What do you think?
Rate this book
Battlefront Vietnam
180 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1991
5 people want to read
About the author
Tom Carhart
14 books4 followersMilitary historian. West Point Military Academy, Class of 1966. Served in South Vietnam as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division. Has also been a lawyer and a historian for the Department of the Army in Washington, D.C. Earned a Ph.D. in American and military history from Princeton University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 4, 2018
Carhart is intent on rehabilitating the reputation of the US armed forces after the Vietnam war. In doing so he cherrypicks accounts, attempting to cast our military efforts in a better light. He mentions, for example, half the battle of Ia Drang...the half that was successful. Moore and Galloway’s account of the battle is far better and unflinchingly honest.
At times he gets his facts terribly wrong, describing the use of belt fed 40 mm grenade launchers in 1966 and AC-48 gunships armed with 20 mm gatling guns. Neither weapon was used that early in the war.
In his account of the US supported South Vietnamese invasion of Laos in early 1970, Carhart describes a debacle. The South Vietnamese troops are “elite”, yet their commanders described as incompetent. They get hammered by a force that Carhart earlier writes as being on the ropes that very same year. “Clearly, the Communists were losing the war” he writes on page 107. Apparently not. The Laos action as described by Carhart is a disordered route with troops panicking and running from the enemy. He then dismisses that with his final sentence of the chapter.
He states at the beginning of the chapter on the 1972 Easter offensive that the campaign was a South Vietnamese victory- their victory”-and a product of their training. Once again he goes on to describe how they once again panicked, fled, and abandoned their weapons. He chronicles how American B-52 strikes were critical in preventing a disaster.
“Their victory”?
The end of the South Vietnamese government is again described as a result of panicked troops and incompetent leadership, undercutting Carhart’s earlier claims of successful Vietnamization of the war.
The end of the book details the struggles between various communist factions in Southeast Asia, deflating the myth of monolithic communism that fueled US involvement in the war in the first place.
This was written at the height of the Cold War and is ideological in tone. There are books with better balance than this.
Carhart is an apologist who can’t see his own contradictions...or a disingenuous writer who thinks his audience incapable of seeing his deceptions.
At times he gets his facts terribly wrong, describing the use of belt fed 40 mm grenade launchers in 1966 and AC-48 gunships armed with 20 mm gatling guns. Neither weapon was used that early in the war.
In his account of the US supported South Vietnamese invasion of Laos in early 1970, Carhart describes a debacle. The South Vietnamese troops are “elite”, yet their commanders described as incompetent. They get hammered by a force that Carhart earlier writes as being on the ropes that very same year. “Clearly, the Communists were losing the war” he writes on page 107. Apparently not. The Laos action as described by Carhart is a disordered route with troops panicking and running from the enemy. He then dismisses that with his final sentence of the chapter.
He states at the beginning of the chapter on the 1972 Easter offensive that the campaign was a South Vietnamese victory- their victory”-and a product of their training. Once again he goes on to describe how they once again panicked, fled, and abandoned their weapons. He chronicles how American B-52 strikes were critical in preventing a disaster.
“Their victory”?
The end of the South Vietnamese government is again described as a result of panicked troops and incompetent leadership, undercutting Carhart’s earlier claims of successful Vietnamization of the war.
The end of the book details the struggles between various communist factions in Southeast Asia, deflating the myth of monolithic communism that fueled US involvement in the war in the first place.
This was written at the height of the Cold War and is ideological in tone. There are books with better balance than this.
Carhart is an apologist who can’t see his own contradictions...or a disingenuous writer who thinks his audience incapable of seeing his deceptions.
July 20, 2018
This was a very enlightening book about the Vietnam War. I highly encourage anyone interested in the Vietnam War to read it.
November 10, 2012
A good summary of the policies and major battles throughout the Vietnam Conflict.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews