Inside the VC and the NVA - Softcover

Lanning, Col. Michael Lee; Cragg, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804105006 ISBN 13: 9780804105002

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1993

Synopsis

"An intimate, candid portrait of the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army...An absolute necessity for Vietnamese-studies collections."
During the war in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese communists had to place their trust in the oldest and most reliable tool of warfare: the individual soldier; America believed that firepower, lgoistics, and technology would be sufificent for victory. The North Vietnamese won. INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA, written by two veterans with six-and-a-half years combined experience, shows how.

A Dual Main Selection of the Military Book Club

About this title

About the Author

MICHAEL LEE LANNING, a retired lieutenant colonel who served three tours of duty in Vietnam, is the author of sixteen nonfiction books on military history. Texas A&M University Press has reissued two of them, The Only War We Had: A Platoon Leader’s Journal of Vietnam and Vietnam, 1969 1970: A Company Commander’s Journal. He lives in Crystal Beach, Texas.DAN CRAGG enlisted in the army in 1958 and served five years as an infantryman in Vietnam. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen military books, fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

From Kirkus Reviews

A look at the other side, by Vietnam vets Lanning (Inside the LRRPS, 1988 paperback, etc.) and Cragg (The Soldier's Prize, 1986 paperback, etc.). Lanning and Cragg draw upon some 2600 Rand Corporation interviews with VC/NVA POWs and defectors, Defense Department documents, and their own knowledge to present a unique portrait. In letters home, NVA regulars expressed loneliness, fear of dying, great discomfort, and weariness--exactly like their American counterparts. But, apparently to a man, they believed in their cause--unlike the Americans they fought. Most were conscripts who went through a three-month period of training and political indoctrination and then were committed for the war's duration. The unit that trained together walked down the Ho Chi Minh trail together and engaged the enemy. The NVA were constantly on the move among a series of well-camouflaged complexes. They had hot meals, but their rations were poor, little more than dried fish, and they often were in ill health, if not from their diets then from lack of sleep. While a key to the Communist victory lay in their total mobilization and resolve, just as vital, say the authors, were their remarkable logistics. Even as peace accords were drawn up in 1954, Viet Minh cached weapons in the South, in jungle enclaves. The Chinese and the Soviet bloc provided still more munitions, and medical supplies. Cadres of civilians bicycled supplies to 26 locations along the Ho Chi Minh trail, to Laotian or Cambodian sanctuaries; one youth corps laid a pipeline through the DMZ, often beneath streambeds, to fuel the eventual tank assault toward Saigon. Impeccably researched, unbiased, and revealing. This fills a gap. (Eight-page photo insert--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0804105006
• ISBN 13: 9780804105002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416