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The Cat From Hue: A Vietnam War Story
Winner of the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan Award
John Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over.
In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Méo, a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course.
The Cat from Hué has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.
John Laurence covered the Vietnam war for CBS News from its early days, through the bloody battle of Hue in 1968, to the Cambodian invasion. He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over.
In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Méo, a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course.
The Cat from Hué has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.
872 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2001
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1646 people want to read
About the author
John Laurence
38 books5 followersJohn Laurence was a foreign correspondent for CBS and ABC News. He was a correspondent in Vietnam from 1965-1970. New York Times reporter Gloria Emerson, described Laurence “the best TV reporter of the entire Vietnam War.” Over the course of his career he covered some of the biggest events of the late twentieth century. Laurence is now retired and living in England.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
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March 17, 2014
Addendum 10/9/09. I just discovered there is a web site that tells the story of "Doc" Dempsey and a follow-up. Anyone who has read the book, MUST check out this website:http://web.archive.org/web/2004021014.... [Note: the original link was taken over by another site so I have recreated the site from the webarchive) If you haven't read the book, don't look at the website; it's a huge spoiler.
***
What makes this book different from many of the others about the quagmire we call Vietnam is the unusual relationship that existed between the soldiers and the correspondents. After all, the correspondents could chose to leave the front. They fly up from their cozy little bungalows in Saigon or wherever, spend some time with the troops (admittedly often a very dangerous time) and then once they get the story, grab a ride on whatever chopper is heading back to "civilized" country. But there was a symbiosis that existed, too. The troops often used the reporters to get their side of the story out. Without them, our view of the war would have been a very different -- and wrong and censored and manipulated by those in control.
The symbiotic relationship that existed between correspondants and the military had its good and bad sides. In one instance, Laurence and his camera men were given a ride on an AE-1 bombing mission. There are directed to bomb a village by an officer in a spotting plane who gives them directions to bomb on one side of the river. On the other side and they will be bombing Cambodia. They proceed to do so and the plane Lawrence is in then strafes some villagers working in their gardens. Lawrence can't understand why the villagers just look up and watch.He asked the pilot why they didn't run. "Dumb bastards," was the reply. Later there are reports that some American planes had bombed and strafed a village in Cambodia. Of course he suspects that had done so and when he inquires, the PR people in the military ask him to please not write about it. He doesn't and the spotter later confirms he had made a mistake. But Laurence, by not reporting the error, had gained more trust and access to the stories - if somewhat expurgated.
In April of 1970, Laurence and his crew were given permission to accompany Charlie Company on routine patrols near the Cambodian border. In a series of very personal and incisive interviews they got the men to reveal their personal feelings about the war and each other. Attitudes toward the war were changing drastically, not just in the United States, and those concerns were reflected among the men in the field. So much so, that the Pentagon was getting worried and the PIOs (public information officers,) who hitherto had been most cooperate, had either been replaced or become much more intrusive and pro- and pre-scriptive. Casualties were increasing as well as the NVA and VC became more bold. Firebases were being overrun, in one case an entire battalion was put out of action. There were clashes between the men and the officers. Laurence and his crew were present, and reported on, one incident where a newly appointed company commander ordered his men down a road, something the previous captain would never have done knowing such a tactic might lead them into an ambush. The men just refused to follow him. Laurence and his group reported it as a rebellion. The vigaro hit the Mixmaster when word of the story got back to brigade. Their PIO was reassigned to the front and a series of mendacious meetings occurred as the army tried to cover up what had happened. Official reports from command had a certain antiseptic quality to them: Reading the handout, I thought the language captured the American high command's view of the war precisely. The battle was described almost exclusively in statistics: military designations, units of men, numbers of kilometers, miles, millimeters, hours, minutes, numbers of killed and wounded, numbers of weapons, calibers, times, distances, sizes, quantities, amounts. Looking at the statistics, what I saw was a cold, impersonal, detached accounting of what had happened during those two hours of hell at the firebase, devoid of any sense of the human cost. How else for an establishment of obsessive number crunchers and quantitative analysts like Robert McNamara to describe a battle? Attrition, the number of enemy soldiers killed in each fight, meant more to them than anything, even as the total number of America's own killed and wounded had grown itself over the years to a monstrous statistic. . . No mention of the consequences of the battle on U.S. operations in War Zone C. No suggestion that with so many of its men killed and wounded, and so many others who survived in shock, 2/8 was crippled, too understrength to stay in the field. The MACV handout told a lot about numbers but nothing of the fury and heartbreak of the fight. The battle was sanitized with statistics. But honest reporting had negative consequences for the brass, as well: The public forgets. No problem. But it's within house the generals don't forget. They never forget. Reputations are affected. Promotions are affected." So that's it, I thought. They want us to cover up the rebellion because it will hurt their chances for promotion. No wonder they've gone to all this trouble to meet us. `When the four-stars in the Pentagon see your story,' the sergeant major said, `they'll go into orbit. They'll come down on General Roberts like a ton of bricks. And he'll come down on us twice as hard for making him look bad.'
A whole lot more is at stake than the reputation of just one company,' Coleman said. `You have to understand the way the Army works.'
`Yes,' I said, `I understand.
Relations between the correspondants themselves were not always cordial. Morley Safer, in particular, was known for flying in at the last minute, collecting tapes and writing from others, then melding it all together under his own name and garnering all the credit. Many of them managed to get rich off the war. The official exchange rate was 70 piastres to the dollar, but the black market rate was 150. So they would get paid in dollars, exchange them for blackmarket piastres, pay their bills, and make a 100% profit. Some correspondants would rush to get the bills to pay them and left the country with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The pacification program, touted by Johnson and Ky was a joke. Laurence was sent to watch how one such operation was handled. The army moved villagers who had lived in the village for hundreds of years out so they could establish a base camp in a fertile framing area. The children were terrified of the shelling, and when they asked where they could go, they were told they would be flown some ten miles to a nearby town. The promised transportation did not come so they were forced to walk a considerable distance, They were housed in old Frenc barracks, which had no windows in blazing heat. There were no latrines. They were given condensed milk that was too old to sell on the black market and useless. They became sick and many died. That's how we made Vietnam a better place for the residents. At the end of 1965, the US had created 620,000 refugees in some 194 camps. Newsmen who reported the story were accused of being "commie-lovers." It was just newsmen who suffered. Officers who had the temerity to discuss missions that did not go quite as planned got demoted or reprimanded; they were helping the enemy.
The troops were often placed in impossible situations. Impossible to determine just who the enemy was, flown in to perform "search and destroy," watching their buddies be blown away by otherwise seemingly innocent civilians, it's a wonder any of them retained any vestige of humanity or sanity.
It was their practice to fly into a village and dump grenades down into village bunkers. Laurence describes one instance where the grenade killed a young pregnant woman who the villagers then lay out [book:on the road|6288] and everyone passes by to view the body - and presumably pay their respects. When the captain heard about it, he ordered it stopped and to use smoke grenades instead. " 'These bunkers,' he said, 'They're part of the house. Everybody's got one.' " Lawrence continues, "The peasants were trapped. If they took shelter when their hamlet was attacked and hid in their bunkers they were vulnerable to being killed by grenades. If they stayed above ground when the helicopters came in, they were in danger of being killed by artillery, air strikes, or gunships."
