Rating: 
Summary: USMC Pacification: The Road Least Taken
Review: "This is the story of a handful of Americans and Vietnamese who lived and fought together in a Vietnamese village. It is not a political book or a critique of national policy.... /// The story is not typical of military operations in Vietnam. Less than one percent of American forces there were employed in the [combined] fashion described in this book. Nor was the combat typical. Throughout Vietnam, one out of four hundred night patrols in the populated areas made contact; in this village, it was one out of every two." (p. xv) (Captain F. J. West, USMCR; from the preface to The Village) /// The Combined Action Program was an unconventional approach to pacification conceived by the Marine Corps and unique to the Vietnam War. Marine infantry squads (10-14 men) integrated with local militia units ("Popular Forces" or PFs) at the village and hamlet level in South Vietnam. Theoretically, the employment of the Marines in this fashion would increase the effectiveness of the PFs and gain the confidence of the Vietnamese by demonstrating a long-term commitment to their security. III Marine Amphibious Force first experimented with combined action in 1965. The experiment yielded positive results. Thus, the Combined Action Program was formally established and centered on the combined action platoon (CAP)-the Program's basic tactical unit. By 1970, more than 1,700 Marines, 100 Navy corpsmen and 3,000 PFs formed 113 CAPs in 102 villages throughout I Corps. This book tells the story of one such CAP stationed in the village of Binh Nghia. /// Binh Nghia was located in a highly contested area south of Chu Lai in Quang Ngai Province. Prior to the arrival of the Marines in 1966, the Viet Cong owned Binh Nghia-controlling five of the village's seven hamlets. The VC garrisoned one of their main force battalions on the far shore of the village's neighboring tidal river and used the waterway to transport their rice and supplies. Seventeen months after the arrival of the Marines, however, the Viet Cong were gone-largely due to the success of the Binh Nghia CAP. /// Four noncommissioned officers rotated command of the Marine garrison in Binh Nghia: Corporal Beebe, Sergeant Sullivan, Sergeant White, and Sergeant McGowan. West cites a key event during the tenure of each Marine as a turning point in the book. Corporal Beebe's rotation home in June 1966 coincided with the deaths of Private First Class Page, the first Marine death in Binh Nghia; Ap Thanh Lam, the village's highly regarded police chief; and Khoi, the younger of two PF brothers serving with the Marines. West asserts that the intended Viet Cong message never reached the Marines: "The Viet Cong had a problem....The villagers and the PFs who knew the history of Binh Nghia could clearly see the power of the Viet Cong manifested in the deaths of Khoi, Page, and Lam. /// Not so the Marines.... not knowing [Binh Nghia's history], they did not view the events as a prelude to the future. There is no evidence [that] the Marines shared the Vietnamese view of the situation in the village." (p. 47) /// Higher headquarters in Chu Lai dispatched Lieutenant O'Rourke to "observe" the CAP's activities in Binh Nghia during Sergeant Sullivan's tenure. As a direct result of O'Rourke's presence, the CAP patrolled more aggressively and achieved better results. But complacency set in after O'Rourke departed in August 1966. Less than thirty days later, the VC launched a successful attack against Fort Page. (Fort Page was the CAP stronghold in Binh Nghia named in memory of Private Page.) Sergeant White succeeded Sullivan after the attack and the Viet Cong increased their efforts to reclaim the village. During this crucial period, the CAP held out and defeated the VC (largely because of White's leadership). McGowan relieved Sergeant White in January 1967 and maintained command until October 1967-when the Binh Nghia CAP was disbanded because the Marines were no longer needed. /// Marine captains were not normally sent into villages to accompany CAP patrols (such as the author was). West took up the story of the Binh Nghia CAP because the Marine Corps had identified a need to study and disseminate small unit action "lessons learned" from Vietnam. West came back onto active duty during the summer of 1966 in fulfillment of this requirement. He was hand-selected for the job because of his military and academic credentials. (West already had an undergraduate degree in history and was a graduate student at the time he left for Vietnam.) These qualifications made West eminently qualified to tell the Binh Nghia CAP's story. /// West concludes that that the combined action effort in Binh Nghia was successful. After October 1967, the Viet Cong no longer dominated the village and the PFs were able to maintain security without the Marines. Although it is obvious that West is a proponent of combined action, he refrains from making any assertions beyond Binh Nghia regarding the Program. West does, however, state that the "strategic implications" of combined action "merit careful analysis" in "Fast Rifles," an article that appeared in the October 1967 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette (which served as the precursor to this book). Would the combined action strategy have been