NO WIDER WAR, A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR VOL. 2: 1965-75

“We died for a stupid slogan” – “we died for the domino theory” – words from a disillusioned draftee. Though advisors and airbases were already present, by landing marines on Da Nang beaches - combat troops - Vietnam became America’s war. Deemed unwinnable by the Secretary of Defense, yet demanding generals escalated troop numbers. Hundreds of operations followed, search and destroy missions into communist-held territory; helicopter borne assaults into jungles, the Central Highlands, the Coastal Plains; and river gunboat forays in the Mekong Delta. Enemy resistance was met by devastating firepower, dispersing the Viet Cong, later to re-infiltrate. Success was measured in the dubious body count; mounting US casualties turned public opinion. The battles for the cities, Tet in 1968 and the Easter Offensive of 1972, strategy missteps, emasculated the Viet Cong. North Vietnamese PAVN formations with Soviet and Chinese supplied tanks would supplant VietCong guerrilla warfare in conventional battles. Cambodia and Laos were subjected to B-52 bombing and ARVN ground invasion, hitting Ho Chi Minh Trail supply routes and border camps. Atrocities occurred: Zippo lighters became weapons for razing hamlets in clearance operations; artillery obliterated suspect villages; Vietnamese fleeing US attacks were considered hostile; executions; the harrowing My Lai massacres; chemical warfare deforestation by Agent Orange and napalm. The Viet Cong seldom took prisoners. The extended “talking with fighting” Paris Peace Talks, and accelerated American withdrawals grew from Tet. Fighting would continue between the North and ARVN reinforced by the “Vietnamization” programme, but without US bomber support Saigon fell in 1975. This is a searching account of America and South Vietnam’s War cramming in ten eventful years of battles and political and social change.