In the meantime, in Saigon, corruption was rampant. "...that pervasive secrecy in the civil service was necessary to protect the intricate networks of graft, bribery, nepotism, payoffs, kickbacks, and other corruption that permeated South Vietnamese institutions. Nor did I understand that most Vietnamese saw us as transients, another temporary army of occupation, like the French."
Death was omnipresent and the soldiers and correspondents soon learned that "the mission was death, cold stinging death, an end in itself, the racking up of bodies -- an NVA platoon here, a VC sniper there, a hostile village here, a few civilians there -- like points on a scoreboard, adding to the illusion of a mission accomplished. . . .winning was more important than any other consideration -- morality not truth, is the first casualty of war -- and that the means, however loathsome, would be justified ultimately by the end, as long as the end brought victory." (Shades of Dick Cheney.)
In WWI, if a British officer became shell shocked he was evacuated to England to a special hospital. Enlisted men were shot for cowardice. Lawrence, trying to get his story filed from Hue, gets to an aid station where three Marines are just sitting on the floor, all of them with the thousand-yard-stare. I quote:
"The Marine had lived in the line for days, his body embedded in the earth until it became part of it, moving on his stomach like a snake, falling asleep exhausted and waking up tired. His senses had absorbed fire and blast, cries of the wounded from no-man's-land, the silences. Most of the men around him had been hit but he had not. He had seen his friend's bodies pierced by flying steel, their blood draining away in the dirt, and so finally the fuses of his modest self-control snapped. Some internal regulator switched off his external senses from the unbearable reality of the Citadel, shut down his nervous system, located a quieter, safer place in the dreamy interiors of his mind, and left him alone. He was finished with the war. His mind had taken refuge in another reality.
"Everyone who went through close combat in the war was like him to some degree: more or less isolated, cut off from reality, lost in other worlds, at least in the mind . . . Who's to say he was less sane than anyone else. . . My guess was that it had more to do with his tolerance for insanity."
Laurence had 3 tours of Vietnam and himself suffered extensively from PTSD. He was responsible for the award-winning documentary The World of Charlie Company.
I graduated from high school in 1965 and college in 1969. Right smack dab in the middle of the war. We were all terrified of the draft, and the war permeated everything we did. We all lost friends there. It's no wonder many of us continue to be obsessed with books about Vietnam and our role there. I don't know what the modal age of Goodreads participants might be, but I suspect many are much younger and might have difficulty understanding how the war and attitudes to it colored everything we did during those years.
***
What makes this book different from many of the others about the quagmire we call Vietnam is the unusual relationship that existed between the soldiers and the correspondents. After all, the correspondents could chose to leave the front. They fly up from their cozy little bungalows in Saigon or wherever, spend some time with the troops (admittedly often a very dangerous time) and then once they get the story, grab a ride on whatever chopper is heading back to "civilized" country. But there was a symbiosis that existed, too. The troops often used the reporters to get their side of the story out. Without them, our view of the war would have been a very different -- and wrong and censored and manipulated by those in control.
The symbiotic relationship that existed between correspondants and the military had its good and bad sides. In one instance, Laurence and his camera men were given a ride on an AE-1 bombing mission. There are directed to bomb a village by an officer in a spotting plane who gives them directions to bomb on one side of the river. On the other side and they will be bombing Cambodia. They proceed to do so and the plane Lawrence is in then strafes some villagers working in their gardens. Lawrence can't understand why the villagers just look up and watch.He asked the pilot why they didn't run. "Dumb bastards," was the reply. Later there are reports that some American planes had bombed and strafed a village in Cambodia. Of course he suspects that had done so and when he inquires, the PR people in the military ask him to please not write about it. He doesn't and the spotter later confirms he had made a mistake. But Laurence, by not reporting the error, had gained more trust and access to the stories - if somewhat expurgated.
In April of 1970, Laurence and his crew were given permission to accompany Charlie Company on routine patrols near the Cambodian border. In a series of very personal and incisive interviews they got the men to reveal their personal feelings about the war and each other. Attitudes toward the war were changing drastically, not just in the United States, and those concerns were reflected among the men in the field. So much so, that the Pentagon was getting worried and the PIOs (public information officers,) who hitherto had been most cooperate, had either been replaced or become much more intrusive and pro- and pre-scriptive. Casualties were increasing as well as the NVA and VC became more bold. Firebases were being overrun, in one case an entire battalion was put out of action. There were clashes between the men and the officers. Laurence and his crew were present, and reported on, one incident where a newly appointed company commander ordered his men down a road, something the previous captain would never have done knowing such a tactic might lead them into an ambush. The men just refused to follow him. Laurence and his group reported it as a rebellion. The vigaro hit the Mixmaster when word of the story got back to brigade. Their PIO was reassigned to the front and a series of mendacious meetings occurred as the army tried to cover up what had happened. Official reports from command had a certain antiseptic quality to them: Reading the handout, I thought the language captured the American high command's view of the war precisely. The battle was described almost exclusively in statistics: military designations, units of men, numbers of kilometers, miles, millimeters, hours, minutes, numbers of killed and wounded, numbers of weapons, calibers, times, distances, sizes, quantities, amounts. Looking at the statistics, what I saw was a cold, impersonal, detached accounting of what had happened during those two hours of hell at the firebase, devoid of any sense of the human cost. How else for an establishment of obsessive number crunchers and quantitative analysts like Robert McNamara to describe a battle? Attrition, the number of enemy soldiers killed in each fight, meant more to them than anything, even as the total number of America's own killed and wounded had grown itself over the years to a monstrous statistic. . . No mention of the consequences of the battle on U.S. operations in War Zone C. No suggestion that with so many of its men killed and wounded, and so many others who survived in shock, 2/8 was crippled, too understrength to stay in the field. The MACV handout told a lot about numbers but nothing of the fury and heartbreak of the fight. The battle was sanitized with statistics. But honest reporting had negative consequences for the brass, as well: The public forgets. No problem. But it's within house the generals don't forget. They never forget. Reputations are affected. Promotions are affected." So that's it, I thought. They want us to cover up the rebellion because it will hurt their chances for promotion. No wonder they've gone to all this trouble to meet us. `When the four-stars in the Pentagon see your story,' the sergeant major said, `they'll go into orbit. They'll come down on General Roberts like a ton of bricks. And he'll come down on us twice as hard for making him look bad.'
A whole lot more is at stake than the reputation of just one company,' Coleman said. `You have to understand the way the Army works.'
`Yes,' I said, `I understand.
Relations between the correspondants themselves were not always cordial. Morley Safer, in particular, was known for flying in at the last minute, collecting tapes and writing from others, then melding it all together under his own name and garnering all the credit. Many of them managed to get rich off the war. The official exchange rate was 70 piastres to the dollar, but the black market rate was 150. So they would get paid in dollars, exchange them for blackmarket piastres, pay their bills, and make a 100% profit. Some correspondants would rush to get the bills to pay them and left the country with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The pacification program, touted by Johnson and Ky was a joke. Laurence was sent to watch how one such operation was handled. The army moved villagers who had lived in the village for hundreds of years out so they could establish a base camp in a fertile framing area. The children were terrified of the shelling, and when they asked where they could go, they were told they would be flown some ten miles to a nearby town. The promised transportation did not come so they were forced to walk a considerable distance, They were housed in old Frenc barracks, which had no windows in blazing heat. There were no latrines. They were given condensed milk that was too old to sell on the black market and useless. They became sick and many died. That's how we made Vietnam a better place for the residents. At the end of 1965, the US had created 620,000 refugees in some 194 camps. Newsmen who reported the story were accused of being "commie-lovers." It was just newsmen who suffered. Officers who had the temerity to discuss missions that did not go quite as planned got demoted or reprimanded; they were helping the enemy.
