Book Reviews & Books of Interest

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After Tet: The Bloodiest Year °f Vietnam

Ronald H. Spector. New York: Free Press, 992. 390 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. Photos.

⁴²4.95 ($22.45)

^viewed by Lieutenant General Ernest • Cheatham, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

, How did the United States lose the war *ⁿ Vietnam? Why were we there? Why 'd the war last so long? Why didn’t we "'in? With these questions. Dr. Spector Establishes the framework on which he ^evelops

ership aware that the military must have clear, obtainable political goals if it is to define sound strategy and tactics.

Dr. Spector also details some of the appalling policies at the tactical level. Such as:

>• the system of changing field comman­ders every six months—officers and, more important, the men they led, were deprived of the opportunity to learn from experience;

> the malemployment of combat units— to guard bridges, culverts, and rear

thought that we were fighting and win­ning a war, and, more importantly, that these actions would be beneficial to our country and appreciated by its people. To his credit, when Spector examines the racial and drug problems that manifested themselves in the latter part of the war he succinctly analyzes their causes, while treating the soldiers and Marines who fought in close combat with the honor and respect that they so richly deserve.

Of particular interest is the author’s thesis that the Vietnam experience closely

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^'tical period on the conduct and ^ength of the war.

The book commences with an in- ^ls'Ve examination of the Johnson • ^ministration and its supporting mil­^ary establishment. The reader is Provided sufficient examples of how ^e shallow and myopic views and obons of both the politicians and the ^{1 Itar}y ensured that, no matter how _i( ^any tactical victories the U.S. mil- _w^ary might win, the United States °uld lose the strategic war. Key , ^lnts analyzed range from President his r°ⁿ f°h^{nson s} decision to place Y '^Jreat Society programs above the _[()^le;^nam War on his list of priorities,

the 9 *^na<f^ecl^uac'^es °f leadership in bouth Vietnamese army and the

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_                                ,                      For a variety of reasons—including domestic political concerns—the top leaders of the

grates how the lack of a national Johnson administration were reluctant to set firm goals in Vietnam. This hesitancy

“ensured that... the United States would lose the strategic war.”

ofte*'^ ⁰*⁵j^ect*^ve produced poor,

sio ^c°^ntradictory, military deci- |.₍n|¹|^{S b}y General William C. Westmore-

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'an [^nat‘^onal political purposes, the civil- 'hu ^Cab^ers wanted maximum flexibility; j_e .’ ^lhey were hesitant to set firm ob- j. Ves. I_{n one e}pj_Sode, Secretary of De- Clifford advises the President *he i cf P^{eace t£}dks must continue through ti_0n Democratic National Conven- [the ^ecause> "if ^we do anything to wreck Jhr ®°bby [Kennedy] shoots up and

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band, it appears that the senior mil-

areas—which denied U.S. forces any op­portunity to wrest the initiative from the North Vietnamese Army;

►                   the excesses of the support establish­ment, with its post exchanges and air- conditioned buildings; and,

►                   the abdication of responsibility by so many leaders—e.g., systems analysts were allowed to make battlefield deci­sions and White House cronies often de­termined the time, place, and direction of air strikes.

To those who served in Vietnam dur­ing this time, the book’s accounts of in­dividual and unit heroism will bring back those glory days when, in our naivete, we

resembled that of World War I. Dr. Spec- tor draws a convincing parallel between the perceptions of those in Washington and Hanoi—and the decisions that sprang from them—to those made by some World War I generals: Haig in 1916, Niv- elle in 1917, and Ludendorf in 1918. He states, “As in World War I. each side grossly underestimated the determination and staying power of the other. Both sides believed that if they persevered, the op­ponent would finally capitulate. Both sides always conceived themselves to be on the offensive, always on the brink of winning against an opponent who was near the breaking point.”

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Despite proclamations of success by both North Vietnam and the United States, 1968, the bloodiest year of the war, ended as it had begun, with battlefield stalemate and diplomatic deadlock—conditions that would prevail until 1973. The result, as Spector poignantly observes: . . caught between an American government that could never make up its mind and a com­munist government that refused ever to change its mind, thousands of brave and dedicated men and women gave up their lives for no good purpose.”

