Brothers: Black Soldiers in the Nam

by Stanley Goff, Robert Sanders, Clark Smith (Contributor)

Two Black infantrymen describe their experiences in an Army training camp and as soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War

Genres: History

201 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1982

Reviews

[Gary Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was struck by some of the raw detail shared by these two veterans in a book published in 1982 about their experiences in Vietnam. The racial component alone brought back the reality of the times when these two 19 year olds went to Vietnam in 1968, to '69. They were dealing with institutional racism in addition to rabid in your face racist. The American military routinely exploited black soldiers as cannon fodder for its wars. If allowed to fight they were considered expendable. In "Brothers: Black Soldiers in the Nam" the two authors were keenly aware of how black soldiers were sent to the front lines, out in the boonies, on search and destroy patrols much more often than their white counterparts. And similar to my previous read "Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans" by Wallace Terry, black soldiers had a unique bond that was forged by a racist military institution, a racist country back home, insulting and denigrating white officers as well as their white peers. Ironically, it was not lost on these men that despite the overwhelming odds against their survival they had the option of reciprocating against some of these perpetrators by "fragging" them or executing them in the field. Some did just that in retaliation for suicide missions and fruitless orders that slaughtered many a good soldier. In addition to all these circumstances the two authors noticed that their units were predominantly black because in mixed units the enemy would target the white soldiers and send out messages to the black soldiers that they did not belong in a war fighting other people of color. In 1967, a year before the two authors were sent to Vietnam, Muhammad Ali famously declined to go to Vietnam because as he so eloquently put it "I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger." Or "The draft is about white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the red people." All of the above is a backdrop for a compelling saga about two black serviceman serving during an unpopular war while crawling through leech infested swamps, braving lethal poisonous snakes, enemy booby traps and ambushes in a civil war where you couldn't tell the enemy from your government sanctioned friends and allies. Not to mention the incidence of friendly fire.

It bears mentioning that like in most of our country's overseas wars and interventions black soldiers have had the enlightening opportunity to discover that most foreign women on any of the continents do not harbor the racist sentiments that they are accustomed to back home. Most are surprised to discover that foreign women (and I don't just mean prostitutes and whores) are open to them as intriguing, virile and exciting men. In the subject book both men have illuminating relations with village women, city women and on R&R women in neighboring Asian countries. Albeit the R&R women were usually professionals in Thailand, Hong Kong and other Asian countries. Nonetheless it opened these 19 year olds up to a different perspective on their attractiveness and self-worth to woman outside their native country.

Overall a Great read. It was fun to read about the camaraderie the black soldiers had in the field, in the rear, on R&R, and back home in the States. It is understandable why they would become tight knit given the institutional and societal pressures that cause them to bond and the added unique bonding power of combat itself. Fortunately for the two subjects of this book they weren't as jaded as some of the black soldiers they met and could distinguish between the good white soldiers who were there to do a job and gave them the opportunity to do the same. The two 19 year olds quickly learned that racism took a back seat to survival in combat in Vietnam. But at the same time they learned that back in the States, whites who had come to respect and rely upon them all to quickly returned to their sense of privilege and the caste system in America that said one was a 1st class citizen entitled to all the opportunities and rewards befitting his status while the other needed to remember his place and not forget the institutional, societal and economic limitations on his rights and liberties.

[RK Byers · Rating 4 out of 5]

way better than i expected and also a little sad.