The troops were often placed in impossible situations. Impossible to determine just who the enemy was, flown in to perform "search and destroy," watching their buddies be blown away by otherwise seemingly innocent civilians, it's a wonder any of them retained any vestige of humanity or sanity.
It was their practice to fly into a village and dump grenades down into village bunkers. Laurence describes one instance where the grenade killed a young pregnant woman who the villagers then lay out [book:on the road|6288] and everyone passes by to view the body - and presumably pay their respects. When the captain heard about it, he ordered it stopped and to use smoke grenades instead. " 'These bunkers,' he said, 'They're part of the house. Everybody's got one.' " Lawrence continues, "The peasants were trapped. If they took shelter when their hamlet was attacked and hid in their bunkers they were vulnerable to being killed by grenades. If they stayed above ground when the helicopters came in, they were in danger of being killed by artillery, air strikes, or gunships."
In the meantime, in Saigon, corruption was rampant. "...that pervasive secrecy in the civil service was necessary to protect the intricate networks of graft, bribery, nepotism, payoffs, kickbacks, and other corruption that permeated South Vietnamese institutions. Nor did I understand that most Vietnamese saw us as transients, another temporary army of occupation, like the French."
Death was omnipresent and the soldiers and correspondents soon learned that "the mission was death, cold stinging death, an end in itself, the racking up of bodies -- an NVA platoon here, a VC sniper there, a hostile village here, a few civilians there -- like points on a scoreboard, adding to the illusion of a mission accomplished. . . .winning was more important than any other consideration -- morality not truth, is the first casualty of war -- and that the means, however loathsome, would be justified ultimately by the end, as long as the end brought victory." (Shades of Dick Cheney.)
In WWI, if a British officer became shell shocked he was evacuated to England to a special hospital. Enlisted men were shot for cowardice. Lawrence, trying to get his story filed from Hue, gets to an aid station where three Marines are just sitting on the floor, all of them with the thousand-yard-stare. I quote:
"The Marine had lived in the line for days, his body embedded in the earth until it became part of it, moving on his stomach like a snake, falling asleep exhausted and waking up tired. His senses had absorbed fire and blast, cries of the wounded from no-man's-land, the silences. Most of the men around him had been hit but he had not. He had seen his friend's bodies pierced by flying steel, their blood draining away in the dirt, and so finally the fuses of his modest self-control snapped. Some internal regulator switched off his external senses from the unbearable reality of the Citadel, shut down his nervous system, located a quieter, safer place in the dreamy interiors of his mind, and left him alone. He was finished with the war. His mind had taken refuge in another reality.
"Everyone who went through close combat in the war was like him to some degree: more or less isolated, cut off from reality, lost in other worlds, at least in the mind . . . Who's to say he was less sane than anyone else. . . My guess was that it had more to do with his tolerance for insanity."
Laurence had 3 tours of Vietnam and himself suffered extensively from PTSD. He was responsible for the award-winning documentary The World of Charlie Company.
I graduated from high school in 1965 and college in 1969. Right smack dab in the middle of the war. We were all terrified of the draft, and the war permeated everything we did. We all lost friends there. It's no wonder many of us continue to be obsessed with books about Vietnam and our role there. I don't know what the modal age of Goodreads participants might be, but I suspect many are much younger and might have difficulty understanding how the war and attitudes to it colored everything we did during those years.
January 27, 2016
My Review: Mèo is a cat, but make no mistake- he is no ordinary house pet. He comes from the deep, war-torn jungles of Vietnam and makes his way, miraculously, into the heart and home of American journalist John Laurence. Mèo is wild at heart; ferocious and hostile, with a particular distaste for Americans. Among friends and visitors, Mèo quickly earns a reputation as being a reincarnated member of the National Liberation Front. Mèo is Viet Cong.
In this incredible memoir, John Laurence reflects on his time as a war correspondent for CBS News. Having spent years in the trenches (both literally and figuratively), Laurence struggles to discover meaning amid the senseless violence and destruction of the Vietnam War. His relationship with Mèo the Viet Cong cat ultimately becomes a metaphor for the tumultuous relationship between the United States and Vietnam. In a beautifully organized account of the decade-long battle, Laurence uses his feline companion to help deconstruct the complex wartime politics and emotional chaos he’d been grappling with for so long.
At over 800 pages in length, this colossal memoir is more than a simple chronicle of Laurence’s personal struggles and growth- it is a haunting reminder of our history as Americans at war. Indeed, my stomach churned as a sickening familiarity washed over me. The political games and nuances; the brutal power of a hidden enemy; the refusal of governments to admit failure; the disconnect between a country at war and the soldiers who fight it…
I know this story. The story of Vietnam is the story of Iraq; violence and destruction reincarnated. War and death recreated to be witnessed and borne by a new generation. Lessons learned in Vietnam and reiterated in the years since (by veterans and journalists like John Laurence) seem to have been utterly dismissed.
How long will we let history repeat itself before we truly consider the consequences of our actions? The toll of war is not light- as Americans, it’s time to reassess our role in the world. As Laurence reminds us, peace is long overdue.
In this incredible memoir, John Laurence reflects on his time as a war correspondent for CBS News. Having spent years in the trenches (both literally and figuratively), Laurence struggles to discover meaning amid the senseless violence and destruction of the Vietnam War. His relationship with Mèo the Viet Cong cat ultimately becomes a metaphor for the tumultuous relationship between the United States and Vietnam. In a beautifully organized account of the decade-long battle, Laurence uses his feline companion to help deconstruct the complex wartime politics and emotional chaos he’d been grappling with for so long.
At over 800 pages in length, this colossal memoir is more than a simple chronicle of Laurence’s personal struggles and growth- it is a haunting reminder of our history as Americans at war. Indeed, my stomach churned as a sickening familiarity washed over me. The political games and nuances; the brutal power of a hidden enemy; the refusal of governments to admit failure; the disconnect between a country at war and the soldiers who fight it…
I know this story. The story of Vietnam is the story of Iraq; violence and destruction reincarnated. War and death recreated to be witnessed and borne by a new generation. Lessons learned in Vietnam and reiterated in the years since (by veterans and journalists like John Laurence) seem to have been utterly dismissed.
How long will we let history repeat itself before we truly consider the consequences of our actions? The toll of war is not light- as Americans, it’s time to reassess our role in the world. As Laurence reminds us, peace is long overdue.
May 6, 2023
The fourth star flickers a little on whether he held my attention for as long as he asked for it, but I will keep it in because I am such a peculiar jury. It's not his fault that I try to complete a book every day, and that wasn't possible with this one.
He really succeeded in getting across both the atmosphere and the ground-level personalities involved in the American war in Vietnam.
