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Blue's Bastards: A True Story of Valor Under Fire
Blue's Bastards is an inspiring story of duty and obligation, and of honorable men defending their ideals both on the battlefield and in the courtroom, and, for once, winning.
215 pages, Hardcover
First published May 4, 1991
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July 30, 2022
Change of rating on July 30, 2022.
My opinion on this book changed after I read Gary D. Solis’s book SON THANG. Herrod has concealed the true nature of his involvement in and responsibility for the Son Thang massacre.
On February 19, 1970, a Marine "killer team" of five men, led and incited by Private Randy Herrod, who had never previously served on such a team, shot and murdered sixteen Vietnamese women and children, aged from three to fifty, in three different areas of an obscure South Vietnamese hamlet located southwest of Da Nang that was known to the Marines as Son Thang. The term killer team, as the author explains, was local to the conflict and to the regiment. There was no agreed definition, except to kill the enemy. The team had been told to shoot first and ask questions later. As the team lader put it: "We'd fire instinctively, just the way we were trained." They were trained to believe that since the Viet Cong did not recognize non-combatants, they should not either.
The appointment of Randy Herrod out of all people for the post of the team leader only aggravated the already atrocity-producing situation. Herrod, who portrays himself in his memoir as a calm, benevolent person, was in reality a different person. According to his fellow Marines, the machinegunner was cool under fire and aggressive. Lieutenant Carney, who assembled the killer team, called him a natural leader with experience in such matters and claimed that Herrod had served on killer teams before. Herrod had never served on a killer team prior to Son Thang, though, and his taking over the leadership of the squad was a huge mistake. He combined the calculated aggression of Charlie Company's Mad Dog Medina with inexperience. According to Solis, he bore the bulk of the responsibility for the massacre. However, at the trials, he was represented by four civilian lawyers from America in addition to his assigned military counsel. He was the first, and only, one of the killer team's members to testify that enemy machine gun fire had been heard when the team patrolled Son Thang. This was an outright lie, just like his claims, which he voices in his memoir, that he had mistook the sixteen women and children for Viet Cong men when he had ordered his team to fire. The court still believed Herrod, though, and he was acquitted.
SON THANG is to be read as an antidote to Herrod's memoir. Solis had done an outstanding job with both research and writing. As someone who has served in the Marine Corps for twenty-six years, he knows whereof he speaks, and it shows. This book is an engaging, insighful, and well-researched account of the Son Thang massacre. I highly recommend it.
———————-
This book was not what I expected, but the surprise was a pleasant one.
Lance Corporal Randall Herrod, a Marine who served in Vietnam, centers his memoir around his famous platoon commander, Oliver North, and his special relationship with him. First, Herrod saved North's life. Then, North came back to save Herrod's. These two events constitute the main mystery in this engaging work, so I will not elaborate on how the two saved each other's lives and spoil the fun for you. Instead, I would like to emphasize the other aspects of the author's account that made this book a more enjoyable read that I could have imagined.
The first thing that impressed me is Herrod's sophisticated voice. His writing is simple and clear, humorous and compelling. Despite the fact that I have read many memoirs of combat service in Vietnam, his stood out to me with its on-point comments about the structure of the Marine Corps and the importance of camaraderie among the men. As the author puts it, team spirit was above everything in the platoon. He defines a Marine combat unit as a "society fighting for its life." A platoon made up of eccentrics who get up every morning and only then decide whether they are in the mood to fight today will not do. The Marine who says that he did it his way is lying in a graveyard surrounded by his buddies. The most important thing in a combat unit, Herrod emphasizes, is respect for the person who gives the orders. If his men do not have confidence in him, if they believe that he is cowardly or foolhardy, they will mess up either because they will do something he did not order them to do or did not do something he ordered them to do, which will lead to unnecessary deaths.
