No comments about A Vietnamese Family Chronicle: Twelve Generations on the Banks of the Hat River.

5 comments about Delta Six, Soldier Surgeon.

1. Delta Six Soldier Surgeon is not your usual war story. Dr. Richard Snider has written the story of a dizzying transition- from his surgical internship at Yale, to draftee in the Army and finally to front-line doctor in the jungles of Vietnam. In this memoir, we do not encounter issues and positions, instead we find a primal view of personal experience and feeling- smells in the air, the color of the dust, the clapping of helicopter blades, the continuous stream of injured bodies, and constant danger of rocket propelled grenades. Through it all, Dr. Snider discovered a grace and nobility of the human spirit, in his soldier/patients, in the Vietnamese and in his co-workers, qualities that transcend even the wretched conditions of wartime.



2. Not having served in Vietnam, I particularly appreciated the ability of the author to make me feel that I was there - able to feel the anxieties of servicemen facing danger at every turn and to see the horrors of war. The author also did a superb job of showing me how humanitarian efforts can make a difference in such an environment.

   This book left me with a much different perspective on the Vietnam conflict than I had previously experienced.




3. Am three time Viet Vet and later went into Emergecy Med this book was very honest, open, and pulled me back to Cu Chi and Tay Ninh.



4. Rick Snider is not really a great writer, as is quickly evidenced by his sometimes tortured syntax and overkill of exclamation points. But his story is worth reading nevertheless. In an oddly "sanitized" version of army life and men in combat, what comes through in Snider's often touching memoir of his year in Vietnam is his sincerity, his utter decency, and his compassion. The dialogue, when he ventures to use it, seems stilted, stiff and unnatural, probably because of his near total omission of any profanity. Snider asserts that the soldiers he came in contact with, during his days as a combat doctor in Cu Chi, Tay Ninh and Saigon, were nothing like the foul-mouthed creatures so often found in films like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket or so many of the other Vietnam memoirs out there today. He does, however, tell us that a quarter to a third of the soldiers in a couple of his first units were conscientious objectors, which may explain the more civilized environments he describes. And I'm also sure that many of his patients showed him only their best behavior, as he was not only an officer, but also their doctor. In spite of its faults, DELTA SIX is book well worth reading. I salute Dr. Richard Snider, not just for his service, but for his simple decency and compassion for his fellow man. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA



5. Richard L. Snider, MD wrote this book - DELTA SIX, SOLDIER SURGEON - in 2003 during a period of time when public focus was drawn to other wars and other conflicts, the once active dialogue about the Vietnam War being for a while rather silent. But it is times like now, when our Congress is debating another long war's future both in Iraq and Afghanistan, that this book gains even more significance and power. Snider has reconstructed his year of duty in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969 when he was drafted out of his Surgery Residency to be rushed through preparatory training in order to supply the escalating war in that little country few knew. What his years away from the immediacy of the experience that shaped that year - terror, Medicine, heartache, loss of friends, tending to soldier's physical and mental needs, getting to know the people of Vietnam, etc. - shaped makes the content of this memoir not only pulsing with truth of observation and emotional reaction, but also a grim reminder of the horror that was the Vietnam War and why we should strive to never repeat it. It should be required reading for everyone involved in making decisions about our current military status in the world as it brings the human element into brilliant focus in the most genuine way.
   
   Snider's writing is casual in style, learned in content, and as fascinating as a fine novel in tone. He begins with the beginning - the surprise call to duty to a war few people understood. He takes us on the journey through the preparation of training camp to landing in Vietnam to learning the lingo and jargon peculiar to that specific war, blends the horrid duties the physicians who spent countless hours identifying the remains of the killed with the strangely warm camaraderie formed between docs and corpsmen, shares the welcome interruptions of humorous incidents, the loneliness of living in a war zone away from loved ones, the beauty of R & R, the frequent 'civilian' mistakes made by docs who were not militarily trained or indoctrinated - all in a manner that invites the reader to stand at his side and experience reality instead of simply reading an angry story of a lost year of his life.
   
   There are many books, poems, films, documentaries, memoirs and novels that use the Vietnam War as a matrix. Learning the facts of the war from the healing mind of a physician places a different slant on things, a slant that should be solace to those still suffering from the trauma of that time and tragedy as well as informative to those who know few of the real facts. As a fellow traveler during the same time frame (Snider was assigned to the Army while this reader was in the same position with the Marines) this is as true a record of what was happening as has been written. Read and remember - or learn. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, 09

1 comments about Medals of America Presents the Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Vietnam and Her Allies 1950-1975.

1. I was recently doing a research paper on the fall of Vietnam under Communism. This book has more than just the history of medals and decorations from the Vietnam era, but gives precise details on how the war began to French forces to when the Americans pulled out. This is a very complete, beautiful color guide to all Republic of Vietnam Military and Civilian decorations, medals, ribbons and unit awards. It includes all Vietnamese civilian awards and their different classes with pictures and descriptions of all the medals of the Vietnamese Allies.

5 comments about The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family.

1. Mai's book is an excellent way for American readers to understand the Vietnam war as well as Vietnamese culture, especially how they have reacted to French colonization, the American war period and the difficult choices that had to made about who to side with. It's a unique and important book that's gripping and important.



