Behind the Lines-Hanoi: December 23, 1966-January 7, 1967

by Harrison E. Salisbury

The true story about the author's stay in Hanoi for two weeks with maps and illustrations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War, Military Fiction, Journalism

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Harrison E. Salisbury (November 14, 1908 - July 5, 1993) was a long time reporter and editor at The New York Times.

Earlier in his career he had worked for the United Press, which he joined after earning a B.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1930. He began his career in journalism as a part-time reporter for the Minneapolis Journal during 1928-29.

Although he served in many different positions and places during his long career at the Times, Mr. Salisbury is perhaps most famous for his work as Moscow correspondent, covering the U.S.S.R. during the early years of the Cold War. After serving as the Times' Moscow Bureau Chief from 1949 to 1954, he returned to the U.S. and wrote a series of articles for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1955.

He spent a great deal of time concentrating on Asia during his later years at the Times, covering the Vietnam War as well as many different issues and events having to do with China.

Reviews

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the record of a New York Times correspondent, who spent two weeks in North Vietnam in 1967, at the height of the war. Salisbury is brilliant and asks some very probing questions about U.S. policy, such as why certain obvious bridges and sections of railroad had not been bombed while civilian areas had, how important a role the National Liberation Front had in the South and how aware of this role the U.S. was, how a peace settlement at that point could be constructed, and so on. He shows how the Vietnamese despite heavy bombing kept their transport lines almost continuous, how the continued to extract aid from both China and Russia despite the rift between the two, and emphasizes the strong, almost fanatical morale, of the Vietnamese and their willingness to fight for decades to come. He discards his descriptive, travelogue style at the end for pure speculation, but they are very important questions. I was enlightened by the book, despite its lack of answers.

[Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

A completely new perspective on the Vietnam War for me. This book was written in the middle of the war by Salisbury, the first American reporter allowed "behind the lines" in the North. It lends a glimpse into the mysterious and closed off world of Hanoi and the psychology, history, and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people.

[Keith Akers · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked the Ken Burns series on Vietnam, you will enjoy this book. I first read this book in the summer of 1967, wanting to find out more about the war in Vietnam. Prompted by the adult reading program at Denver Public Library “Winter of Reading,” which invited us to re-read a favorite book from childhood, I picked it up again, wondering if it would make the same impression. The answer is briefly: Yes.

At the time, this book was a revelation that changed my life. I had read about campus protests but wasn’t in college and knew no one personally who was against the war. On the strength of this book, and three others which I read roughly at the same time (“The Other Side,” “The Bitter Heritage,” and “The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam”) I became, all by myself, an opponent of the war. The other books were helpful but Salisbury’s, even though it contained no pro or con discussion of the war at all, was the most accessible and made the deepest impression. When I finally got to college, it did not lead to my becoming an antiwar activist, though I tried. I was introverted and shy, and the other antiwar students had too many definite opinions. I did show up at all the discussions and antiwar demonstrations that I could manage, though.

Today the book still reads very well. Salisbury is a journalist who can also write, so the book is far from dry. I later read his book “The 900 Days” on the siege of Leningrad. From the first page it appears, perhaps improbably, as a drama more than a travelogue. We’re not sure he’s even going to make it to North Vietnam.

Today of course we know how the war is going to end, but reading this is not just like reading history. At the time I wanted to become informed about a pivotal public issue. Salisbury finds destroyed buildings in the North have neither any military significance, nor are they near such buildings. He finds that the Vietnamese have high morale despite all the destruction. He finds public officials in the United States that have no clue as to the significance of the policies they are implementing. Today, Salisbury’s writing is able to convey what it was like to be alive and wondering about the war at that time, in the questions he asks and the answers he gives. He understands and even sympathizes with what policy-makers and the public want to have happen, so it is not hardly a diatribe against the war, while he does venture a few modest opinions. But what is striking to me today is what struck me then: the sheer stupidity of U. S. policy. Moreover, he demonstrates (without exactly spelling out) how relatively easy it was to unearth this stupidity. All it required was an open mind and a few obvious questions.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seemed a very important book at the time. I still have doubts.

[David Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating.

I tried to imagine a noted journalist being given access to the sorts of people, places, and information given to Salisbury in any other modern war. Can you picture Walter Winchell, A. J. Liebling, or Salisbury himself visiting Berlin in 1943 to inspect bomb damage, tour the countryside, and interviewing Hitler? Unimaginable.

Salisbury arrived in Hanoi at the end of 1966. By this time, US casualties in the war were only about a third of their ultimate total, and the US was still escalating troop levels and had hardly begun bombing the north. This was well before Nixon conspired with a foreign power to sabotage LBJ's efforts to negotiate a peace. This was a turning point in US history; people still mostly believed their government. The disaster of the war, compounded by Watergate, altered America for the worse. Imagine how things might have been different had Salisbury (and other reporters) been taken seriously.

Salisbury had quite a bit of experience reporting on war, and reporting on communists. I wouldn't call him an expert on bomb damage assessment, but he was a keen observer. And I don't think he was one to be taken in by Potemkin villages or things of that sort.

And, given how things turned out, I'm quite impressed by his observations. Most of this book is straightforward reportage. Only in the last few pages does he go about trying to predict the future. I understand that he wrote a number of articles about this trip that were published in the New York Times, so much (or all?) of the substance in the book was reported in the mass media at the time. It's too bad that his excellent reporting fell (mostly) on deaf ears.

What I found most interesting in this book was his analysis of the tension and competition between China and Russia and how the leaders in North Vietnam were not puppets of either power. There is also a nice description of the difference between the Liberation Front (which he calls Vietcong only once, I believe) and the North Vietnamese government. I'd always wondered why it was so important to the North Vietnamese that the NLF get seated in the peace negotiations. Now I know.

Good stuff.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that this book, done by a journalist, provided an interesting look at the Vietnam war. Both because his investigation was done during thee height of the war and because he was given rare access to go to Hanoi and interview leaders, common people and investigate what damage the American forces had done to the area. Some of the American strategy in the conduction revealed by the author in his investigation simply defies logic. For example, just what the Americans elected to bomb as opposed to. what they elected to ignore on their bombing missions. It seems to me if what the author has said is accurate, things might have turned out differently if a greater focus had been put on bombing the more militarily crucial targets which for whatever reason were ignored by the American leadership. Overall the book gave a different perspective on the war than I otherwise had, as I was not born until after the war was over.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was wholly different than what I normally read, hence why it was on my to-read shelf for the better part of two years. I went into this book with a semi open mind, as I don't know anything about the Vietnam war. I do know how it escalated and the atrocities committed by the US and by Vietnam but it was interesting to see what came before that and the general sentiment of the Vietnamese and what Salisbury reported. He asked many great questions that I also wanted to know the answer to and that we do have the answer to now. It was also interesting to see his take on the relations and how China was a huge factor, kind of mirrors some of today's political climate. Overall an extremely informative read that opened my eyes to aspects of war that I never knew.

[Dawn]

I can't really review it as I read it in junior high school. I remember being shocked as it was 1968 and I lived in a military family. Can't go beyond that.