The Village

The Village, by F. J. West Jr. (Harper, 288 pp., $7.95). This is not, thank God, yet another rehashing of why we are in Vietnam. It is the exciting and well-told story of the successful fight for one Vietnamese village, Binh Nghia, by a combined unit of a dozen U.S. Marines and two dozen South Vietnamese militia (Popular Forces). When the Marines came in 1966, Binh Nghia had been held by the Vietcong for two years. At that time, most of the PFs were poor fighters, and the villagers had little confidence in their or the Marines’ ability to protect them. The turning point came when the combined unit’s fort, manned that night by six Americans and twelve PFs, was attacked by 110 Vietcong and North Vietnamese. The Americans and three PFs were killed or seriously wounded almost instantly; the surviving PFs drove off the attackers. To the villagers, that proved the combined unit was not going to give up and leave them to the mercy of the VC. Starting then, village life became more and more integrated with fort life. Men from the fort were able to stroll through the village alone; they could take meals with villagers without bringing the danger of reprisals from the Vietcong; the village children started hanging around the fort, especially after one of the Marines “adopted” a Vietnamese orphan. Then, seventeen months after the combined unit had come to Binh Nghia, the Marine command decided that the village could survive without Americans, and the PFs, under Nguyen Suong’s leadership, were left on their own. l. bridges