Dr. Spector has produced a readable and well-researched study of this difficult period in our history. For the leaders of today, it is a lesson in how not to fight a war; for all Americans, it is an admoni­tion that we must turn yesterday’s errors into better preparations for tomorrow.

In 1968, General Cheatham commanded the 2d Bat­talion, 5th Marines during the Battle of Hue. For his heroic leadership during the battle, he received the Navy Cross. .

Gray Raiders of the Sea: How Eight Confederate Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce

Chester H. Hearn. Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing, 1992. 351 pp. Append, lllus. Ind. Maps. Notes.

Photos. $24.95.

Reviewed by John Stanchak

Chester Hearn’s book is a serious non­fiction work about something mighty like piracy or privateering. It recounts the es­capades of eight Confederate warships that attacked Union merchant shipping on the open ocean, looted the vessels, then— frequently—sank them. In international law this activity, looking a lot like priva­teering and stuff of Errol Flynn-type swashbucklers, is called commerce raid­ing. While in practice it appears much dif­ferent from a submarine attack on a mer­chant convoy, the point behind it is the same: bring the war home to the enemy, disrupt his economy, and demoralize his mercantile fleet. It is a deadly earnest in­strument of wartime statecraft and diplo­macy and a hazardous military policy and exercise. It is also, as readers should hap­pily discover, not rocket science.

Hearn writes about the Civil War, one of the last truly low-tech periods in the American military record. The story he tells unfolds as it did in his'tory. After some light discussion of international law and political objectives, wartime agen­das, financing, and ship construction, the rest is left up to sailing canvas, coal-fired engines, capricious weather, muzzle-load­ing firearms, luck, and men with experi­ence and nerve.

The ships at the center of Hearn’s story are the Sumter, Nashville, Georgia, Tal­lahassee, Chickamauga, Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah. They are com­manded by such colorful sailors as Raphael Semmes—a man noted for his temper and his distinctive waxed mus­tache—and John Newland Maffitt, an old salt who survived vigorous Union pursuit only to lose a son, most of a crew, and his own health to yellow fever. Their crews are usually made up of foreign na­tionals fighting for pay and a percentage of the booty—men who could just as easily be called pirates as mercenaries.

Their enemies are powerful and, occa­sionally, worthy adversaries: Union naval officers such as Napoleon Collins, who spends most of his Civil War service hunt­ing commerce raiders, or John Winslow, who takes on and sinks the Alabama. Their friends often are unsung or for­gotten Confederate patriots: James Bul­loch, who forsakes service at sea to arrange for the financing and supply of the raiders; Navy Secretary Stephen Mal­lory, who promotes the commerce-raid­ing strategy; and many earnest members of the underfunded and understaffed for­eign service.

Hearn contends that U.S. merchant shipping was competitive with British maritime commerce in the days just be­fore the Civil War and likely would have overtaken it in the second half of the 19th century if the Civil War had not inter­vened. The Confederate commerce raiders, however, so crippled U.S. shipping in the 1860s—says Heam—that the British were able to maintain their dominance through the early 1900s. The final chapter, “The Alabama Claims,” restates that assertion and explains why the $15.5 million the British paid the United States after the war was a paltry penance for sometimes giv­ing tacit support to the Rebel raiders and allowing some commerce raiders to be built in English shipyards.

Frankly, argument and debate aren’t the most appealing features of Gray Raiders. As a writer, Hearn needs to grow. And the individuals credited with editing his work missed such problems as dropping the names of individuals and ships into stories without precedent or introduction and allowing some con­troversial statements to go unsupported. For example, Hearn declares flatly that Britain enjoyed unusual prosperity dur­ing the Civil War years—a point some economic historians would quarrel with. They also ignore inconsistencies in minor details, such as allowing Hearn to state

the Florida carried 19 officers—the later permitting him to say 20.

Anecdote, adventure, and enderni humor are the floats that buoy up thi work, however. We learn that while rut ning to Mobile Bay under Union fi® John Maffitt sent most of the Florida crew below, then heroically lashed hirt self to the quarter rail, and prepared^|l steer his ship to sanctuary or see her “sh^f to pieces or sunk.” That after stealing vessel out of the harbor at Portland Maine, Confederate Navy Lieutenat Charles W. Read—running out of art munition at a very bad time—actual! fired a ball of cheese at a pursuing shif These strange, uncommonly heroic,⁰ quirky elements add another dimensi® to an already wide-ranging story tW takes readers around the globe, tracki® the raiders to locales as exotic as the co® of South Africa, the frosty vistas of ^ Bering Sea, and the Australian seasid®

Gray Raiders also recounts some miliar events in Civil War naval history' such as the battle between the Kearsarge and the Alabama off Fran®' It also elaborates on the routinely stofl"! relationships and feuds that kept seven Confederate naval heroes and govern rn® functionaries at each others’ throats.

