In This Man's Army
Publisher: iUniverse.com
Published: 2010
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9781440198618
Description: Written By Bernie Weisz Vietnam War Historian Pembroke Pines, Florida USA April 30, 2010 Contact: BernWei1@aol.com Title of Review: "Our professionalism As Australian Soldiers Is Worth More Than The South Vietnamese Will for A Free Country!" Very rare is it that I come across a memoir that I mourned finishing. I simply wanted more! Stan Sutherland's "In This Man's Army" is exactly what I am referring to, and I have no doubt that any reader will agree with my thumbs up conclusion. From historical research on the conflict in S.E. Asia, I knew that after John F. Kennedy's assassination, incoming President Lyndon B. Johnson had recruited South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and both New Zealand and Australia to join the fray. This endeavor he labeled his "More Flags Program." However, I had never before read any memoirs from soldiers that fought in Vietnam other than American. Searching on the Internet, I discovered Stan Sutherland's gem, and was able to contact him. He sent me a complementary copy to read, and after devouring his stimulating book, I lamented how there was no vendor that carried this, conversely there existed no venue to review it. After many Transatlantic e mails, I convinced Stan to have more copies of his book printed for American distribution, using "iUniverse" as his publisher. "In This Man's Army" was written by Stan as a catharsis, to leave a written legacy of history frequently ignored. It is truly my sincere hope that this continent will eagerly scoop up this amazing story, seeing Vietnam through a "Digger's eyes". 


It is interesting to note that I found many interesting juxtapositions written by Sutherland comparing the Australian and American military. In terms of stealth, Stan found the "grunt" to be noisy and careless about his movements and volume in the bush, while the professional "digger" paid close attention to being quiet and incognito, especially in the jungle. In terms of resting at a defensive night position (D.N.P.), Sutherland mused: " It is not unusual to doss down at night sometimes wondering if the enemy is going to creep up and slit your throat. The more quiet you are the better your chances.". He also closely compared Aussie verses American food rations, with interesting conclusions. In that regard, Sutherland wrote: "Australians were fortunate because we were able to mix our combat rations with the American ration packs. each country's pack is deficient on it's own. The Americans stack plenty of food into their packs and they have a number of delicacies like canned peaches, fruit salad and pound cake. You won't go hungry on American rations but the downside is no tea bags and poor quality instant coffee". For digger rations, Sutherland asserted: "they're very nutritional and will certainly keep you alive. But they are short on niceties. Apart from the fruit tingles and the high energy chocolate,there are no other frills. There is one aspect , however, in which they're good, and that is the sachets of tea and sugar". Sutherland concluded that by having access to both U.S. and Aussie rations, a digger had the best of both worlds. 



Mr. Sutherland also compared the alertness of the Australian soldier compared to his American counterpart, particularly when it came to manning one's own weapon in dangerous enemy territory. Sutherland's conclusions are noteworthy: "One discipline that has saved the lives of a lot of diggers is the strict removal and banning of rifle slings. Each man carries his rifle in the ready position all the time. There was no exception to this. Your ability to bring your rifle into action immediately is the difference between life and death in a lot of instances. This contrasts starkly with our American allies. They carry their rifles or machine guns on the shoulder, behind the neck across their shoulders and in any other manner that strikes their fancy. The South Vietnamese soldiers also carry their weapons any way they like. It looks and is extremely unprofessional, slack as hell and really serves to highlight the difference in standards between the Australians and everyone else". There are more comparisons, less overtly expressed. With racial tensions, discipline, drug problems, fragging and other rivalries between U.S. commanders and their different branches of service, tensions culminated in a violent and deadly American riot that occurred in Long Binh Jail on August 29, 1968. Sutherland surely must have noticed this during his tour, and without pointing the finger directly at American disunity, he wrote the following about digger solidarity in his memoir: "The men are always together in the boozer, in the lines and ,more importantly, when out in the jungle, they are always in close proximity to one another, working as a highly trained team. The camaraderie and mateship is particularly strong. This is true of the whole Australian army, but those of us in infantry see ourselves in the aura of a special light. Together, and at the same time, we get soaked to the skin, covered in leeches, get boils, foot rot, fungicidal crotch, stink to high heaven, get hungry, thirsty and get shot for good measure". Sutherland also made an interesting observation about U.S. convoy drivers and the way they drive. To this, he asserted as follows: "Convoy protection is interesting in so far as most times we're mounted on APC's. The American drivers in the convoy are mostly African American and without exception, as far as I can see, the fuel tankers are all driven by African Americans. They hurdle along flat out. Nobody can keep up with them and, as a general rule, we position ourselves at strategic points along the road." 



