vit Nam Military Academy and was then commissioned an officer in the ARVN. He served just short of twenty years, right through the collapse of South Vit Nam in April 1975. Nguyn then endured almost seven years in the reeducation camps. He finally was allowed to immigrate to the United States under the Orderly Departure Program.

Most of this book is devoted to Major Luns service and experience as an ARVN officer. This is one of the most compelling and thoughtful ARVN accounts ever published. Nguyns view of the ARVN from the inside offers a perspective that few Western readers will ever have an opportunity to see. Along the way he also provides fascinating accounts of Vietnamese village life and social culture, the French colonial occupation, the communist government of the North, and the U.S. forces in Vit Nam during the second phase of Vit Nams thirty-year war.

This book is an unblinking, unflinching account, and it will be received with serious reservations in many quarters. Some readers among the French most likely will object to Luns portrayal of the French military during the period of the colonial occupation. The current government of Vit Nam quite likely will not be pleased with his descriptions of the corruption and brutality of the communist system, both in the North after the French defeat and in the South after the fall of Si Gn. Some members of the former South Vietnamese government and the ARVN likely will object to Luns frank assessments of the weakness and political corruption systemic to South Vit Nam. And some American veterans might take umbrage at his warts and all portrayal of the U.S. military and of his severe criticisms of the U.S. governments overall handling of the war. Nonetheless, everything that Major Lun writes rings true. He calls it like he saw it, but he does not take cheap shots. Despite his well justified descriptions of the cultural blindness exhibited by too many Americans during the war, it is very clear that he still has a great deal of sympathy and admiration for the typical American soldier and a genuine affection for what is now his adopted country.