2. I bought this book prior to a vacation in Vietnam. This is painless history! Although the book is long (nearly 500 pages) and very heavy to carry on an airplane, it was worth it. I learned so much about the historical differences that led to the Vietnam war and the succeeding political situations. I feel really prepared now for this trip in terms of understanding the context for my travels both to Hanoi and to Saigon.
   If you want to get an understanding of the history of this country from prior to the French occupancy to the Communist era, I would recommend this book.



3. I highly recommend this book for all young 2nd generation Vietnamese-Americans, like myself, who want to learn about their family's culture and past. This book should be included in any Asian American Studies class or curriculum.
   Well done, Mrs. Duong-Elliot! Thank you for writing such an insightful, moving and educational story about your family and Vietnam. Not only did I learn more about the Vietnamese people, but I learn more about who I am.



4. The Sacred Willow is a book about Vietnam and it's history portrayed by the life of one Vietnamese family. Unlike most books about the war in Vietnam, this book offers the views of the Vietnamese themselves instead of the views of foreigners. Another important aspect is the fact that Elliot shows the opinons and values of both the people who support and are against the Viet Minh. This is done by the views of her family and the views of her sister Thang, who leaves to fight for the Viet Minh. While studying abroad Elliot is able to get an outside perspective and begins to feel a connection to the Viet Minh, at least to the point that she understands why they are willing to fight.
   
   I did enjoy this book becuase it directly tied into my history class, but if it was not for that I do not know if I would of truely enjoyed it. The book is fascinating, since it gives American readers the views of the Vietnamese that we were fighting for in the Vietnam War. Another plus, is the reader does not have to be familiar with Vietnamese history beacuse Elliot does an excellent job describing the historical events. However, the book is a little dry, a very long read, and a little bias toward the Viet Minh (Elliot did grow up in a family that strongly despised the communists). I would probably only recomened it for modern history lovers, those who have an appreciation for Vietnam or the Vietnamese War. The book is definitely not for leisure readers.



5. This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary woman. Of all the Vietnam narratives I've read, this is the first to give us a detailed picture of life in a Vietnamese mandarin family, a milieu which most of us who were there never knew existed. Moreover, this is a history of Vietnam seen from all sides because Mrs. Elliott's family members were involved in all the events that shaped the modern history of her native land from the French occupation to today's united Vietnam under communist rule. She spares no details and some of them must've been very painful for her to write about, especially the foibles of certain prominent family members whom she describes objectively and without emotion, and with all their warts. That kind of honesty is refreshing in a book like this and frankly makes her subjects' vulnerably human in spite of their extraordinary accomplishments. No mistake about it, the Duong family produced some extraordinary individuals but in Mrs. Elliott's narrative they put their robes on the same way everyone else does.
   
   Mrs. Elliott is also the author of the magisterial RAND IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. She was a RAND employee in the 1960s working as an interrogator and translator in the Vietcong Motivation and Morale Study commissioned by the Department of Defense. This effort produced hundreds of in-depth interviews with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese POWs and defectors which today are a priceless archive of the ordinary communist fighter's life in the jungle. When Lee Lanning and I wrote INSIDE THE VC AND THE NVA we relied heavily on these interviews some of which were conducted by Mrs. Elliott herself. We used other RAND reports, particularly "Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition Platoon of the 514th Battalion," authored by Mrs. Elliott and her husband, David.
   
   If only we'd paid closer attention to what the Elliotts and their colleagues were finding out about our communist enemy in Vietnam we might've gained valuable insights. And, as she very perceptively points out in this book, if we'd only done a similar study on our South Vietnamese ally we might've taken a different course in Vietnam than the one that led to disaster and the vast diaspora Mrs. Elliott describes in this book.
   
   Mrs. Elliott was only a child when the first Indochina War ended. She grew up in a privileged environment, went to the best schools, was educated at Georgetown at the American taxpayer's expense, married an American intellectual, and was safe here in the States when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese juggernaut. She never knew the ordinary people of Vietnam, the soldiers, the bar girls, the prostitutes, the street vendors, the street urchins, the rural villagers, not like the average GI and if he was an infantryman, he knew the Vietnamese countryside better than this author ever could, better, in fact, than many of his communist enemies fresh off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Of her siblings none were killed in the war.
   
   But when the Duongs fled their country in 1975, those who didn't stay behind to experience concentration camps or victory in the ranks of the VC and the NVA, they came with nothing except a will to survive and provide for their children. A hundred-year membership in the mandarinate was worthless to these new immigrants. We should never forget it's people like them who've made this country what it is.
   
   Yes, Mrs. Elliott reveals in this book that she shared the anti-war views of the American intelligentsia which at the time outraged me and if I'd have met her back then I don't think I'd have liked her -- I'd have considered her a communist stooge. But she was right that the way we & our South Vietnamese ally were pursuring that war would end in failure and while she had close relatives who were devoted communists, she's not one herself, she's Vietnamese and that is a BIG difference.
   
   My son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren have all been back to Vietnam. It's not the same country it was in 1975. Mrs. Elliott doesn't beat you over the head with this fact, but it's clear and one might wonder who really won that war. My barber, a Vietnamese immigrant, wasn't even born when I first went there & he was but a baby when I left. That, Mrs. Elliott tells us in this book, is how we come to terms with the past, by living through and beyond it. Her family did it and so can the rest of us.