Friday, December 07, 2007

Inside the VC and the NVA by Michael Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg

Inside the VC and the NVA by Michael Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg is a study on the soldiers of the North Vietnamese. The book deals with training, tactics, logistics and recruitment. Most of the research was gathered from POW interrogations and captured material such as letters and diaries. The book is excellent at describing day-to-day experiences. There's an extensive section of excerpts from a survey sent to US personnel giving their opinions on the North Vietnamese. Unfortunately there are some strange choices. There's some gratuitous whining about campus liberals and the media which seems out of place and the book concludes with a summary of the Chinese Vietnamese conflict. I'm not really sure what this had to do with discussing the soldiers experiences.

Recommended with caveats.

For reviews take a look at My Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Partisan and Guerrilla Warfare bookshelf.

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