successful if it was implemented throughout all of Vietnam? Although it is a moot point, the issue does bear further analysis-particularly in light of the strong differences in opinion between top Marine and Army officials. For example, whereas General Walt (senior Marine commander in Vietnam) championed combined action in his Strange War, Strange Strategy (New York, 1970): "Of all our innovations in Vietnam none was as successful, as lasting in effect, or as useful for the future as the Combined Action Program." (Walt 1970, p. 105) /// General Westmoreland (senior Army commander) expressed otherwise in A Soldier Reports (New York, 1976): "Although I disseminated information on the [combined action] platoons and their success to other commands ... I simply had not enough numbers to put a squad of Americans in every village and hamlet; that would have been fragmenting resources and exposing them to defeat in detail." (Westmoreland 1976, p. 216) /// In summary, this book's greatest value lies in the author's prose. The Village was written for the enlisted Marine and junior officer. Although it is historically accurate and highly readable, the book is not intended for scholarly inspection. There is no bibliography or index. West's sole purpose is to demonstrate how the combined force of Marines and PFs were able to achieve success against the numerically superior Communists. To this end, he is successful. Although there has been an outpouring of literature written in the same vein, the Village still stands alone as the best eyewitness narrative of a combined action platoon. Those seeking a more scholarly, balanced account should see Michael Peterson's The Combined Action Platoons: The US Marines' Other War in Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1989).
Rating:
Summary: Gripping. Action-packed. Top-five book on the Vietnam War.
Review: This book tells the story of a village and the marines and militia who defended it during the Vietnam War. It is filled with first hand accounts of fast paced fire-fights and battalion-sized battles. The action is riveting, and the story is endearing and heart-wrenching. A squad of marines and platoon of PF militia men fight night-after-night against local guerillas, and at times, VC main force battalions. The Americans become members of the village, eat in families' homes, play with their children, attend weddings, funerals, and holiday festivities. Their emotional ties hearten them, motivate them, and ultimately betray them. The book was written by Francis J. West, a marine officer and RAND Corporation researcher sent to the village in the late 1960's to study its marine defenders. The marine squad -- seldom numbering more than a dozen -- was known throughout the Marine Corps. It encountered communist units more often than any other unit in the Corps; its members often fought twenty to thirty engagements a month, more than most U.S. battalions. I've recommended this book to several men in the military, including my brother, a captian in the 10th SF group. All of them, in turn, recommended it to their friends, commanders, and subordinates. "The Village" is as good as "Bravo Two Zero," "A Bright Shining Lie," and "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young." You won't put this book down until you're finished, and then, you'll read it again and again and give copies to your friends for Christmas.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written
Review: Anyone interested in understanding the challenges of security in Iraq and Afghanistan would do well to read Bing West's "The Village." This is the classic study of small unit anti-guerrilla activity in Vietnam.
The Marines had a model of intervention built around their justly famous Small Wars Manual (originally written with considerable help from the Army based on its Philippines experience from 1898-1913). Where General Westmoreland and the senior Army favored large units sweeping across areas and hunting for large Vietcong forces, the Marines had developed a small unit action program, which was uniquely effective.
"The Village" is about one squad of Marines in Binh Nghia village (actually a collection of villages numbering about 6,000 people.) As Bing West notes, "This is the story of fifteen Marines who lived and fought for two years inside a Vietnamese village. There was shooting almost every night: from across the river a seasoned Viet Cong battalion attacked repeatedly. In the village, the South Vietnamese farmers planted rice during the day and after dusk patrolled with the Marines....at the height of the Vietnam War a dozen U.S. Marines did live in the village and were generally accepted by 6,000 Vietnamese farmers." West was sent by the Marine Corps to study this process in 1966. He writes, this is "what war is like when you fight guerrillas, and of how Americans behaved when they volunteered to fight among the people. It was a bloody and intensely personal war." West went back to the village in 2002 and has a new closing chapter on the memories of Americans that remain despite a generation of Communist dictatorship.
This book is a useful introduction to policing in third world settings and establishing security through small-unit, intensely local efforts that build knowledge of the community and a network of personal relationships.
