Street Without Joy

Rating:
Summary: Essential Background to Our War in Vietnam
Review: "Street Without Joy" is a must for the library of anyone interested in the 20th Century's Indo-China wars. Bernard Fall explored the French disaster brilliantly -- exposing the foolishness of the French military and political leaders while honoring the valor and dedication of the fighting men. Fall was a Frenchman who immigrated to America and accompanied French Union forces for graduate research at a U.S. university. His writing brought to light the hidebound French military leadership's failure to grasp the realities of counter-insurgency warfare. The French knew mobility was the key to thwart the Viet Minh, but they applied European concepts of mobile warfare that depended too heavily on roads and vehicular transport. The cruel fate of Mobile Group 1 in central Annam unveiled the limitations of French military vision more completely than the renowned fiasco at Dienbienphu.
The French bungled and miscalculated everywhere. They failed at tactical intelligence gathering, routinely neglected to conduct adequate reconnaissance, mismanaged the propaganda war, underestimated the capabilities and tenacity of their enemy and squandered troops and scarce material resources in defense of worthless fixed installations. In virtually every respect, French leadership ceded the initiative to General Giap and Ho Chi Minh - and you don't win by simply reacting to your enemy. One of war's oldest maxims is: Carry the war to the enemy. The French did not. The Viet Minh carried it to them - again, and again, and again!
"Street Without Joy" drew lessons from the French debacle applicable to America's growing involvement in Indo-China; unfortunately Fall was a prophet without honor in his adopted country. While a few forward-looking American officers appreciated the value of effective counter-insurgency warfare, conventional forces generals held sway in Saigon, Hawaii and Washington. Some of our greatest successes in Vietnam resulted from effective operations by Special Forces, Long Range Penetration Groups, SEALs, and native guerillas, but most of our vast resources went into conventional operations. Bernard Fall told us what to expect in the jungles of Southeast Asia, but too few of our generals and politicians heeded the admonition.

Rating:
Summary: BROKEN HEARTED STORY OF VALIANT MEN
Review: A heartrending tale of the French experience in IndoChina during the 20 years prior to US arrival there. Poignantly written, the Author- a university professor - spent his summers in VietNam in combat with the French troops. Incidentally: He also died there - KIA with the men of whom he so eloquently wrote. As a Marine myself, with some field experience, I was deeply touched by the story he tells. It's a story of unfliching valiance on the part of the enlisted men of the French forces - and unbending stupidity on the part of their senior leaders. Absolutely heartbreaking and maddening at the same time. Fall takes you there. Highly recommended. Oorah. And Semper Fi to those valiant hearts who epitomize selflessness in an otherwise selfish age - our servicemen and women - then and now.

Rating:
Summary: The First Book to Read
Review: Before you undertake the now historical period of America's engagement in Vietnam, read Fall. First read Street Without Joy, then Hell in a Very Small Place. You can't fully appreciate what we got into unless you have a knowledge of the French successes and ultimate failure. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the French withdrawal. This is the book to start with.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Account of the French Experience in Indo-China
Review: Bernard Fall's classic on the First Indochina War is useful not only for the excellent historical account it provides of the French experience in the war, but also in its later importance to American commanders in Vietnam. Some reviewers, and even prominent Vietnam vets like Colin Powell have pointed to the failure of American commanders to learn the lessons of the French debacle in Vietnam as being instrumental in the United States's withdrawl from the country in 1973. It is important to understand however, that for the most part this failure was not due to an ignorance of Fall's work. Indeed, the reason Fall's book is still in print today is because Street Without Joy was widely reaad by American military leaders in Vietnam, including LTC Hal Moore, COL Joseph Bellino and many others down to the company level (epsecially infantry and transportation officers). Despite what some reviewers have said, the Americans learned the lessons of Fall's work fairly well: one need only look at the creation and use of hardended convoys(guntrucks, air cav escorts), the wide use of air support, and the employment of helicopter-borne troops to see that American officers benefited greatly from Bernard Fall's work. The US forces in Vietnam did not have any Dien Bien Phu's, Street Without Joys or Groupement Mobile 100's/42's. Indeed as one American general pointed out to a North Vietnamese counterpart during the Paris Peace Negotiations in 1973, the Americans never lost a major battle to the NVA or VC during nearly ten years of war. But, of course, as the Vietnamese general rightly pointed out, that fact it made little difference since the United States lost the war politically both at home and in South Vietnam. This where Fall's work fails to effecively grasp the root problem of the French experience: even if the the French had dominated the battlefield as the Americans were able to after them, they could not overcome the image of being seen as colonial oppressors, and therefore could not succesfully wipe out the widspread and fanatical political and nationalist insurgency they faced. The US would similarly fail in this manner as well, making their battlefield success moot.