He really succeeded in getting across both the atmosphere and the ground-level personalities involved in the American war in Vietnam.
June 16, 2019
This book is by far the best I have read on the Vietnam War so far. John Laurence’s descriptions of the battles, the cities and even just the oppressive heat that permeated the Vietnamese jungles had me dreaming vividly about a conflict that happened decades before I was born.
With prose that is in turns beautiful and enchanting, then violent and terrifying, Laurence has provided me with what is perhaps the closest I will ever get to fully realizing the importance, brutality, and complexity of this conflict. The 845 pages flew by as I was drawn into the multiple dimensions of the war; as it was fought from the ground in Vietnam, to the pressrooms, where skirmishes between military authority and the press centered around how to convey the fighting to the public. (To quote a lieutenant colonel in the heat of one of these press wars: “When we let you guys into our bedroom...you’re seeing everything that happens, the bad with the good...we want to be able to handle the bad in our own way. We want the dirty linen to come out clean.”) The book was enlightening and powerful. Perhaps one of the most powerful surprises was the fact that I came away from the novel with a feeling of hope that maybe the scars left from such a tragic war can still be healed.
With prose that is in turns beautiful and enchanting, then violent and terrifying, Laurence has provided me with what is perhaps the closest I will ever get to fully realizing the importance, brutality, and complexity of this conflict. The 845 pages flew by as I was drawn into the multiple dimensions of the war; as it was fought from the ground in Vietnam, to the pressrooms, where skirmishes between military authority and the press centered around how to convey the fighting to the public. (To quote a lieutenant colonel in the heat of one of these press wars: “When we let you guys into our bedroom...you’re seeing everything that happens, the bad with the good...we want to be able to handle the bad in our own way. We want the dirty linen to come out clean.”) The book was enlightening and powerful. Perhaps one of the most powerful surprises was the fact that I came away from the novel with a feeling of hope that maybe the scars left from such a tragic war can still be healed.
December 30, 2018
Remarkably open, personal and unembellished narrative about media evolution, and what it takes to report a war. It offers plenty of surprising "behind the scenes" insights. As a newbie television journalist in the 60's, Laurence hadn’t had an easy job in Vietnam since the very beginning. Not only people were not accustomed to TV broadcasting violence directly in their living rooms, but the new medium wasn’t trusted by colleagues from traditional media either. TV reporters were generally mocked as "Saigon cowboys" or "news actors" by most print reporters who considered them to be lenient, overpaid, intellectually shallow egotists wearing hand-tailored bush jackets they called "TV suits" and who rarely took risks. As time (and war) went by, TV crews gained respect, recognition, and trust from both sides. People quickly learnt that unlike the American generals and politicians, journalists’ reputations did not rise or fall with progress in the war and thus were more credible.
Although raw combat footage seemed authentic, Laurence admits that television may not be an ideal medium for understanding whole reality: “TV audience saw Vietnam like a child kneeling in the corridor, his eye to the keyhole, looking at two grownups arguing in a locked room - the aperture of the keyhole very small…”
Perhaps this was one of reasons why Laurence felt necessity to write a book that would put his Vietnam videos to a wider context. Although being adventurous and naturally curios, Laurence remains primarily thoughtful observer and does not romanticize the war. While other war reporters often tend to handpick dramatic events in their careers, Laurence's book is full of aimless wandering through the jungle, awaiting action, or screwing snapshots. Paradoxically, his most famous and best-known report - "three months in the field with Charlie company" - did not catch a single shooting. Nevertheless, Cat from Hue is a truly fascinating read. Perhaps also for the possibility to compare Laurence's narratives with his crew's footage on youtube.
Although raw combat footage seemed authentic, Laurence admits that television may not be an ideal medium for understanding whole reality: “TV audience saw Vietnam like a child kneeling in the corridor, his eye to the keyhole, looking at two grownups arguing in a locked room - the aperture of the keyhole very small…”
Perhaps this was one of reasons why Laurence felt necessity to write a book that would put his Vietnam videos to a wider context. Although being adventurous and naturally curios, Laurence remains primarily thoughtful observer and does not romanticize the war. While other war reporters often tend to handpick dramatic events in their careers, Laurence's book is full of aimless wandering through the jungle, awaiting action, or screwing snapshots. Paradoxically, his most famous and best-known report - "three months in the field with Charlie company" - did not catch a single shooting. Nevertheless, Cat from Hue is a truly fascinating read. Perhaps also for the possibility to compare Laurence's narratives with his crew's footage on youtube.
July 17, 2022
A very detailed memoir of the author's time spent covering the war, from the moment Marines landed at Danang in 1965, the large scale battles in the Central Highlands, followed by about a year's break before coming back for the Tet Offensive in 1968. Then there was another break before he returns in 1970 for an in-depth assignment, including the Cambodian invasion. Throughout Laurence interviewed dozens of participants from Privates to Generals and every rank in between about their thoughts and experiences of the war and of combat. He details the intricacies of television reporting, still in its infancy at the time, the technological hurdles and logistical challenges coordinating with American broadcast timings from Asia. It was also an account of life during those tumultuous days, living on the edge and the drug and booze fueled parties in Saigon in between field assignments.
As usual with a book of this length there could have been better editing to shorten the overly long portions that may bore readers who are interested only in coverage of the fighting. Then again it wouldn't have been the same work - a personal diary of one man's journey from beginning to end.
As for the titular cat, he was a real character. A true survivor like many humans caught up in the conflict. Tenacious to the very end - thousands of miles from where he was born, ground zero of Tet in Hue city.
News reporting of war has come a long way since, with almost instantaneous communications from anywhere in the world via the internet today. But the quality in my opinion has not progressed as much judging from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, though to be fair the scale isn't comparable even if they were of similar and even longer duration.
As usual with a book of this length there could have been better editing to shorten the overly long portions that may bore readers who are interested only in coverage of the fighting. Then again it wouldn't have been the same work - a personal diary of one man's journey from beginning to end.
As for the titular cat, he was a real character. A true survivor like many humans caught up in the conflict. Tenacious to the very end - thousands of miles from where he was born, ground zero of Tet in Hue city.
News reporting of war has come a long way since, with almost instantaneous communications from anywhere in the world via the internet today. But the quality in my opinion has not progressed as much judging from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, though to be fair the scale isn't comparable even if they were of similar and even longer duration.
March 6, 2018
I found The Cat from Hue by John Laurence to be one of the best historical accounts of the Vietnam War that I have read. I missed reading the Cat from Hue when it came out in 2002. By that time America had gone through Desert Storm, 9/11, fighting in Afghanistan, and was about to invade Iraq. Vietnam was far in the rear view mirror. I came across this book after reading the recently published book Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden who referred to The Cat from Hue in his book. Bowden’s book was good, but Laurence’s book was better, I think, because of its first person account. Bowden’s account included interviews of former soldiers, but it was retrospective and Bowden wasn’t part of the action. Laurence’s account was interviewing soldiers in the field at the time, and he was in on the action.