There are noteworthy comparisons found in this memoir and 
American ones. Read enough books of grunts in the bush coming back to "the world" and you will come across accounts of veterans shredding off their military uniforms at airport terminals. Fearing being accosted by hippies, war protesters or Vietnam Vets against the war, there are anecdotes of Vietnam Veterans fresh out of Vietnam being spit on, called "baby killers, druggie homicidal killers and lackeys" for an unappreciative government. Rarely would a Vet brag that he had just returned from a tour of Vietnam in the U.S. However, Sutherland wrote a totally different account when he came back to Australia after his first tour. Returning by boat, Sutherland wrote the following: "The Sydney (the name of his ship) berthed at Fremantle to let the West Australian diggers disembark on leave. Sailing into Fremantle, the Battalion lined the decks-it was a magnificent sight and the men, seeing the first Australians waiting at the wharf, waving their Aussie flags to welcome us home, felt a deep sense of pride." 
There is also an interesting segment that Mr. Sutherland wrote about diggers voting out in the jungles of Vietnam and the feeling they had about choosing their Australian candidates. This was a time where many U.S. grunts drew caricatures of President Nixon on their helmets picturing him as "Tricky Dick." Confidence in U.S. leaders and morale at that time (1968 to 1970) was at an all time low, with the shooting of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the violence at Kent State, the Cambodian Invasion and Vietnamization. I might add that Nixon later was the only U.S. president to ever resign from office. His vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was caught in an investigation that had uncovered a kickback scheme that he'd been profiting from while he had been Governor of Maryland, and was continuing to profit from while serving as Vice President, but for which he had not been paying any Income Tax. He also later pleaded no contest to one charge of income tax evasion and resigned as Vice President, in exchange for the government not seeking any criminal charges against him. With this in mind, Sutherland remarked: " We made the rendezvous in time. The reason why we had to make sure we arrived in time was to vote in the federal elections. Not long after we arrived the re-supply choppers came in carrying ballot boxes as well. All the diggers were given voting papers to complete and place in the boxes. After I'd voted I lay back against a tree and thought to myself, what a great country Australia is, democracy at it's best. Here we are, fighting a war out in the jungle somewhere in a foreign land, and the system gives us an opportunity to vote." 


However, not everything was "peaches and cream" with Australia's war effort in this memoir. Mr. Sutherland wrote of a Platoon Commander that had been killed with a hand grenade placed on his mosquito net while he slept. Called "fragging" by Americans, Sutherland had the following to say about this incident: "Jeez, I know this sort of thing happens in the American army quite a bit-they've even got a name for it-but in the Australian army it's virtually unheard of, I said". Ultimately, Stan Sutherland realized that regardless of Australian pride and digger unity, the Vietnam War was an exercise in futility for all involved. After witnessing a U.S. B-52 air strike and thinking he was going to find countless dead enemy soldiers, Mr. Sutherland came to a strikingly different conclusion. To that, he wrote: The depth of the crater seemed to be approximately 20 feet and it strikes me that you could easily lower a house of average suburban size into the hole and the top of the roof will still be below ground level. We clambered over the jungle debris and found another crater and then another, and so on. The bombs have peeled back the jungle from around each crater and stacked it up in tight circular walls, making movement through the area difficult. We patrolled the area for 3 days and found nothing with the exception of a couple of contacts with the enemy, resulting in 2 enemy dead and another wounded. The whole exercise has just been one great expensive waste of time and effort. The cost of the B-52 strike alone must have been enormous." 


There is one part of this memoir that is truly telling about what I referred to before in regards to winning the "Hearts and Minds" of the Vietnamese. Mr. Sutherland wrote a small story where his platoon had to search the entire Vietnamese town of "Cape St. Jacques" for the presence of Viet Cong. Searching from house to house, he truly captured the futility of trying to teach democracy to a group of people over 100 years back in time. As such, he tellingly wrote the following: "The cordon was put in before daybreak to ensure no one entered or left town. After daybreak, the townspeople were instructed by megaphone to assemble at the eastern edge of the village. Once the townspeople had all assembled under armed control, 6 platoon was given the task of searching all the houses. Going into each house with our rifles in one hand and bayonets in the other, we methodically searched for weapons, ammunition or stores, which looked as though they could be of use to the enemy. Most of the houses are single room dwellings, but some have two rooms. Definitely no running conveniences like running water or power though. Vietnamese village people live a life of hardship that we can scarcely imagine. After I searched 3 or 4 houses I entered the next to find an old lady with no teeth confined to her bad. Dressed totally in the standard black pajama style of dress, she looked to be a hundred years old. A smile crossed her face revealing a lifetime of blackened betel nut gums. I wondered what was behind the smile. Placing myself in her position, I thought about how I would feel hack home in Australia if an armed foreign soldier with total control over me simply walked in to search my home and basically do anything he wanted. I concluded that I would have an enemy for life, and no doubt it is the same here...especially as they have had to deal with the French, then Japanese, French again and now the Americans and Australians. How can it be otherwise? How can we win a war when we're compelled to search the houses of ordinary people?" 