The second thing I liked about Herrod and his thinking is that he, in a rare expression of understanding for the Vietnamese people's plight, acknowledges that the villagers whom he saw, or interacted with, on a daily basis had as much reason to dislike him and his comrades if they were loyal to the South Vietnamese government as if they were Viet Cong sympathizers because "wherever we went we brought trouble – and usually death." He realized that the rural population did not care about politics even when the Communists filled their heads with propaganda. They reminded him of the people back in his native Oklahoma, who wanted to live in peace and cared about elections only because they were concerned that the next guy to get elected might be worse than the previous one. With regret, the author recognizes that the Vietnamese villagers were the greatest victims of what was going on in their country. I wish more of the military and civilian leaders who directed the American involvement in the Vietnam conflict had shared Herrod's thoughts. It would also have helped many of the American soldiers to break through the dehumanization of the native population that was prevalent in the American Army. If they had understood that the majority of the villagers were not Viet Cong supporters or American admirers, but just people trying to survive as best as they could amidst the destructive violence around them, they would have treated them more humanely.
Most importantly, those interested in Oliver North will discover a wealth of information that might well change their opinion of North as a person, or at least show them another side of him. The Marine Corps platoon commander became notorious during the Iran-Contra scandal, when he was tried for conspiring to defraud America by channeling the profits from American arms sales to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The convictions were reversed on appeal, but North's reputation was tarnished. As Herrod demonstrates in his book, in Vietnam, North was extraordinarily courageous and a dynamic, dutiful leader. He was disparaged by other commanders for what they believed to be a "guns-guts-and-glory" attitude and excessive preoccupation with safety. As the author reveals, however, North's attentiveness to detail and the personal guilt he felt when he lost a man made his platoon one of the best performing and safest. When Herrod had arrived in Vietnam as a gunner, he had heard veterans say that the life expectancy of gunners during a fight was between three and seven seconds because Viet Cong immediately located where the machine guns were and tried to kill the gunners first. However, under North's leadership, he did not suffer any damage, nor did the majority of other Marines.
BLUE'S BASTARDS was a great read for me. I have to admit that Herrod does not contribute much new to my knowledge of what fighting in Vietnam was like, except his brief account of the Son Thang massacre of sixteen civilians by the Marine Corps in 1970 from his perspective. However, the author's work is remarkable for the interesting thoughts it is interspersed with. Learning about Oliver North was also useful. This book is a brilliant memoir.
My opinion on this book changed after I read Gary D. Solis’s book SON THANG. Herrod has concealed the true nature of his involvement in and responsibility for the Son Thang massacre.
On February 19, 1970, a Marine "killer team" of five men, led and incited by Private Randy Herrod, who had never previously served on such a team, shot and murdered sixteen Vietnamese women and children, aged from three to fifty, in three different areas of an obscure South Vietnamese hamlet located southwest of Da Nang that was known to the Marines as Son Thang. The term killer team, as the author explains, was local to the conflict and to the regiment. There was no agreed definition, except to kill the enemy. The team had been told to shoot first and ask questions later. As the team lader put it: "We'd fire instinctively, just the way we were trained." They were trained to believe that since the Viet Cong did not recognize non-combatants, they should not either.
The appointment of Randy Herrod out of all people for the post of the team leader only aggravated the already atrocity-producing situation. Herrod, who portrays himself in his memoir as a calm, benevolent person, was in reality a different person. According to his fellow Marines, the machinegunner was cool under fire and aggressive. Lieutenant Carney, who assembled the killer team, called him a natural leader with experience in such matters and claimed that Herrod had served on killer teams before. Herrod had never served on a killer team prior to Son Thang, though, and his taking over the leadership of the squad was a huge mistake. He combined the calculated aggression of Charlie Company's Mad Dog Medina with inexperience. According to Solis, he bore the bulk of the responsibility for the massacre. However, at the trials, he was represented by four civilian lawyers from America in addition to his assigned military counsel. He was the first, and only, one of the killer team's members to testify that enemy machine gun fire had been heard when the team patrolled Son Thang. This was an outright lie, just like his claims, which he voices in his memoir, that he had mistook the sixteen women and children for Viet Cong men when he had ordered his team to fire. The court still believed Herrod, though, and he was acquitted.
