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Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account

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Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
In a gripping memoir that reads like a spy novel, one man recounts his personal experience with Operation Phoenix, the program created to destroy the Vietcong’s shadow government, which thrived in the rural communities of South Vietnam.

Stuart A. Herrington was an American intelligence advisor assigned to root out the enemy in the Hau Nghia province. His two-year mission to capture or kill Communist agents operating there was made all the more difficult by local officials who were reluctant to cooperate, villagers who were too scared to talk, and VC who would not go down without a fight. Herrington developed an unexpected but intense identification with the villagers in his jurisdiction–and learned the hard way that experiencing war was profoundly different from philosophizing about it in a seminar room.

Selected Customer Reviews

stalking the Viet Cong, May 16, 2010
AUTHOR GOES INTO TOO MUCH UNNECESSARY AND REPETITIVE DETAIL WHICH MAKES IT VERY HARD TO KEEP READER INTERESTED.

Not what I expected, March 25, 2010
I've read a lot of Vietnam books, and this one is good. I didn't rate it a five because I like to leave that for really great books. This is the story of the Phoenix program, from one of the local adviser points of view. Stuart Herrington was an intelligence officer in Europe in the late 1960's before leaving the Army for 7 months. Herrington was then sent to Nam to become an adviser to the Vietnamese local militias. What is very interesting about this book is that America won the Vietnam War in 1971 or so, the North Vietnamese negotiated a peace, the Americans left, the North Vietnamese rested up, and then took all of Vietnam.

One lesson I learned from this book is that EVERYTHING is personal, Sonny Corleone is wrong, it's not business, EVERYTHING in the world is personal. When the local politicians steal your money because the one guy is corrupt, you personally dislike the government. The NVA took great advantage of this. The American advisers were able to gain the South Vietnamese trust, but then when they left after a year, the next advisor had to start over. We should have over-lapped a lot more. We also should have left the army over there until we won.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

star-p

Vietnam book, October 27, 2008
The book is not all that great, its more about info than it is about action. I prefer war books that are non stop action.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

star-p

Boldly Provocative, October 04, 2007
"In Sweden, Foreign Minister Torsten Nilsson reveals that Sweden has been providing assistance to the Viet Cong, including some $550,000 worth of medical supplies. Similar Swedish aid was to go to Cambodian and Laotian civilians affected by the Indochinese fighting. This support was primarily humanitarian in nature and included no military aid."

I don't think most Vietnam veterans were aware of this. Anyway, this is a good book. Makes me wished I'd worked a little harder on mine, but then I've never really worked very hard at anything.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

star-p

Most Incisive Account, October 01, 2007
I have read a lot of books on Vietnam. If you want to know the combination of reasons why the North Vietnamese succeeeded, read this book ! Like someone else has said, what a shame the author was shipped back in '72, although one already knows ( from reading this book), what happened over the next 2-3 years. One cannot also help but feel that had America not tired of the war ( and the loss of American lives - for which the recruitment and personnel policies of the Army are greatly to blame !),the outcome may have been different. So bad was the sentiment against returning vets that some of them said they were coming back from Germany or Korea ( out of embarassment and the want to avoid being mistreated by their own countrymen !). I have to say,that as an Australian ( we also sent our men to Vietnam), I cannot get over the treatment meted out to vets upon their return.It disgusts me. The soldiers were not to blame !!Blame the McNamara's !!!

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