I found Laurence’s book especially gripping because of his personal investment in what was happening. In a lot of ways the book reads like a novel more than a non-fiction story, but what happened was all too real. The conflict between the press and the military was interesting, because the press has not always been at such odds with military, eg., during WWII. The difference perhaps is the true danger that the press perceives. In WWII there was a conscious recognition that the U.S. was threatened by Japan and Germany. In the case of Vietnam, that threat to the U.S. homeland was increasingly seen as bogus by the press who were on the scene. We were simply destroying a country and its people in order to “save” it.
Laurence’s introspective description of how the war affected him personally, both psychologically and physically, was impactful. His revelation of how his experiences changed how he looked at the war was really interesting, illustrating the conflict he had between being an impartial journalist and his need to tell the truth in the face of what he increasingly saw as a pointless immoral war. His book makes a strong case for leaders to heed the lessons of history when going to war, but as the twenty first century is showing, history’s wars are quickly forgotten. Laurence’s book nevertheless continues to remind us of how difficult it is for a nation to extract itself from war once it has started.
I found Laurence’s book especially gripping because of his personal investment in what was happening. In a lot of ways the book reads like a novel more than a non-fiction story, but what happened was all too real. The conflict between the press and the military was interesting, because the press has not always been at such odds with military, eg., during WWII. The difference perhaps is the true danger that the press perceives. In WWII there was a conscious recognition that the U.S. was threatened by Japan and Germany. In the case of Vietnam, that threat to the U.S. homeland was increasingly seen as bogus by the press who were on the scene. We were simply destroying a country and its people in order to “save” it.
Laurence’s introspective description of how the war affected him personally, both psychologically and physically, was impactful. His revelation of how his experiences changed how he looked at the war was really interesting, illustrating the conflict he had between being an impartial journalist and his need to tell the truth in the face of what he increasingly saw as a pointless immoral war. His book makes a strong case for leaders to heed the lessons of history when going to war, but as the twenty first century is showing, history’s wars are quickly forgotten. Laurence’s book nevertheless continues to remind us of how difficult it is for a nation to extract itself from war once it has started.
November 24, 2017
I read this book in the run-up to the Iraq war. I was a supporter of the war at the time, but was still struck by the parallel between the arrogant confidence of the Americans in 1964, and the over-confident attitude going in to the the invasion of Iraq.
April 26, 2023
I have read numerous books about Vietnam and the tragic American undeclared war that resulted in millions of needless deaths. Our 50,000 dead American military youth was the tip of the iceberg relative to this illegal war. It marked a low point in our nation’s record of misbegotten imperialist policy to that point in history.
CBS journalist,John Laurence, does an exceptional job humanizing the soldiers who fought on all sides in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos while exposing the horror and hypocrisy of those god awful years. This is as well written as any book I have read on Vietnam. The author lives in the field reporting on the daily lives of the troops and command structure. There isn’t one single book that will better educate the reader regarding this bleak era. This is great writing on a soul sucking subject and must reading to fully appreciate America’s culpability regarding Vietnam and events that have shaped who we are today.
CBS journalist,John Laurence, does an exceptional job humanizing the soldiers who fought on all sides in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos while exposing the horror and hypocrisy of those god awful years. This is as well written as any book I have read on Vietnam. The author lives in the field reporting on the daily lives of the troops and command structure. There isn’t one single book that will better educate the reader regarding this bleak era. This is great writing on a soul sucking subject and must reading to fully appreciate America’s culpability regarding Vietnam and events that have shaped who we are today.
June 4, 2016
This is a remarkable book carefully documented to create a narrative that follows a new American combat news reporter to the field in Vietnam and his rise to be one of, if not the finest combat journalist in Vietnam. John Lawrence has used a narrative that can be backed up by news footage, newspaper reports or notes taken in the field. At over 800 pages it is hefty but holds its own throughout. What is especially interesting is the news footage and documentaries that he worked on and reported in can be viewed on Youtube and so these can be matched to the stories in the book giving an incredible amount of additional color. His combination of dreamlike sequences and emotional empathy placed within the strict documented storyline is some of his most beautiful work. Well recommended to any reader on any level for an insiders knowledge regarding the Vietnam war.
September 12, 2022
Of all the major Vietnam War correspondents, John Laurence remains the most obscure. Of course, I remember him well enough for his CBS reports from Vietnam during the 1960s. But after that, he seems to have disappeared somewhat. In The Cat From Hue, I think you get an idea of why that happened. This is a lengthy book. And it covers Laurence's time in Vietnam, about 95 percent of the book, about as thoroughly as can be expected, especially his time in the field with the American troops. Yet when Laurence leaves in 1970, his story simply deflates. There is a return trip to Vietnam in 1982 and descriptions of personal crises while living in London in the 1970s and 1980s. But he barely mentions his subsequent work as a war correspondent in other regions of the world. He does provide a chapter on the fate of the cat from Hue, Laurence's pet cat, Meo, which he rescued from Hue city as it was being fought for between the Americans/South Vietnamese and Viet Cong in 1968. As becomes obvious early on, the cat and Laurence serve as metaphors for the relationship between America and Vietnam. It is obvious and, therefore, a bit disappointing when Laurence feels he has to spell it out towards the end of the book.
The strengths of this memoir/history is Laurence's description of the patrols and fighting in places such as Hue, An Ninh, Ia Drang, Dak To, Plei Me, and the invasion of Cambodia. Frankly, nobody has ever done this better than Laurence. I simply cannot emphasize how excellent his stories from the field are. Nobody really comes close to matching him, not for firsthand reporting or from the perspective of history. The weaknesses of the book come from Laurence wanting to be more than perhaps the best frontline war correspondent in the business at the time. He tries to philosophize, create deep meaning, and he wallows in some of the cliches of the time as a result. These contradictions even manifest themselves in Laurence's masterwork, The World of Charlie Company. This one hour documentary that captured American troops on the verge of mutiny against their officers is one of the most consequential pieces of filmmaking from the war. Yet in the background story and aftermath that Laurence describes in Cat From Hue, he discredits himself, I think, in the way he pictures Lt. Col. William Ochs in particular. He creates the picture of a vacillating, stammering, insecure, and embarrassed career officer. Nowhere else in this book does Laurence describe anyone else as stuttering or peppering their sentences with "ah" and "er." Not one to trust the military myself, I nonetheless found this unfair. And that especially became true when Laurence contrasted himself with Ochs, claiming a sort of virtue and search for truth that I don't quite trust.
Why don't I trust it? Because Laurence exaggerates. There is no need to make the climate and environment of Vietnam worse than it was. The heat and humidity was a physical drain on the soldiers. But do not refer to 100 degree Fahrenheit days that didn't happen. I know they didn't happen because it was appearing so often in the pages of the book that I started cross referencing the places Laurence says he was with historical weather data for the time of the year the events he was covering took place. He was off by at least 10 degrees cooler than he writes. (I live in Southeast Asia, in Bangkok, and the time of the year he describes as 100+ was in January/February. The coolest, most pleasant time of the year is December through early February. And that is for Bangkok, about which even the Vietnamese complain that it is always too hot.) Included, here, too is Laurence's technique of what amounts to inventing quotes and drama for his story. What he does is take the material he can cite directly from notes, film, and audio and place it in "double quotes," while reconstructing conversations that could or should have been there in 'single quotes.' To me, this is pure invention and falsity. Laurence easily could have paraphrased and been equally as effective, but instead he wants the drama of conversations and comments that did not happen. This single quote business, I think, is shameful. At the same time, I would bet that more than a few other writers on similar material have done the same but never acknowledged it. At least Laurence is being honest with us.