Rating:
Summary: astute observations -a preview of the U.S. Vietnam War
Review: Bernard Fall's unbiased observations and descriptions are right on the mark. The mistakes the French made in fighting the North Vietnamese did not disuade U.S. policy makers into making the same mistakes. Fall captures the average soldiers position as well as could be expected. It is clear that the French were fighting a no win situation. If U.S. Policymakers read the book (which was published prior to U.S. troop commitment) perhaps they could have avoided forcing U.S. troops into fighting a loosing war. A must read for any leader prior to commiting troops to fight an "inferior" enemy.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting in retrospect, of course but not a lively read!
Review: I can't shower this book with effusive praise as reviewers below have done because I don't believe that this is a particularly captivating read. Yes, Mr. Fall was prescient in the sense that he saw the ultimate futility of a colonial-style war waged against an indigenous population and yes Mr. Fall correctly predicted that USA would be as unsuccessful cowing the Vietminh as the French had been BUT....and this is a huge butt: He did so only by taking a huge stab in the dark; multiple stabs actually as he had a number of different and differing reasons for the inevitability of a French/USA defeat in that theatre. Among them were: inadequate resources thrown into the fight, non-traditional war theatre, a unifying ideology, a near-by haven state(s), a lack of will by the West to pursue a larger war (i.e. to fight Red China and the USSR if necessary). In other words, all of the stuff that all of the rest of us trot out as plausible reasons for the implausible defeat of the world's most powerful nation by a bunch of pajama-wearing, rice farmers. No searing insight here, then. In fact, Mr. Fall tellingly fails to even address the most obvious linked questions, or even to pose them: What is it about the Vietminh political ideology causes it to prevail? What is it about opposing Vietnamese government politics' causes them to fail? Also, Mr. Fall predicates his argument about the safe-haven as victory facilitater upon a model in Algeria-Tunisia that fails the smell test. Are we really to believe that France lost Algeria because Tunisia allowed some revolutionaries to shelter there? Is this good history? I can't speak to the veracity of this line of argument but I must say that reading it in Mr. Fall's book was the first that I'd heard of such a thing. To bolster his 'gotta get tough' argument he cites Israel's response to the Fedeyeen (yup, the Fedeyeen) in 1956 as a successful use of realpolitik muscle to permanently kill a problem. Meanwhile, forty years later Israel is still fighting the same battle only with different players who, ironically, share the same ideology, and as in Vietnam, Israel wouldn't even be able to do so if the USA weren't annually pumping billions and billions of dollars into the economy to ensure that state's viability. All of this aside, I could live with Mr. Fall's premises if only he were a gifted story teller. While the chap does an adequate job of turning French military battle reports into understandable accounts for the lay reader, he does it without the spark of life that causes historical events to come alive for the reader. Furthermore, it is difficult to parse just what it is that Mr. Fall is attempting in this book. For, this is not a comprehensive history of the conflict; neither is it a warfare manual such as might be studied in a War College; it is not a reminiscence, nor is it a journal; 'tis not a polemic nor a paean. Actually, I can't characterize it as anything but moderately interesting footnote commentary about the nastiness that occurred in Vietnam in the late 1950's and which promised to become nastier for the Americans in the 1960's. I really can't recommend this to anyone but the most dyed in the wool Vietnam War voyeurs, such as myself. To others, suffice it to say that this book is about the stuff that happened to the Americans in the Vietnam war only it happened earlier to the French instead.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting in retrospect, of course but not a lively read!
Review: I can't shower this book with effusive praise as reviewers below have done because I don't believe that this is a particularly captivating read. Yes, Mr. Fall was prescient in the sense that he saw the ultimate futility of a colonial-style war waged against an indigenous population and yes Mr. Fall correctly predicted that USA would be as unsuccessful cowing the Vietminh as the French had been BUT....and this is a huge butt: He did so only by taking a huge stab in the dark; multiple stabs actually as he had a number of different and differing reasons for the inevitability of a French/USA defeat in that theatre. Among them were: inadequate resources thrown into the fight, non-traditional war theatre, a unifying ideology, a near-by haven state(s), a lack of will by the West to pursue a larger war (i.e. to fight Red China and the USSR if necessary). In other words, all of the stuff that all of the rest of us trot out as plausible reasons for the implausible defeat of the world's most powerful nation by a bunch of pajama-wearing, rice farmers. No searing insight here, then. In fact, Mr. Fall tellingly fails to even address the most obvious linked questions, or even to pose them: What is it about the Vietminh political ideology causes it to prevail? What is it about opposing Vietnamese government politics' causes them to fail? Also, Mr. Fall predicates his argument about the safe-haven as victory facilitater upon a model in Algeria-Tunisia that fails the smell test. Are we really to believe that France lost Algeria because Tunisia allowed some revolutionaries to shelter there? Is this good history? I can't speak to the veracity of this line of argument but I must say that reading it in Mr. Fall's book was the first that I'd heard of such a thing. To bolster his 'gotta get tough' argument he cites Israel's response to the Fedeyeen (yup, the Fedeyeen) in 1956 as a successful use of realpolitik muscle to permanently kill a problem. Meanwhile, forty years later Israel is still fighting the same battle only with different players who, ironically, share the same ideology, and as in Vietnam, Israel wouldn't even be able to do so if the USA weren't annually pumping billions and billions of dollars into the economy to ensure that state's viability. All of this aside, I could live with Mr. Fall's premises if only he were a gifted story teller. While the chap does an adequate job of turning French military battle reports into understandable accounts for the lay reader, he does it without the spark of life that causes historical events to come alive for the reader. Furthermore, it is difficult to parse just what it is that Mr. Fall is attempting in this book. For, this is not a comprehensive history of the conflict; neither is it a warfare manual such as might be studied in a War College; it is not a reminiscence, nor is it a journal; 'tis not a polemic nor a paean. Actually, I can't characterize it as anything but moderately interesting footnote commentary about the nastiness that occurred in Vietnam in the late 1950's and which promised to become nastier for the Americans in the 1960's. I really can't recommend this to anyone but the most dyed in the wool Vietnam War voyeurs, such as myself. To others, suffice it to say that this book is about the stuff that happened to the Americans in the Vietnam war only it happened earlier to the French instead.

