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War in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, 1968–1970: An Historian's Experience (review)

on foot, a procession of marching ants with no purpose except to move south.” Tuan describes the universal experiences of soldiers: the quirkiness of the supply system; the precious value of a letter from home; leeches, mosquitoes, and snakes; foul, wet trenches; hunger and thirst; heat and cold; constant fatigue; debilitating disease; and terror. Tuan and his comrades also experienced the constant harassment of parasitical political officers, who attempted, futilely and unnecessarily, to motivate by using the words of Lenin and Mao. It was the words of Sun Tzu, however, they “contemplated and discussed,” and their simple tactics were to strike “as a cobra” and to disappear; to dig, to shoot, to run, and to dig again. But as Clausewitz reminds us, friction in war makes the simplest thing difficult, and for the PAVN, the friction was the jungle. Under the triple canopy, Tuan’s world was “a perpetual state of humid darkness [where] . . . the sun . . . teases with an infrequent lone shard.” With more light, he would discover everything was covered with “layers of green and black mold.” The PAVN had to be constantly vigilant for the “lightning speed “ of a strike by helicopter-borne troops, “capable of arriving from many different directions.” Americans mordantly referred to high explosive and napalm aircraft ordnance as “shake and bake.” Tuan takes us to the other side to describe “demon napalm and the countless suffocating strings of liquid flame that seek out each fissure in the forest canopy . . . the screams that come before the fire engulfs.” And under B-52 attack, Tuan found it “difficult to stand as the earth tries to cast us away in the manner of a buffalo [shaking] mud from its back.” Tuan remembered when he and his mates clutched fistfuls of the red earth of their homeland and held it “above our heads, [and] the mud runs down our arms as we swear fresh allegiance.” Tuan recognized it was total war, which must be won no “matter the price, no matter the sacrifice.” Through it all these soldiers endured and were, as they proved, indomitable. By his recording of the stark difference between the experience of the soldier of the PAVN and his American counterpart, Delezen deepens our understanding of why the former was victorious.