Hearn’s passive style leeches a lot¹' the vigor out of these stories, but t® panache of his real-life heroes and tl^> zesty facts behind their historical adv®^f tures are the things that keep G^ Raiders in front of you.

Mr. Stanchak is editor of Civil War Times lllusir^ i

The Odyssey of a U-Boat Commander: Recollections of Erich Topp

Erich Topp. Westport, CT: Praeger, 199­242 pp. Ind. $39.95 ($35.95)

Reviewed by Jordan Vause

Erich Topp was the third-ranking ^ boat captain of World War II, behind 0¹' Kretschmer and Wolfgang Liith. He c<$ manded three boats and sank 34 ship* almost 200,000 tons—and is prob^ best known in the United States for si® ing the USS Reuben James (DD-245) ® weeks before Pearl Harbor.

His autobiography, Odyssey of^a J Boat Commander may well be the 12^s' the genre to appear in this country"^ j is among the most junior of the grea¹ ^ boat aces—but, fortunately, it is on® the best as well.

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simply telling of war stories, he engages tie reader in a discussion of war, phi- osophy, and the human condition; the re­^sult is a remarkable tapestry of thought— enlivened by quotes from everyone from Kant to Euripides to Woody Guthrie—in "'hich Topp simultaneously indicts him­self and his country for the war and its merrnath and tries to draw as much good ^as he can from the lessons it taught. Philosophy aside, the core of any good °§raphy is gossip; and although the ?^Cenes of war one might expect are min- J^ial, the multitude of personal glimpses °PP offers more than make up for it. We ^a,e no wiser about the events surround- ^ln8 the sinking of the Reuben James for example, but Topp devotes several °ughtful pages to the men involved in ^e tragedy. Because of his success he as able to observe the elite of Nazi Ger- , any at close range; he was decorated y Hitler three times and he and fellow ^inhard Suhren were once the guests "lartin Bormann at Berchtesgaden. Borrnann does not actually come off ^a,y. but many other people do. Topp’s ndor is noteworthy. He is especially ^ard on Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, a ⁿ who is considered no less than a saint by a huge majority of the surviving men of the U-bootwaffe. In spite of protestations to the contrary, Topp writes, Donitz knew what was happening in Ger­many and said nothing, a position very close to “passive tolerance of [these] in­sane crimes.” At the same time he em­braces two of the U-boat community’s favorite whipping boys: Wolfgang Ott, who wrote the novel Sharks and Little Fish—for which he was hounded out of the business—and Lothar-Gunther Buch- heim, who wrote Das Boot and contin­ues to write, oblivious to the odium reg­ularly dumped on him by the subjects of his books. One of the most poignant scenes in the book is Topp’s recounting of the depressing and rather tacky memo­rial service for Suhren in 1984.

Structurally, the book is functional. It is divided into fairly even sections hav­ing to do with Topp’s life before the war, the war years, his years afterwards as an ordinary seaman, student, and successful architect, and his postwar career in the West German Bundesmarine—which he left under complicated circumstances in 1969. Large parts of the book are taken from his diaries. The tendency away from action and towards introspection defeats Topp sometimes; in a few places, after particularly lofty excursions, he runs the risk of losing a confused reader forever.

But this book succeeds in many ways. A biography (even an autobiography) is supposed to convey the character of its subject, good or bad, and those who read

Odyssey certainly will know more about Erich Topp and the problems of his gen­eration; problems that made this book more a catharsis than a pleasure for him: “I have learned that the passing of decades does not cushion anything. As years go by they may eat up the words of the past, but they cannot stop the onslaught of the images. These images continue to haunt me; they take away my sleep.”

A 1978 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Jor­dan Vause is the author of U-Boat Ace: The Story of Wolfgang Liith (Naval Institute Press, 1990).

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