Doug McComas Books

American involvement in Vietnam started in 1945, immediately after World War II, and ended with the evacuation of the South Vietnam Embassy in Saigon in 1975. Throughout the thirty years our participation ranged from cautious observer, to arms supplier, to advisors, to active combatants, than back to arms supplier. It started with an ardent determination to stop tumbling dominos and ended with (what I would consider) a numbed indifference.

In the summer of 1945 World War II was winding down. A Vietnamese patriot named Ho Chi Min appealed to the west for independence from France, after quoting part of our Declaration of Independence in a similar document he had drawn up for an independent Vietnam. Trained in Moscow, but beholding to no one, he was rejected. Instead, the free world opted to not interfere with the French reoccupying its Indochinese colonies (consisting of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) following the departure of the defeated Japanese. The west preferred a strong France to counter the growing Soviet threat in Europe. Remembering they were once colonies of an oppressive court, America opted to only provide humanitarian support.

By early 1947 the Truman Doctrine had become the cornerstone of American policy toward the Soviet Union. Its principle tools were propping up anticommunist regimes and strengthening alliances with like-minded countries. In 1948 Mao’s Chinese communists subdued the most populous nation in the world, and America began to reconsider her colonialist phobias. In November of 1950 Mao’s armies attacked US forces in Korea who were mopping up the North Koreans following their invasion of the South. As a result America switched to supplying the French in Indochina with surplus WW II weaponry.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and his lieutenants led the Viet Minh revolutionary forces against the French for nine years. The French, too often, lethargically manned forts and stuck to the roads. The Viet Minh moved freely about the countryside.

Unconcerned (as communists always are) with their own losses, Ho fought a war of attrition against his French enemy who tried to keep its national casualties down by sending in generous levies of ruthless troops from its North African Colonies and its famous Foreign Legionnaires. The strategy didn’t work. The French population was tired of war.

Caught in the middle were the Vietnamese peasants. They were roughly handled by both sides, and they considered both sides to be trespassers in their world that centered only on their family and their village. As always, French arrogance in running the war and stabilizing the local government didn’t help. The counter-insurgency war, which had started well for the French, culminated in agonizing defeat. In 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, a place referred to as Hell in a Very Small Place, the French lost the cream of their army. Shortly afterwards, the UN split Indochina into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17th Parallel. The communists, with their leader Ho Chi Minh, acquired the north. The west, with its leader Ngo Dinh Diem, got the south along with a million, predominantly Catholic, North Vietnamese refugees. The arrogance of high minded politicians in carving up Eastern Europe in the Treaty of Versailles was shown to Indochina. Deeply instilled nationalist traditions and rivalries were snubbed. None realized Ho Chi Minh’s determination to have a united Vietnam.

In step with the Truman Doctrine of containment, America immediately sent advisors (both military and civilian) and material for both military and civil construction projects to bolster their new ally. A war of rhetoric between North Vietnam and South Vietnam immediately erupted. In 1959 North Vietnam switched to using active force against the fledgling and very corrupt Republic of Vietnam. In a few years South Vietnam began to buckle. Aching from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, in came America with more military advisors. It would only get worse.

Two lingering misunderstandings from this era would plague American policy until near the end. First, so stunned was America by the Chinese intervention in Korea that fear of it repeating in Vietnam would limit involvement to an unwinnable Strategic Defensive war. Second, the monolith of communism was a myth. A better study of Vietnam’s history would have revealed its intense hatred of the Chinese. This too would be realized, but only after America’s determination had turned to indifference.

With the Eisenhower administration’s mindset of nuclear retaliation being the future (who needs a military-industrial complex when you can just nuke them?) the US Army and Marine Corps were nearly stripped of a mission. Some deemed them anachronisms. Not wanting to risk a war with a world power with such a mindset, the Chinese communists introduced People’s War; the Bolshevik Russians called it Wars of Liberation; the west called it Guerilla Warfare. Stirring up people on nearly every continent against oppressive regimes left over by Western Colonization and greed, and promising a worker’s utopia, the communists went to work.

