Combat Recon: My Year With The ARVN

by Robert D. Parrish

The author describes his experiences as a young first lieutenant during the Vietnam War, when he was an advisor to an infantry batallion of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam

Genres: Military Fiction

291 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1991

Reviews

[Michael Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I said in another review, the Vietnam war is the most misunderstood and the most inaccurately reported and the most lied-about war, probably in United States history.
Today, 2020, you can see on social media apparently young people who have been so propagandized, so lied to, they believe, or claim to believe, the United States "invaded" Vietnam!
Somehow, they have missed all the facts about that conflict, including the most important one: there was a war because North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam.
South Vietnam was a treaty ally so the U.S. was bound to go to the aid of the victim of aggression.
Some people try to claim the war was "only" a civil war, that the Viet Cong were South Vietnamese rebelling against the government.
In fact, North Vietnam's General Giap was the commander of the Viet Cong as well as of the North Vietnamese Army -- and apparently one of the great military commanders of the 20th century, if one can accept barbarity and cruelty, including torture, to prisoners and to civilians, as part of military greatness.
Another distortion is that the South Vietnamese Army did not pull its own weight, that its troops wouldn't fight.
Robert D. Parrish spent a year fighting beside the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam, ARVN, and he recounts tale after tale after tale of courage and heroism by his fellow warriors.
This is a very important book, but it has very few reviews here. That is a shame.
Parrish died almost two years ago, in February of 2018, after a gallant career: He was wounded twice and was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, two Bronze Stars, the Air Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, along with numerous other awards, including the Ranger Tab and Senior Parachutist Badge. Between tours he served as a Ranger instructor in what is now the 6th Ranger Training Battalion, Camp Rudder, Fla. Later he was awarded two Meritorious Service Medals and the Legion of Merit.
He rose through the ranks, retiring as lieutenant colonel, and he wrote other books, which I want to find.
Col. Parrish was a hero. He deserves lots of praise, but perhaps even more for his efforts, as in this book, at telling the truth about a terrible war, one our country was dragged into, and one in which the political leaders of these United States did nearly as much harm as the imperialist aggressors of North Vietnam.

[Chris the Protagonist Antagonist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and a half stars. This is a first person account about a rarely well written viewpoint of an american adviser leading on the front lines with the South Vietnam Army. There is plenty of action with several near death escapes of the author's life. I highly recommend it to expand the bigger picture of the Vietnam War in general and the book adds perspective to the war's heart of assisting the South Vietnamese in liberating themselves of foreign communist rule. I learned some new things I probably would not have gotten anywhere else without reading this book, very glad I bought it for one dollar at my library's book sale.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting book to read- so much of the literature on Vietnam is written from the US perspective, and seeing how the Vietnamese experienced the war was sobering. The author's writing style is effective, and the stories he relates- which includes dropping captured mortars out of airplanes- are insane. I guess the one thing I found odd was how casualties were addressed- they were just numbers at the end of contact to be calculated. The ending however, was totally unexpected and really shocking, considering the ultimate futility of everything the book has built up, as the entire recondo platoon is killed in after an ammunition bunker explodes. It's a short read, and while the narrative has an obvious perspective and bias- there's no real examination of how the war began or why it was fought- I did want more context from the author. Many of the locations were hard to locate, and the maps included were hard to understand unless you already knew what you were looking at. However, on the whole, a solid read.