ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army.(Book review)

ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army by Robert K. Brigham. University Press of Kansas (http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu), 2502 Westbrooke Circle, Lawrence, Kansas 66045-4444, 2006, 250 pages, $29.95 (hardcover).

The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) never became a fully legitimate arm of the government of Vietnam because of misguided policies, poor leadership, and a failure to create a Vietnamese army with origins in and connections to Vietnamese culture and history. Robert K. Brigham makes his case convincingly in this welcomed postrevisionist monograph on a maligned army. He does so, not with recycled English-language sources but with documents from the Vietnamese Archive in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese-language books and memoirs, and dozens of interviews of ARVN veterans. Indeed, Brigham only used oral histories he could corroborate with other sources.

Among the strengths of this book are the author's analyses of ARVN conscription and the relationship among the draft, morale, and family life. Conscription was nothing new to Vietnam, but historically it had been molded to the rhythms and requirements of family and agricultural life through terms not exceeding one year. When the ARVN increased the term to two years in pursuit of a stronger army, village agriculture and family life suffered severely from the loss of the backbone of the labor force. Consequently, the government prevented soldiers from fulfilling obligations to their families, forcing them to behave in a way that is shameful within that culture. Morale plummeted. By the late 1960s, soldiers brought their families with them to encampments or shantytowns so they could care for each other.

Army life discouraged the soldiers because they did not receive adequate weapons and combat training prior to field operations, and the government made no effort to explain in political and cultural terms the reasons why they needed to sacrifice and fight for the government and idea of South Vietnam. This was the policy of Ngo Dinh Diem and his successors. They feared that a nationalistic, patriotic, and motivated ARVN might someday hold them accountable for corruption, failed policies, and the like. The ARVN was notorious for a high desertion rate, but Brigham points out that perhaps "only 20 to 30 percent of the soldiers listed as deserters actually were" skirting their duties out of fear or malice (p. 48). Over half of the deserters actually served in units to which they were not assigned. Many deserted to see their families and eventually returned to their units. Brigham thus accomplishes one of his goals: dispelling ill-founded conclusions with sound analyses.

In analyzing why the ARVN soldiers fought--in spite of poor training, poverty-level pay, and abject facilities--Brigham arrives at several inferences. Because training and training facilities were so substandard, a conscript initially experienced alienation. He would be away from his family for years, and the ARVN lacked the spirit to function as a substitute family. Interviewees asked, "How can you build a nation without a well-trained army that knows why it is fighting and then gets to fight?" They also asserted that ...