Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 128

third-order effects of the loss or damage of 53 aircraft
during a single mission.
The best chapters of Raid focus on various ARVN
units’ actions during the course of the six-week operation.
Although the attack was timed to occur between the two
monsoon seasons, poor weather and late winter temperatures conspired with the difficult terrain and a determined
enemy to deny a rapid and smooth advance to the attacking forces.
Here for the first time, scholars will find carefully
researched arguments written in clear and unemotional
prose that conclusively disprove the derogatory generalizations of the ARVN soldier’s supposedly innate lack
of character and martial ability.
Indeed, Willbanks, a Vietnam
veteran who advised an ARVN
regiment during the 1972 battle
for An Loc, explicitly hopes that
Raid will silence critics whose simplistic and reductionist arguments
are inspired by media photos
of a handful of panic-stricken
ARVN soldiers clinging to the
skids of American helicopters
to escape the North Vietnamese
counterattacks.
The conclusions that both
Willbanks and Sander reach
will not surprise anyone. Both
authors make admirable use of
documentary evidence, diaries,
letters, personal interviews with
participants, contemporary media,
and a host of secondary material
to identify the numerous problems that beset such an ambitious plan. Nixon, National Security Advisor Kissinger,
Gen. Alexander Haig, President Thieu, and Abrams share
in the responsibility for the operation’s failure. Readers will
perhaps be surprised that both Sander and Willbanks treat
Army Chief of Staff Gen. William Westmoreland with
some sympathy.

Westmoreland was in the minority in opposing Lam
Son 719 from the beginning. He