Finally, there is a most telling story Mr. Sutherland wrote about his impression working side by side with our ally during the conflict, the South Vietnamese Army. It this case, it was the "Regional Forces." During the war, the South Vietnamese "Regional Forces" were roughly akin to militias. Recruited locally, they fell into two broad groups - Regional Forces ("R.F's") and what was called "Popular Forces" (The RFPF's, called Ruff-Puffs by American forces). During the early 1960's the Regional Forces manned the country-wide outpost system and defended critical points, such as bridges and ferries. There were some 9,000 such positions, half of them in the Mekong Delta region. In 1964, the Regional Forces were integrated into the "Army Republic of Vietnam" (ARVN) and placed under the command of the Joint General Staff. After Vietnamization (when U.S. forces began to withdraw from South Vietnam during 1969) the R.F's/ARVN began the task of fighting the communist main force units. However, Stan's memoir portends the eventual communist victory in his description of attempting to train the "R.F's". For the first day of Australian training of their Vietnamese counter-part, Stan recorded the following observations: "They play around a lot amongst themselves. One can liken it to teaching 13 and 14 year olds back home. It seems strange to teach such serious matters as the art of warfare in an environment where every man, woman and child is affected by the war and they're like kids. They're aware that the average Australian soldier is far more capable and more highly trained than most of their senior officers." 


Stan Sutherland had more to say, far damaging in terms of the South's will to win. He continued about the ARVN: "The NCO's have absolutely no control of the men under them. They much prefer to be friends, than to actually lead them. We've told them that we'll be taking them out to actually put in an ambush after dark tonight. They make their feelings be known. They tell us that they don't like to do this. It's too cold and wet. Furthermore, why go out of our way? If the VC attack us in our compound, we'll fight, but we don't go out looking for them after dark. Daylight training to them is a bit fun and falls within their comfort zone but night work is disagreeable. In the Company there are about a dozen ethnic Chinese. It's very apparent the Chinese are more intelligent. Our observation is that the Chinese are more reliable and trustworthy and we've made up our minds that when we leave the compound we'll always have a number of Chinese with us for our own protection. It's known that the Vietnamese in the past have shot their American advisors and simply ran away from the battle if the going gets a bit rough. We always leave a couple of diggers back at the compound because if we didn't we'd have no gear left when we returned. Everything would be pilfered." 


There is a final comment that Stan Sutherland wrote in his memoir, which I actually used part of to title this review. It is a sad commentary which makes the reader of this memoir, as well as the student of this conflict feel that all Allied forces that were wounded or perished gave their lives for a cause that never could be accomplished. You, the reader, will have to judge for yourselves as to whether or not, under the circumstances I am about to quote, this war ever had a chance to be victorious. Mr. Sutherland wrote this ominous foreboding during his training of the "R.F's", on September 12, 1968. Stan noted: "We conducted a normal day of training and then we put in another ambush during the evening. The Vietnamese don't like working at night and there's a bit of disharmony as a result of it. Lt. Bin, the "R.F" commander, asks for a pay off, in other words, to get his cooperation, we have to bribe him. One day it's the stretcher, the next it's a lantern, the next a box of C-rations. We find this extremely disappointing. Here we are Australians, over here in Vietnam, trying our hardest to assist them remain free and out of communist control and it's hard to deal with the fact that, in order for them to cooperate with us and assist stave off a communist victory in their own country, we have to bribe them. This is the turning point in the war for me. Our professional-ism as Australian soldiers reflected in our work ethic is worth more than their will to keep their country free". This is a book that needs to be included as part of any serious study or consideration of the war in Vietnam...an absolute "must read"!
Table of contents: title: In This Man's Army is a book on Australian's at War in Vietnam as an Ally of the United States. The contents provides a great insight into their professionalism as soldiers and their renowned expertise in Jungle warfare.; title: Contents:; title: 1. Introduction and training P.3; title: 2. To Vietnam and beyond the wire. P. 21; title: 3. 3RAR after the "Battle of Balmoral" P. 70; title: 4. In between Tours. P.151; title: 5. Back to Vietnam as a Section Commander. P. 160; title: 6. D & E Platoon P. 238; title: 7. Epilogue P. 355