Anyone interested in better understanding how to win societal wars at the tactical level will find this a helpful book.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Study Relevant to Modern Challenges
Review: Anyone interested in understanding the challenges of security in Iraq and Afghanistan would do well to read Bing West's "The Village." This is the classic study of small unit anti-guerrilla activity in Vietnam.
The Marines had a model of intervention built around their justly famous Small Wars Manual (originally written with considerable help from the Army based on its Philippines experience from 1898-1913). Where General Westmoreland and the senior Army favored large units sweeping across areas and hunting for large Vietcong forces, the Marines had developed a small unit action program, which was uniquely effective.
"The Village" is about one squad of Marines in Binh Nghia village (actually a collection of villages numbering about 6,000 people.) As Bing West notes, "This is the story of fifteen Marines who lived and fought for two years inside a Vietnamese village. There was shooting almost every night: from across the river a seasoned Viet Cong battalion attacked repeatedly. In the village, the South Vietnamese farmers planted rice during the day and after dusk patrolled with the Marines....at the height of the Vietnam War a dozen U.S. Marines did live in the village and were generally accepted by 6,000 Vietnamese farmers." West was sent by the Marine Corps to study this process in 1966. He writes, this is "what war is like when you fight guerrillas, and of how Americans behaved when they volunteered to fight among the people. It was a bloody and intensely personal war." West went back to the village in 2002 and has a new closing chapter on the memories of Americans that remain despite a generation of Communist dictatorship.
This book is a useful introduction to policing in third world settings and establishing security through small-unit, intensely local efforts that build knowledge of the community and a network of personal relationships.
Anyone interested in better understanding how to win societal wars at the tactical level will find this a helpful book.
Rating:
Summary: Well written
Review: Explains the "other" war...what has been documented to have been the only program that actually ever worked during the Vietnam War.
Rating:
Summary: A great story dulled down by the author's writing style
Review: I am glad I read this book because it is an important story to consider regarding the Vietnam war. It's important in that by describing the experience of a fairly small number of effective Marines posted permanently in a village area, this book makes a reader think about how the war effort might have been more effective if this strategy would have been employed on a much larger scale. For that reason and because of the admiration I have for the author's service, I hesitate to be critical. But, I think this book failed to reach its potential. To me, the book is weak in writing style. I read some praise for the author's plain style and I typically favor that style as well. However, in this book, I thought the descriptions of the people, the places and the actions to be so spare that the book bordered on being dull. It was an effort for me to finish it and I don't think it should have been. I just didn't feel like Mr. West helped us to know the people and what they went through very well. I think if a great soldier/author like James Webb, Tim O'Brien or Charles Anderson had written this story it would have been an incredibly powerful book. As it is, it's a great story dulled down by the writing.
Rating:
Summary: small unit action at its best
Review: I first read this book in jr. High school in the 70s and I never forgot it. I later reread it while serving in the marines in the 90s. This book tells of small 5 man squads seeking out the enemy often w/o artillery support. These marines were not recon they were ambush patrols. The chapter where the squads fort is overran is unforgetable. The books author was at the village but he writes about the men and not himself. While in the Corps a Lt. O.West asked me what was the best book on Vietnam I had read I told him "The Village" Only than did I find out it had been written by his father. Later, while serving as a raid instructor I told my marines that this was the book to read if they want to know about patrols and ambushes.
Rating:
Summary: A war classic, glad to see it still in print and holding up
Review: I was at fort page. The book brings back memories. If Capt. West reads this, I would like to visit with him after so many years. The Viet Nam war still seems like yesterday. Capt West wrote what happened.
Rating:
Summary: Young gung ho Marines
Review: In boot camp the DIs are experts at transforming our youth into gung ho Marines. The village shows how these young gung ho lower rank enlisted Marines brought honor to the traditions of the Corp. They combined with Vietnamese counterparts to drive the Viet Cong out of the area. One of the most remarkable incidents describes how one Marine patrolling the village at night fired at a sound made by an enemy moving in the night. He had shot an killed a much feared master killer, a Viet Cong who at one time had been on their side but switched over and managed time after time to get back in the village to kill local vietnamese malitia members.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This book was recommended to me by a vet well before I found it. It is an non-fiction account of the experiences of one squad of Marines working in the "win their hearts and minds" program. The depictions of the bonds that are formed between the Marines and the Vietnamese villagers is reassuring and fresh. The book tells a very emotional tale of Marines dedicated to their cause and country. It is well written and illustrates some idiosyncrasies of trying to get things done in a military bureaucracy.
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