Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account

The VIetnam war is arguably more relevant to Americans than the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq because the agenda was clearer. This book delivers the message that knowledgeable and sympathetic advisors were aware that the will to fight would determine the outcome. Herrington captures this in the latter part of the book. Much of the book is anecdotal with many fascinating episodes that didn't always end well. I believe that sophisticated readers will draw more from this book than those simply seeking war stories. The revelations were perhaps more relevant to me than others, because I was the district senior advisor in the province next door at the same time. But were were both moved to greater regret in 1975 as the North Vietnamese Army swept over the area where we served with counterparts we admired and respected for their acuity and determination to keep South Vietnam out of the communist sphere. It seems obvious that we failed to understand the complexity of the Mideast, seeing the issues in the most simplistic manner as a mirror of how we see ourselves. I know no word in the English language to describe this stupidity adequately, and we too will fall unless we find a way to adjust our view of the world.

I've read a lot of Vietnam books, and this one is good. I didn't rate it a five because I like to leave that for really great books. This is the story of the Phoenix program, from one of the local adviser points of view. Stuart Herrington was an intelligence officer in Europe in the late 1960's before leaving the Army for 7 months. Herrington was then sent to Nam to become an adviser to the Vietnamese local militias. What is very interesting about this book is that America won the Vietnam War in 1971 or so, the North Vietnamese negotiated a peace, the Americans left, the North Vietnamese rested up, and then took all of Vietnam.One lesson I learned from this book is that EVERYTHING is personal, Sonny Corleone is wrong, it's not business, EVERYTHING in the world is personal. When the local politicians steal your money because the one guy is corrupt, you personally dislike the government. The NVA took great advantage of this. The American advisers were able to gain the South Vietnamese trust, but then when they left after a year, the next advisor had to start over. We should have over-lapped a lot more. We also should have left the army over there until we won.

I have read a lot of books on Vietnam. If you want to know the combination of reasons why the North Vietnamese succeeeded, read this book ! Like someone else has said, what a shame the author was shipped back in '72, although one already knows ( from reading this book), what happened over the next 2-3 years. One cannot also help but feel that had America not tired of the war ( and the loss of American lives - for which the recruitment and personnel policies of the Army are greatly to blame !),the outcome may have been different. So bad was the sentiment against returning vets that some of them said they were coming back from Germany or Korea ( out of embarassment and the want to avoid being mistreated by their own countrymen !). I have to say,that as an Australian ( we also sent our men to Vietnam), I cannot get over the treatment meted out to vets upon their return.It disgusts me. The soldiers were not to blame !!Blame the McNamara's !!!

The eventual withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975 reunited Vietnam. This withdrawal was preceded by failed psyops where captured and surrendered Vietminh to Vietcong deceived their Amercan handlers. The cultural differences played a crucial role in the deception.

This book is a scholarly treatise on the ins and outs of the Phoenix program in the Viet Nam war from the perspective of one who was there. I found it to be dry and scholarly. It does not discuss any involvement by the Green Berets or the Navy SEALS.

This is an educational account of what it was like to be an intelligence advisor during the late stages of the war. The author was an army captain who was not enthusiastic about American intervention in Southeast Asia. Mr. Herrington pontificates at length about the intricate dynamic of "winning the hearts and minds" of a people split between wanting freedom from oppression and wanting a better lot in life. Be careful of your bedfellows is the message. He offers stories about trying to convince captured Communist soldiers to work for the South Vietnamese government. Finally, he explains the frustration in the realization that many of the root causes for the success of the Communist agenda were the result of corruption inside the South Vietnamese government system. For other reading, check out "Duster Duty, 1967."

This is an anecdotal first-hand account of the experiences of an intelligence advisor in country during the Vietnam War. It is adequate in presenting the facts and frustrations of the mission for those charged with destroying the Viet Cong (Operation Phoenix), but it is short on the larger perspective of the war or recommendations on improving effectiveness for future conflicts.

I met (then) Captain Herrington briefly when I was assigned to the Phoenix Program. My impression was that he was one of the brightest and most thoughtful Army officers I had ever met. His ability to speak the language and understand and empathize with our Vietnamese allies was a rare thing, in my experience. While historians have evaluated the Phoenix Program as a resounding success, the adviser program was spotty at best. Most of the officers I saw that drew adviser assignments were continually frustrated at their own inability to get their Vietnamese counterpart to do anything worthwhile. Of course, the lack of training, the inability to speak the language, and outright racism contributed to the failures.

If this book is to be believed which I do, Stuart Herrington must be amongst the members of the United States military who abstained from committing war crimes in accordance with international law. Having said that the American war should not have been fought in the first place as it was a struggle of the Vietnamese people against foreign occupation, so my sympathy lies with the Viet Cong

Le memorie di un consigliere americano nella penultima fase della guerra vietnamita.Lettura scorrevole, bei personaggi che balzano fuori dalle pagine, tutto quello che pensate ci debba essere in una storia del genere: combattimenti, guerriglia, corruzione, "scrounging", figure controverse da una parte e dall'altra.. umanità, valore e romanticismo.Certo, sembra evidente che gli episodi siano i più significativi, i più belli, di un "tour" di venti mesi, ignoprando le settimane di burocratica quotidianità (ma senza trascurare i riferimenti al lavoro tutto sommato d'ufficio di un ufficiale che fa intelligence), ma emerge la passione di uno straniero che, per la sua interazione, impara a conoscere una civiltà tanto diversa (ed apprezzarla, con tutti i limiti che può avere una società in guerra) e i suoi compagni d'armi, a rispettare il nemico e a farsi coinvolgere in una causa tanto lontana da casa quanto, poi, perduta.

Herrington has certainly produced one of the more knowledgeable and sympathetic American accounts of one part of the US war against Vietnam. Having said that one of the flaws with any US account from a pro-interventionist perspective is that it inevitably ignores the political dimension ,focusing instead on the effectiveness or not of tactics,strategies and programmes,which equally inevitably leads to a measure of success based on numbers of Vietnamese killed or "neutralised".The underlying logic of Herrington's position is in essence therefore no different from lunatic revisionist ideologues such as Moylar et al,namely ,that with the "correct" methods the Vietnamese revolution could have been defeated and American will imposed on the Vietnamese under the guise of assisting them (or at least those deemed suitable for such selfless American goodwill)to create a viable State in the Southern part of their country which was supposed to have been re-united following elections in 1956.The notion that the US prescence was an un-wanted and wholly destructive intervention against the tide of Vietnamese nationalism is, therefore,just as un-thinkable to Herrington as it is to the deluded ideologues who began the deceitfull and shamefull attack on the largely rural population of Vietnam first through the French and later with direct invasion and occupation with horrific consequences for the Vietnamese people.Unfortunately,despite his thoroughness and insights Herrington can never understand that the struggle was fundamentally a political one and moreover one in which the US was never going to be able to compete with the forces of Vietnames nationalism .

To be honest I have not started reading this book as the print is quite small and the pages are aged. I need a magnifying glass. However, what I have read is interesting, for Vietnam nerds. I am going to read it and it is worth the money but it is only for somebody who can persevere. Quality is about 40% but it is an old book. I'd buy it again.

A very interesting book; especially if you were there. This book is a reprint of his previous book "Silence was a Weapon".