Voices of Vietnam: Stories and Civilian Tragedies from the Vietnam War

Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann stood on the balcony of his quarters in the early morning hours, watching the city wake beneath him. The streets filled with the usual procession of bicycles, motor scooters, and pedestrians carrying baskets of produce to market. To the casual observer, Saigon appeared vibrant and resilient, a city adapting to the presence of increasing numbers of American military advisors. But Vann, who had spent months working with South Vietnamese forces in the Mekong Delta, knew that beneath this veneer of normalcy lay a complexity that Washington seemed unable or unwilling to grasp.

The strategic hamlet program, designed to separate rural populations from Viet Cong influence, was failing in ways that reports back to the Pentagon rarely captured. Vann had witnessed firsthand how forcing peasant families to abandon ancestral villages and relocate to fortified compounds bred resentment rather than gratitude. The very people the South Vietnamese government claimed to protect increasingly viewed American-backed initiatives with suspicion and hostility.