Something else that irks me is Laurence's hero worshipping of the war photographer, Tim Page. (Page just died a few weeks before I am writing this review, on 24 August 2022.) Despite his brilliance and courage, Page was an unstable individual (perhaps being unstable, in fact, might have been why he was so courageous and exceptional in his work). And Laurence seems to have wanted to copy his "cool" friend to escape something of an image of a nerd that he projected. Laurence was a small man who wore large horn rimmed glasses during the war; Page was a tall and lanky figure who appears utterly at ease in the fatigues he wore in the field and in Saigon. If so, Laurence got his wish, eventually sliding into alcoholism and an addiction to painkillers and other drugs.
Finally, I spent a couple of weeks with this book. I took my time and while reading it also downloaded many of Laurence's reports for CBS from the 1960s. Much if not most of his work is easily available online, including The World of Charlie Company. Laurence's reports can also be found in Walter Cronkite's 1981 compendium of CBS news reports about the war. As I remember, they come in thirty minute episodes. At any rate, it's very much a valuable experience for anyone interested in the war and its effects on individual soldiers to read Cat From Hue while watching the very footage Laurence discusses.
The strengths of this memoir/history is Laurence's description of the patrols and fighting in places such as Hue, An Ninh, Ia Drang, Dak To, Plei Me, and the invasion of Cambodia. Frankly, nobody has ever done this better than Laurence. I simply cannot emphasize how excellent his stories from the field are. Nobody really comes close to matching him, not for firsthand reporting or from the perspective of history. The weaknesses of the book come from Laurence wanting to be more than perhaps the best frontline war correspondent in the business at the time. He tries to philosophize, create deep meaning, and he wallows in some of the cliches of the time as a result. These contradictions even manifest themselves in Laurence's masterwork, The World of Charlie Company. This one hour documentary that captured American troops on the verge of mutiny against their officers is one of the most consequential pieces of filmmaking from the war. Yet in the background story and aftermath that Laurence describes in Cat From Hue, he discredits himself, I think, in the way he pictures Lt. Col. William Ochs in particular. He creates the picture of a vacillating, stammering, insecure, and embarrassed career officer. Nowhere else in this book does Laurence describe anyone else as stuttering or peppering their sentences with "ah" and "er." Not one to trust the military myself, I nonetheless found this unfair. And that especially became true when Laurence contrasted himself with Ochs, claiming a sort of virtue and search for truth that I don't quite trust.
Why don't I trust it? Because Laurence exaggerates. There is no need to make the climate and environment of Vietnam worse than it was. The heat and humidity was a physical drain on the soldiers. But do not refer to 100 degree Fahrenheit days that didn't happen. I know they didn't happen because it was appearing so often in the pages of the book that I started cross referencing the places Laurence says he was with historical weather data for the time of the year the events he was covering took place. He was off by at least 10 degrees cooler than he writes. (I live in Southeast Asia, in Bangkok, and the time of the year he describes as 100+ was in January/February. The coolest, most pleasant time of the year is December through early February. And that is for Bangkok, about which even the Vietnamese complain that it is always too hot.) Included, here, too is Laurence's technique of what amounts to inventing quotes and drama for his story. What he does is take the material he can cite directly from notes, film, and audio and place it in "double quotes," while reconstructing conversations that could or should have been there in 'single quotes.' To me, this is pure invention and falsity. Laurence easily could have paraphrased and been equally as effective, but instead he wants the drama of conversations and comments that did not happen. This single quote business, I think, is shameful. At the same time, I would bet that more than a few other writers on similar material have done the same but never acknowledged it. At least Laurence is being honest with us.
Something else that irks me is Laurence's hero worshipping of the war photographer, Tim Page. (Page just died a few weeks before I am writing this review, on 24 August 2022.) Despite his brilliance and courage, Page was an unstable individual (perhaps being unstable, in fact, might have been why he was so courageous and exceptional in his work). And Laurence seems to have wanted to copy his "cool" friend to escape something of an image of a nerd that he projected. Laurence was a small man who wore large horn rimmed glasses during the war; Page was a tall and lanky figure who appears utterly at ease in the fatigues he wore in the field and in Saigon. If so, Laurence got his wish, eventually sliding into alcoholism and an addiction to painkillers and other drugs.
Finally, I spent a couple of weeks with this book. I took my time and while reading it also downloaded many of Laurence's reports for CBS from the 1960s. Much if not most of his work is easily available online, including The World of Charlie Company. Laurence's reports can also be found in Walter Cronkite's 1981 compendium of CBS news reports about the war. As I remember, they come in thirty minute episodes. At any rate, it's very much a valuable experience for anyone interested in the war and its effects on individual soldiers to read Cat From Hue while watching the very footage Laurence discusses.
December 2, 2014
When I got "The Cat From Hue' I thought- really? 840 pages of personal memoirs of the Vietnam war by the famous CBS video correspondent? how is that gonna work? did he remember everything?
Yeah. He did. And its FASCINATING. Even the story about the cat was of interest to me, a major stretch. Name dropping all the famous people who covered the war- and covering multiple visits during the conflict, the book lets you see the growing unease of the press and the army at the same time. Thick as it is- not to be missed if you want to reads the VietNam oeuvre.
Yeah. He did. And its FASCINATING. Even the story about the cat was of interest to me, a major stretch. Name dropping all the famous people who covered the war- and covering multiple visits during the conflict, the book lets you see the growing unease of the press and the army at the same time. Thick as it is- not to be missed if you want to reads the VietNam oeuvre.
May 12, 2018
I loved this book beyond belief. Not only was it well-written, but the stories of Charlie Company and the bigwigs from the networks were so real; you feel as if you are there. Laurence was very self-effacing, and a marvelous storyteller. A couple of Vietnam books I read from the point of view of officers, or enlisted men, were either too stilted, or too low in terms of vocabulary and ideals, but this was just the right mix of doing the right thing, and wanting to get the story out. I wish he had written other books.
July 29, 2007
This was a very affecting book. Laurence was there with the soldiers in the jungle and saw first-hand just what they went through. His descriptions and interviews really made the horrors of the war hit home for me.
It's been a while since I've read it from cover to cover, but I still think about it sometimes and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in a non-sanitized account of the Vietnam War.
It's been a while since I've read it from cover to cover, but I still think about it sometimes and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in a non-sanitized account of the Vietnam War.
February 25, 2009
There is not quite enough plot to sustain the considerable bulk of this book; the action is often repetitive or superfluous to the overall effect of the story. Even so, this is a richly layered story that humanizes the often misunderstood and stereotyped soldiers of the Vietnam conflict. And it is this humanizing element, this "this is the way it was and the way we were" that makes this book valuable, even compelling reading despite the ponderous length.
December 19, 2008
Five years ago, some of my students did a research project on Vietnam and interviewed John Laurence via e-mail. They bought me acopy of this book to commerate their project making it to National History Day . This is the most personal of all the Vietnam memoirs. It is a must read for any person who wants to understand the daily travails of the grunt and the journalist that travelled with them.
August 29, 2018
I loved this one. The prose occasionally veers into the indulgent, and near the end, Laurence gets rather maudlin, but it's well worth the read, and you'll never be bored.