The Kennedy Administration replaced Eisenhower’s and immediately realized you can’t blow everyone off the map for the slightest provocation. A policy of flexible response was developed, big bombs for big threats, advisors and arms supply (counter-insurgency) for little threats. Unfortunately the conventional warfare end (tanks and artillery) that American ground forces had always excelled at were given second billing. Kennedy’s Ivy-League Best and Brightest told the military to get on the counter-insurgency bandwagon if one wanted to be promoted.

Blind to the enemies predicted response, American policy became confused. Hanoi was out to win and not willing to play along. America wanted a low key guerilla war and the North gave them one, but to keep things off kilter, also gave them a conventional war. America started to meet the challenge but wasted its firepower trying to pacify the countryside. Isolating the battlefield (keeping the North Vietnamese in the north) should have been the goal, and the job of winning hearts and minds should have been left to the Saigon government. The North settled into another decade of warfare by attrition.

In April of 1975 I was a thirteen and was considered wealthy by my friends because I had a paper route. Serving seventy-five households in North Tacoma, I could complete my route in thirty-five minutes and pocket about seventy dollars per month. I enjoyed the job except for the end of the month collecting. Like most unpleasant memories, they fade, but one particular month I will never forget.

The usual routine of collecting for the paper went like this: I would knock on the door, an adult would let me in, I would watch the evening news, usually with the man of the house, and the wife would scrounge for the four dollars and fifty cents or write me a check. What stood out about this month was that in each house the same vivid footage was being shown on every TV: The Fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The footage I remember most was not the helicopter evacuations from the American Embassy Compound, but one of the last battles between the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the NVA. I recently found it on YouTube. A platoon strength ARVN unit was defending a bridge. The footage contained blood, confusion, and lots of spray firing.

In each house I can remember none of the usual words of greeting, just a straight face, a signal to enter, and then being left alone to watch. The man of the house did not turn to see who had entered his home, much less to greet me. I received few, if any, tips that month.

I was born in 1961 just as American involvement in Southeast Asia was ramping up. By the time I entered kindergarten, the US military was fully engaged. In sixth grade (it would have had to have been about February of 1973) I remember a Weekly Reader article telling about the withdrawal of all US combat forces from Southeast Asia. I have few other memories. My parents, somewhat, kept up on the war. I remember newscasters Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley speaking, all three with the latest casualty figures on a board behind them. I remember watching a special about an army unit fighting in the Central Highlands. I remember a man at my church who had lost his leg below the knee. He never said he lost it “in Vietnam.” He said he lost it “over there.” I never found out how because I knew it was impolite to ask. My last memory was of a Vietnamese family my church sponsored; they were real Boat People. All were quiet and shy but intensely hard working and very generous with everything.

Since then the war has received comparatively little notice. I guess most want to brush bad memories aside. At the bookstore about a twentieth of the space dedicated to World War II is reserved for the Vietnam War. This is understandable because most of the books concerning combat in Vietnam are about Search and Destroy missions which are not nearly as exciting as airborne drops into the French Boscage during World War II. For the reader interested in the political side of the Vietnam War, many titles are so full of finger pointing and venom spitting that it’s difficult to form an accurate representation.

Having written on World War II and the Korean War, I have decided to take a crack at this war. I admit I am entering it as a rabid anti-communist and not very kindly disposed toward those who protested the war, but I’m older now, ready to make peace with an era my children know pretty much nothing about.

I started writing shortly after our youngest was born eighteen years ago. Having four daughters, there was much to write about. But stories about little girls dealing with a foul-mouthed, elderly neighbor, or finding a runaway princess in a barn loft weren’t keeping my attention.

I’ve studied military history most of my life. My mother took me to see Patton and Waterloo on the big screen when I was nine. She persuaded me to sit through a twenty part series of War and Peace by simply promising the Battle of Borodino was only so many episodes away. That hooked me. Not long after, l could name Napoleon’s Marshals and American Civil War Generals quicker than my peers could name who Bart Starr played for.

