ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army

Air & Space Power Journal, Summer, 2009 by Michael E. Weaver

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 they did not fight for their buddies because the ARVN's small units lacked closeness and cohesion. Brigham concludes that soldiers fought on behalf of their families.

He observes that the ARVN displayed better fighting skill, endurance, and effectiveness than it is commonly credited for. The discussion of the Battle of Ap Bac is excellent, and Brigham notes a couple of battles in which the ARVN fought very well, one of which Military Assistance CommandVietnam called "a brilliant performance" (p. 94). Unfortunately, the author devotes only 28 pages to an assessment of the army's abilities in combat. Although he defends the South Vietnamese performance during Tet, that offensive receives only two pages. Brigham scarcely mentions Lam Son 719 (a single sentence), and the 1972 Easter Offensive gets two paragraphs of coverage. Although he did not intend to analyze specific battles or the ARVN's performance in battle, a fuller coverage of battle would have strengthened his thesis that by the early 1970s, soldiers fought to keep their families together. Armies exist to fight. The topics of this book--conscription, family life, morale, training, and politics--all influenced the fighting effectiveness of the ARVN. An analysis of its battle performance would have completed his social history of the ARVN by more thoroughly tracing the connections between society and culture and the army's deeds in war. The historiography of the Vietnam War still awaits the definitive history of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Perhaps Professor Brigham will satisfy this need with a second edition of his most recent work.

Glaring defects are rare in this book. Brigham states that "from 1969 until 1973 the Nixon administration launched one of the most massive air campaigns in history" (p. 100). Actually, that air campaign did not become "massive" until March of 1972. Only 2,107 "attack" sorties occurred over North Vietnam from 1969 to 1971, in contrast to the 41,057 in 1968 and the 21,496 in 1972 (Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966-1973 [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000], 304). He also claims that "most modern armies in a time of war" are not "built on the draft" (p. 7), a surprising assertion, given the reliance of armies on conscription during both world wars.