January 29, 2025
The story of the Vietnam War is inextricably linked with stories about the Vietnam War, and especially how the war was coverage at home. Walter Cronkite saying that "We are mired in stalemate" in the wake of the Tet Offensive is noted as a turning point in public opinion. General Westmoreland said "Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." And while words are one things, the immediacy of television in the 1960s brought the war into American living rooms. As a CBS television reporter, John Laurence was a key link in that chain. This book is his attempt to grapple with his experiences in Vietnam decades later.
Mỹ Tho, Vietnam, 5 April, 1968. A Viet Cong base camp being burned down.
--Wikimedia
Laurence served three tours in Vietnam with a combat reporter's tours having obvious analogs to military tours to a soldier's. The first was in 1965 and 1966, the start of the American phase of the war. Laurence was not at the Battle of Ia Drang, but he was with the cavalry both before and after, and with the Marines in Operation Masher. He returned to Vietnam in 1967, in time to catch the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Hue. And he went back once more with an ambitious project to do a focused study of a single unit, which became the award winning documentary The World of Charlie Company.
Two themes drive through this book. The first one is about a journalist's duty. Television producers were hungry for bang-bang footage, live combat on film which would get viewers on their channel. The US government as a whole wanted to keep everybody 'on the program', the informal understanding that the war was going well, and that the daily MACV press briefings called the five o'clock follies was relevant. Reporters were engaged in contests with each other to get better stories back home first. And finally there was some obligation to the truth, and the reporter's role as the intermediary between subjects of their reporting, American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, and the people back home. There are no easy answers to this problem, but a good reporter has a sensitivity towards the construction of the story, and the ways in which images and text are always partial, always incomplete, always biased.
A second theme is coming of age in the Vietnam War. Laurence was just a few years older than the soldiers he covered, and barely more worldly at first. Reporters were not under military discipline, they could always just go home, and yet combat exerted a magnetic draw on some of them, even to the death. Laurence chronicles the strange and lovely scene at Frankie's House, a flophouse maintained by several reporters that was a rolling party of dope and rock and roll (sex is a little vaguer in this book, probably for the best). The attraction of the war proved fatal for some reporters. About 150 correspondents died covering the war. Laurence's friends Dana Stone and Sean Flynn disappeared in Cambodia, almost certainly killed by the Khmer Rouge. Tim Page was wounded four times, the last leaving him partially paralyzed. Laurence himself suffered from PTSD, which he self-medicated with booze, marijuana, and Valium. And yet the only regrets I think Laurence and his friends have is that they didn't record more, that technical glitches lost shots or luck had they away from the action.
A lot of Vietnam War memoirs are the same: Civvy life, bootcamp, one year tour, back to the states, and what the hell happened. Laurence's memoir fits the same space, but his story is both unique and well told.
Oh, and the cat. Laurence rescued a kitten during the battle of Hue, a white and orange cat named Mèo (Vietnamese for cat), which rapidly grew to a terrorizing king of wherever he surveyed, a beast which distrusted all Americans and would attack ruthlessly and without warning. I'm not a cat person, but there's some humor in Laurence and his friends describing Mèo as '100% Viet Cong, a hardcore warrior who'll never surrender and never break.'
Mỹ Tho, Vietnam, 5 April, 1968. A Viet Cong base camp being burned down.
--Wikimedia
Laurence served three tours in Vietnam with a combat reporter's tours having obvious analogs to military tours to a soldier's. The first was in 1965 and 1966, the start of the American phase of the war. Laurence was not at the Battle of Ia Drang, but he was with the cavalry both before and after, and with the Marines in Operation Masher. He returned to Vietnam in 1967, in time to catch the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Hue. And he went back once more with an ambitious project to do a focused study of a single unit, which became the award winning documentary The World of Charlie Company.
Two themes drive through this book. The first one is about a journalist's duty. Television producers were hungry for bang-bang footage, live combat on film which would get viewers on their channel. The US government as a whole wanted to keep everybody 'on the program', the informal understanding that the war was going well, and that the daily MACV press briefings called the five o'clock follies was relevant. Reporters were engaged in contests with each other to get better stories back home first. And finally there was some obligation to the truth, and the reporter's role as the intermediary between subjects of their reporting, American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, and the people back home. There are no easy answers to this problem, but a good reporter has a sensitivity towards the construction of the story, and the ways in which images and text are always partial, always incomplete, always biased.
A second theme is coming of age in the Vietnam War. Laurence was just a few years older than the soldiers he covered, and barely more worldly at first. Reporters were not under military discipline, they could always just go home, and yet combat exerted a magnetic draw on some of them, even to the death. Laurence chronicles the strange and lovely scene at Frankie's House, a flophouse maintained by several reporters that was a rolling party of dope and rock and roll (sex is a little vaguer in this book, probably for the best). The attraction of the war proved fatal for some reporters. About 150 correspondents died covering the war. Laurence's friends Dana Stone and Sean Flynn disappeared in Cambodia, almost certainly killed by the Khmer Rouge. Tim Page was wounded four times, the last leaving him partially paralyzed. Laurence himself suffered from PTSD, which he self-medicated with booze, marijuana, and Valium. And yet the only regrets I think Laurence and his friends have is that they didn't record more, that technical glitches lost shots or luck had they away from the action.
A lot of Vietnam War memoirs are the same: Civvy life, bootcamp, one year tour, back to the states, and what the hell happened. Laurence's memoir fits the same space, but his story is both unique and well told.
Oh, and the cat. Laurence rescued a kitten during the battle of Hue, a white and orange cat named Mèo (Vietnamese for cat), which rapidly grew to a terrorizing king of wherever he surveyed, a beast which distrusted all Americans and would attack ruthlessly and without warning. I'm not a cat person, but there's some humor in Laurence and his friends describing Mèo as '100% Viet Cong, a hardcore warrior who'll never surrender and never break.'
October 27, 2019
Reading John Laurence’s The Cat From Hue: A Vietnam War Story, I reflected on the isolation and innocence of my 1960s childhood. Summers of ‘65-’68, I was a tow-headed boy popping wheelies on the pebbled side streets of the Jersey shore. Eleven hours ahead of me, and a world away in Vietnam, thousands of soldiers some ten years older than me were being shot, blown up, maimed, tortured, and traumatized in an absurdly harrowing Faustian theater.
The intellectual abstractions of Cold War political philosophies played out by soldiers and Vietnamese civilians in a violent slaughterhouse remote for all of us "back in the world". US citizens were fed the war-mongering pablum, “Defeat communism over there before it reaches our shores”.
John Laurence retrospectively refers to the Vietnam war as a killing machine. When the curtain dropped in April 1975, the death toll was a shamefully pointless 1,353,000 deaths (627,000 civilian, 444,000 NVA/VC and 282,000 US and allies).
I don't remember anyone, friends or relatives, directly impacted by the escalating tragedy that was unfolding in Vietnam. Like most other middle class white boys in 1960s North America, I lived in a bubble of privilege and serenity, isolated from hunger, strife, violence, and the abandonment of hope.