Rating:
Summary: A hard read, but well worth it
Review: I found "Street Without Joy" hard to read only because, lacking in military experience, it was hard for me to visualize many of the things Fall talks about, in terms of battles and troop movements. Nevertheless, this book is essential to an understanding of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the political climate of the 60s.

Rating:
Summary: Timeless
Review: I picked up this book after reading The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam's epic on the US involvement in the Vietnam war. Would actually recommend folks read this before Halberstam's book, then jump into more detailed coverage of the US involvement in Vietnam.

Fall was a mentor to many US journalists covering Vietnam, based on his experience covering the country during the French war, and as a reader you will recognize the tone throughout. The book starts with a description of different battles during the French Indochina war, beginning with those of the "set piece" variety and then moving to those where mobility was a factor. The more mobility involved, the worse it got for the French, and you can see the Vietnamese evolve their tactics as the war unfolds.

There are some very interesting chapters on life in the French army during Vietnam, as well as some closing chapters on the 'future of revolutionary war' and the like. There is a fascinating analysis on the subject of 'active sanctuary' that provides a preview of both the balance of the Vietnam war, the wars in Africa, as well as an entirely period as well: the Reagan Doctrine, the Russian experience in Afghanistan, etc.

This book is timeless, and that it was published before the US became involved in Vietnam makes it a classic. I read alot of history, and was prepared for it to be more "dry;" I actually found it pretty easy to read if you like the subject and would highly recommend it to anyone interested not just in Vietnam but in world affairs in general.



Rating:
Summary: A sobering analysis of the Indochina war
Review: I wish I had read this book before going to Vietnam. I would have benefited from Fall's insight into the Vietnamese, the war, and "The Street Without Joy" where I earned a Bronze Star with "V." No wonder the punji pit I stepped into looked so old!