‘The Battle of Saigon’ should interest, and move, anyone who is interested in the fate of Viet Nam. It may also surprise those who know little about the complex attitudes of the South Vietnamese people towards a war whose consequences still shape their lives. 

Both during the fighting and after the voice of  the South Vietnamese has often been ignored. As a foreign correspondent in Viet Nam during the war I was lucky enough to hear something of that voice, largely thanks to the persistence of my Vietnamese assistant. But he was a man of middle age with a large family and could not accompany me into the war zones where he might have helped me understand better the so often misunderstood ARVN soldiers. And it is the mind of the South Vietnamese soldier that particularly interests Ngo The Vinh.

In ‘The Battle of Saigon’ he allows some of those soldiers to speak. The result is a judicious and humane portrayal of men at war which should concern an outside world that gave them so little thought at the time. 

The author also deals with the political and moral dilemmas of the Vietnamese diaspora in North America, trapped between love of the country they were forced to abandon, the ruthlessness of its present communist rulers, and the sometimes painfully different habits of the Western culture they now live in.  

Here, too, Ngo The Vinh remains shrewd yet sympathetic. And he shows the same qualities when writing about troubled American veterans who he accepts are as much the war’s victims as the Vietnamese themselves. This is a generous and perceptive book.

MARK FRANKLAND
Former foreign correspondent of "the Observer"

Mark Frankland is a former foreign correspondent of The Observer who has worked in the Soviet Union, Indochina, the United States and Eastern Europe. His memoir of the Cold War, 'A Child of My Time' (Chatto 1999), won the JR Ackerley/PEN prize for literary autobiography in 2000. His account of the collapse of communism in East Europe, 'The Patriots' Revolution' (Sinclair-Stevenson 1990), was short-listed for the NCR Award. Among his other books are two novels, one of them 'The Mother-of-Pearl Men' set in Viet Nam (John Murray 1985). He now lives and works in London.

There have been a succession of books on the Vietnam conflict, though there  have been few that have told it from the South Vietnam point of view, from the  aspect of the true losers, those who fought for a and believed in the  nascent Southern Republic.

Ngo The Vinh brings us essays illuminating his experience as doctor with the crack rangers, here in dealing with the dichotomies of combat. He then moves to the disconcerting life of a refugee rebuilding a life  in the strangeness of Southern California and the struggle to  reestablish in his profession amongst the politically riven ex-pat  community of the 1/2 million boat people. A perspective totally neglected in prose so far.

You will find yourself slipping in the mind set of the soldier doctor, prisoner in the gulags and liberated uprooted refugees through to nascent middle class American.

The whole time you hear the plaintive tones of a man attached still to the spiritual roots of that haunting country Viet Nam.

TIM PAGE
 Tim Page left England at 17 to travel across Europe, the Middle East and to India and Nepal.  He found himself in Laos at the time of the civil war and ended up working for United Press International. From there he moved on to Saigon where he covered the Vietnam War for years working largely on assignment for Time-Life, UPI, Paris Match and Associate Press.
He became an iconic photographer of the Vietnam War.  He was wounded four times, once by ‘friendly fire’. Tim Page is the subject of many documentaries, two films and the author of nine books included Tim Page’s Nam, Ten Years after: Vietnam Today... and as founder of the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation. Tim now freelances from Brisbane Australia, and has taken up a position as Adjunct Professor in the Photojournalism at Griffith University.

Ever since before 1975, in the Vietnamese circle of literature and the arts, Ngo The Vinh has been a familiar name.  To the circle of physicians, dentists and pharmacists in particular, he is a gifted writer admired by friends and colleagues, not only for his creative talent but also for his dignified personality and his way of thinking.   

Ngo The Vinh is well-informed and highly discerning of the political situation and its development.  Embedded in each of his works is a perspective on the country.  Indeed, all the twelve stories in the collection "The Battle of Saigon" bear out that thematic focus.  Fundamentally a very warm-hearted and upright person, he accepted and resigned himself to the position of one caught in a cross fire, all the while being full of compassion and without hatred.  Both sides of the conflict seemed uncomfortable and distrustful of him. 

The reason for their negative feeling was that while using politics for the background of his works, Ngo The Vinh let his conscience guide his presentation and his expression.  It was precisely that pure, humane and compassionate conscience that unmasked dark political chicaneries which, like an animal hiding in the dark of night, when exposed to light would wriggle violently in disquieting protest.

My last impression is that Ngo The Vinh's prose is clear, his style highly polished, and his stories substantial.  We should read him in order to understand why he has chosen to engage in writing and for what reason "The Battle of Saigon" makes its appearance overseas.

BUI KHIET
editor of Living Earth Magazine

It turns out that "The Battle of Saigon" has never ended and also will never end.  Violent situations, cruel and brutal circumstances have exploded all over the South and spread to the North, to every place where people of Vietnamese origins burdened with concealed tragedies live.  And to places where Ngo The Vinh more than once had, as a visionary, perceived heart-rending reality, from which he wrote The Green Belt and The Battle of Saigon, when both he and I were still very young. 

The reality also turns out to be that a writer possesses no power other than a sensitive heart that foresees in whole the Collective Pain.  And from that time until now, among the Vietnamese, the Vietnam issue has remained as ever saturated with contradiction and opposition between people of all camps in connection to the war.  Every one should re-read "The Battle of Saigon", re-read it in order to reduce to some extent the cruelty and ruthlessness of the battle prevailing at present in Saigon, even in Ha Noi, in the Central Highlands, in each of us here, overseas Vietnamese residing in the United States of America.

PHAN NHAT NAM
author of Peace and Prisoner of War

The writings of Ngo The Vinh incorporate the feelings and thoughts that have grown in him through time and the experiences he underwent during his voluntary term of service with the ARVN.  His soul’s equanimity as a young military surgeon during the most painful period of the Vietnamese history is admirable. 

As an idealist fighting without hatred for the national cause, he was looking for meaning in his existence as a man in wartime and as a patriot – reflecting Descartes' “I think therefore I am.”  To think for him “is to say no” to the dictatorial military government and to become the unique writer-officer who underwent a special trial in a court of law.  These experiences have given momentum to his work as a writer. 

Ngo The Vinh is no non-sense.  May he be blessed. And we should all be grateful for his illuminating work.

            HOANG VAN DUC, MD, Sc Dr
author of Notebook of  Southeast Asia

Ngo The Vinh is a writer of dreams, or more precisely, an author of conscience.  In my first novel, “The Nonconformist”, I reserved almost a chapter to refer to Ngo The Vinh, as a token of gratitude.  I called him ‘my conscience’.  And now, more than twenty years later, as I contemplate the man and his latest works, I find that my opinions about him stay the same as before.  He continues to be a socially-committed writer.  Indeed, Ngo The Vinh remains the voice of heart and conscience. 

NGUYEN XUAN HOANG

author of The Nonconformist, and Editor of Van Magazine

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