My real concentration in writing started about 2005. I had completed a correspondence course through Children’s Institute of Literature and was ready to take a shot at chapter books. Tired of reading about World War II through American and British eyes, I opted to write period stories about the Germans.

My first book was Karl with the 12th SS. (It was a steep learning curve). The protagonist was a boy growing up in World War II Germany and fighting in the Hitler Youth Division. Karl participated in the Hitler Youth and was an ammo bearer on one of the city of Hamburg’s flak towers. His older brothers served in different branches of the Wermacht. He and his family were not Nazis; they retained their Christian faith, but like many, they were simply swept up in the times. Karl joined the 12th SS because his friends did.

Keeping my characters consistent, developing their personalities through the thread of the story, and not letting the plot wander were lessons learned.

I sent the complete eighty-five thousand word manuscript to Writer’s Edge, a literature critiquing service. They rejected it because of potential harsh content. I was informed that twelve to fourteen year old boys have their books bought by their mothers. When those mothers go to a bookstore, they usually have the boy’s younger siblings with them, and there is no way she would purchase anything with a swastika or SS runes on it. Talk about knowing your market! In the end, they said, “The story has merit.” That was encouragement enough.

Next I started writing for high school students because their mothers aren’t so uptight about perceived content; they’re usually just happy the kid is reading. I expanded the story of the German family in World War II (calling it The Schultz Family Saga) into a six volume epic. Sweeping in content, the planned story spanned from pre-World War I to sometime post-World War II. Off I went. Fortunately I was able to build on Karl with the 12th SS. After a year of work, my personal friend and author, Douglas Bond, told me it was unlikely a publisher would be interested in a multi-volume work by a first time author. So I regrouped again and wrote Return to Tarawa.

This time Writer’s Edge liked the three chapters and synopsis. I sent the manuscript to a few publishers and literary agents, but they weren’t impressed. Those who answered encouraged me to keep at it.

My next book was about a young man growing up with missionary parents in post-World War II South Korea. The story had a seduction scene in it, not for spice (we made sure it wasn’t), but to show how big a jerk my protagonist was, and how much he would grow during the Korean War. My writing group, The Ink Blots, had a lot of fun helping me with plenty of suggestions on how to improve the chapter.

About halfway through writing Back to Korea, Douglas Bond suggested I write a book set in Italy. (Then we and our wives could tour Italy and, Lord willing, promote our books together). So I put the Korean story aside and wrote Before Monte Casino. That work went very well. Set in World War II, a group of allied soldiers from around the world fake a pilgrimage to Saint Benedict’s famous monastery to help an Italian friend. Just as I was getting into it, that work had to be set aside.

By now it was November 2011. Douglas Bond had asked me to coauthor a biography on Girolamo Savonarola (due out March 2014 with Evangelical Press). The opportunity to work with an established author was not something to pass up, so I quickly said, “Yes.” No sooner than I had agreed, he asked if I could have it completed in sixty days. After ten years of hearing my kids vent about their English teacher’s (the same Douglas Bond’s) deadlines, I was now getting a full broadside. Thirty thousand words on a Florentine monk I knew nothing about; Doug looked at me like it would be a weekend project. Off I went researching, writing, and answering a plethora of emails from Doug that offered advice, encouragement, and sources. Bond was gracious, not only for putting my name alongside his, but also for the hours of one on one time. The best lesson was on word-killing. The slow process of evaluating each word and deciding whether to keep it or murder it helped the flow of the story. When Savonarola was complete, I realized everything I had ever written needed to be put under the knife.

I finished Before Monte Casino and sent it to Writer’s Edge, but they rejected it -- too many editorial errors. Next I completed Back to Korea.

In October 2013, my wife, Heidi, tired of my whining about punctuation, offered to help. She edited Return to Tarawa, and I recently submitted it to a book contest with Deep Water Publishers.

The work goes on.