Memories of a Lost War

Abstract

Twenty-seven years after the fall of Saigon, memories of the Vietnam War remain vivid among those who served there. It was an all-consuming struggle, and those who were involved in it still feel compelled to tell their stories, to try to make sense of their experiences and to try to justify all of the sacrifices for what was, on the American and South Vietnamese side, a lost cause. John Laurence, who served three tours in South Vietnam as a reporter for CBS News, found that, in the years after he left in 1970, the war became an "obsession" (p. 88). The writing of his massive memoir helped him "unravel the colossal tangle of memories knotted in my mind" and to "expel the demons that made my war go on and on" (p. 88). Lam Quang Thi, a general in the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), watched his army and nation collapse and eventually felt compelled to tell the story of what he still views as a noble cause. He believes that the French and American wars in Vietnam, despite their failures, "bought time for the Free World to regroup, marshall its energy, and to finally win the Cold War" (p. 4). David Hackworth, a career soldier, cannot "hold back my memories of Vietnam: the stench of swampy Mekong paddies, the angry snap of AK-47 rounds, the crump of incoming mortars; the billowing red and yellow flames of exploding napalm; the sour smell of gunpowder drifting in the black smoke; and the one-million-candlelight flares lighting up the battlefields where American men and boys, who knew the whole lousy enterprise was futile, fought and died" (p. i). He [End Page 161] writes to honor his "brothers-in-arms" and to convince posterity that there was "a smarter way to fight in Vietnam" (p. ii).