Latest Reading

Unheralded Victory, The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973 by Mark W. Woodruff, Vandamere Press, 1999. I really enjoyed this book, filled with research from the archives of the communist north and statistics and information from newspapers and military accounts. It showed how the American military resoundingly won the Vietnam War militarily but how the US lost the war politically. What really linked it together for me was that I had just read the liberal paeon to the 1960's entitled Coming Apart, An Informal History of America in the 1960's. It is clear that people like Walter Conkrite who my father thought could only speak the truth, were notorious liars, communist sympathizers, and would be communist agents. It is also clear that the Anti-War movement was run by the privileged children who did not have to fight for the most part while the war was fought by the working class. It is also clear that many of the most outspoken vets against the war, but most certainly not all, weren't even frontline combat troops and in some cases, never left Saigon. It is also clear that, in the communist's own words, they were beaten decisively. It is book that survivors of that era and students of that era should read. It changed my mind.