SON THANG is to be read as an antidote to Herrod's memoir. Solis had done an outstanding job with both research and writing. As someone who has served in the Marine Corps for twenty-six years, he knows whereof he speaks, and it shows. This book is an engaging, insighful, and well-researched account of the Son Thang massacre. I highly recommend it.
———————-
This book was not what I expected, but the surprise was a pleasant one.
Lance Corporal Randall Herrod, a Marine who served in Vietnam, centers his memoir around his famous platoon commander, Oliver North, and his special relationship with him. First, Herrod saved North's life. Then, North came back to save Herrod's. These two events constitute the main mystery in this engaging work, so I will not elaborate on how the two saved each other's lives and spoil the fun for you. Instead, I would like to emphasize the other aspects of the author's account that made this book a more enjoyable read that I could have imagined.
The first thing that impressed me is Herrod's sophisticated voice. His writing is simple and clear, humorous and compelling. Despite the fact that I have read many memoirs of combat service in Vietnam, his stood out to me with its on-point comments about the structure of the Marine Corps and the importance of camaraderie among the men. As the author puts it, team spirit was above everything in the platoon. He defines a Marine combat unit as a "society fighting for its life." A platoon made up of eccentrics who get up every morning and only then decide whether they are in the mood to fight today will not do. The Marine who says that he did it his way is lying in a graveyard surrounded by his buddies. The most important thing in a combat unit, Herrod emphasizes, is respect for the person who gives the orders. If his men do not have confidence in him, if they believe that he is cowardly or foolhardy, they will mess up either because they will do something he did not order them to do or did not do something he ordered them to do, which will lead to unnecessary deaths.
The second thing I liked about Herrod and his thinking is that he, in a rare expression of understanding for the Vietnamese people's plight, acknowledges that the villagers whom he saw, or interacted with, on a daily basis had as much reason to dislike him and his comrades if they were loyal to the South Vietnamese government as if they were Viet Cong sympathizers because "wherever we went we brought trouble – and usually death." He realized that the rural population did not care about politics even when the Communists filled their heads with propaganda. They reminded him of the people back in his native Oklahoma, who wanted to live in peace and cared about elections only because they were concerned that the next guy to get elected might be worse than the previous one. With regret, the author recognizes that the Vietnamese villagers were the greatest victims of what was going on in their country. I wish more of the military and civilian leaders who directed the American involvement in the Vietnam conflict had shared Herrod's thoughts. It would also have helped many of the American soldiers to break through the dehumanization of the native population that was prevalent in the American Army. If they had understood that the majority of the villagers were not Viet Cong supporters or American admirers, but just people trying to survive as best as they could amidst the destructive violence around them, they would have treated them more humanely.
Most importantly, those interested in Oliver North will discover a wealth of information that might well change their opinion of North as a person, or at least show them another side of him. The Marine Corps platoon commander became notorious during the Iran-Contra scandal, when he was tried for conspiring to defraud America by channeling the profits from American arms sales to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The convictions were reversed on appeal, but North's reputation was tarnished. As Herrod demonstrates in his book, in Vietnam, North was extraordinarily courageous and a dynamic, dutiful leader. He was disparaged by other commanders for what they believed to be a "guns-guts-and-glory" attitude and excessive preoccupation with safety. As the author reveals, however, North's attentiveness to detail and the personal guilt he felt when he lost a man made his platoon one of the best performing and safest. When Herrod had arrived in Vietnam as a gunner, he had heard veterans say that the life expectancy of gunners during a fight was between three and seven seconds because Viet Cong immediately located where the machine guns were and tried to kill the gunners first. However, under North's leadership, he did not suffer any damage, nor did the majority of other Marines.
BLUE'S BASTARDS was a great read for me. I have to admit that Herrod does not contribute much new to my knowledge of what fighting in Vietnam was like, except his brief account of the Son Thang massacre of sixteen civilians by the Marine Corps in 1970 from his perspective. However, the author's work is remarkable for the interesting thoughts it is interspersed with. Learning about Oliver North was also useful. This book is a brilliant memoir.
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