One recollection of the Vietnam war centered around my sixth grade teacher Mr. Kasner. Kasner was a forthright teacher who had been directly impacted by the war. He explained to us why it was called a “conflict” rather than a war: the US Congress never declared war. That was ‘68. In January of ‘68, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army launched the Tet Offensive, one of the war’s largest military campaigns targeting the South Vietnamese Army, the US, and their allies.
To resilient North Vietnamese soldiers who’d fended off occupying armies from China and France, the Vietnam War was called the “Resistance War Against America”. The US military were interlopers in an agrarian country, an un-welcomed combatant to the NVA and a tolerated economic sugar-daddy to the corrupt South Vietnamese government in Saigon.
The US ostensibly interloped to defend the South Vietnamese people from a Cold-War-conjured bogeyman: communism.
Seven years prior to the Vietnam war, departing President and former Army General Dwight Eisenhower coined the term military industrial complex. President Eisenhower warned:
John Laurence has written an important book. Vietnam should've never happened. No rationale justifies or explains the violence, the suffering, or the grief. The ignorance, hubris, cultural isolation, and ongoing delusion of American exceptionalism combined with war-profiteering by United States’ industrial war machinery will never serve the Common Good.
Laurence is a polished storyteller. This compelling memoir is heart-felt. It pulls no punches. He takes us along on a harrowing journey both personal and collective. He documents the hopes and fears of the infantry "grunts" who endured intense tropical heat and existential threats in the jungles, rice paddies, and villages of Vietnam and Cambodia.
Lawrence’s memoir gave me missing historical context and gave me a perspective on the Vietnam War I lacked.
The lessons are clear. War exposes the worst of human nature. Few if any wars are just. Go forth in peace. Practice peace mongering.
Rated 5 of 5 stars.
The intellectual abstractions of Cold War political philosophies played out by soldiers and Vietnamese civilians in a violent slaughterhouse remote for all of us "back in the world". US citizens were fed the war-mongering pablum, “Defeat communism over there before it reaches our shores”.
John Laurence retrospectively refers to the Vietnam war as a killing machine. When the curtain dropped in April 1975, the death toll was a shamefully pointless 1,353,000 deaths (627,000 civilian, 444,000 NVA/VC and 282,000 US and allies).
I don't remember anyone, friends or relatives, directly impacted by the escalating tragedy that was unfolding in Vietnam. Like most other middle class white boys in 1960s North America, I lived in a bubble of privilege and serenity, isolated from hunger, strife, violence, and the abandonment of hope.
One recollection of the Vietnam war centered around my sixth grade teacher Mr. Kasner. Kasner was a forthright teacher who had been directly impacted by the war. He explained to us why it was called a “conflict” rather than a war: the US Congress never declared war. That was ‘68. In January of ‘68, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army launched the Tet Offensive, one of the war’s largest military campaigns targeting the South Vietnamese Army, the US, and their allies.
“Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth”
— Message to NVA troops before Tet commenced
To resilient North Vietnamese soldiers who’d fended off occupying armies from China and France, the Vietnam War was called the “Resistance War Against America”. The US military were interlopers in an agrarian country, an un-welcomed combatant to the NVA and a tolerated economic sugar-daddy to the corrupt South Vietnamese government in Saigon.
The US ostensibly interloped to defend the South Vietnamese people from a Cold-War-conjured bogeyman: communism.
Seven years prior to the Vietnam war, departing President and former Army General Dwight Eisenhower coined the term military industrial complex. President Eisenhower warned:
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
John Laurence has written an important book. Vietnam should've never happened. No rationale justifies or explains the violence, the suffering, or the grief. The ignorance, hubris, cultural isolation, and ongoing delusion of American exceptionalism combined with war-profiteering by United States’ industrial war machinery will never serve the Common Good.
Laurence is a polished storyteller. This compelling memoir is heart-felt. It pulls no punches. He takes us along on a harrowing journey both personal and collective. He documents the hopes and fears of the infantry "grunts" who endured intense tropical heat and existential threats in the jungles, rice paddies, and villages of Vietnam and Cambodia.
Lawrence’s memoir gave me missing historical context and gave me a perspective on the Vietnam War I lacked.
The lessons are clear. War exposes the worst of human nature. Few if any wars are just. Go forth in peace. Practice peace mongering.
Rated 5 of 5 stars.
August 17, 2018
"The Cat From Hue" was of great interest to me since CBS reporter, John Laurence was mentioned in "Hue 1968" by Mark Bowden which I read earlier in the year. Two different books; Bowden's focused exclusively on the Hue bloodbath and how the defense of Hue during the Test offensive was so mismanaged by leaders like Westmoreland. "The Cat From Hue" takes in a longer time frame, about 1965 to 1970, and deals more with the grunts tasked with implementing some fouled up military orders. My biggest complaint about "The Cat" is that it spends too much time as an autobiography of John Laurence. I'm not real interested in his sex life, his battles with the top brass of CBS, or his gradual turning against the war. I was interested in the lengths he went to for a story, his time in the field with the soldiers even during combat and his dedication to remaining neutral even as his support for the war changed. Compare this with the lazy reporting today. It has been reported that pro Obama writing has been over 90% favorable. Conversely, 90% of Trump stories are unfavorable. Can it be that 90% of reporters feel our people do not want to keep more of their own money; that 90% favor abortion; 90% favor open borders? If not, why aren't more reporters covering the other side of the story at least to show the other side that they at least acknowledge there is different point of view? John Laurence and many other reporters of the Vietnam war did that. When they showed the hardships that the American soldier had to endure to fight a war for an indifferent South Vietnamese people and a cowardly South Vietnamese military, their reporting was infinitely more persuasive than the mindless reporting of today's press who feel they are more effective by screaming "Trump is a moron". And they wonder why newspapers are dying.
January 3, 2019
A good overview of the Vietnam War
Having read many Vietnam war novels from the eyes of the men who fought it, this was a refreshing look at the war from the eyes of a civilian. This book also does a good job showing how the struggle changed as the years went on. John focuses on the human costs of the war rather than the tactics or strategy. The story does a great job putting you in the time period and highlighting the contention between the lifers and the unwilling drafted.
I did think the book was a little long for what it was attempting to accomplish, but not enough to make it a bad read at all.
Having read many Vietnam war novels from the eyes of the men who fought it, this was a refreshing look at the war from the eyes of a civilian. This book also does a good job showing how the struggle changed as the years went on. John focuses on the human costs of the war rather than the tactics or strategy. The story does a great job putting you in the time period and highlighting the contention between the lifers and the unwilling drafted.
I did think the book was a little long for what it was attempting to accomplish, but not enough to make it a bad read at all.
May 31, 2020
Whew. Reading this was an undertaking. Most of the Vietnam war memorials that I’ve read have been written by former soldiers. This one breaks the mold as Laurence was / is a reporter - and there’s a certain amount of distance there. What I found interesting about the book was that it was from a different perspective, one that I didn’t know much about. But that’s also what made it difficult goings at times. I found myself more interested in the soldiers that Laurence was covering than in the lives of his fellow reporters.
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August 6, 2021Possibly the best book I've read on the Vietnam war. I remember John Laurence from his reports during the war. He's a memorable correspondent. The way he writes puts your body not only in the action but in the frame of mind to fight. It's a different way to experience what you can't physically experience. How he thinks about the war is as divided as the American people were back in the day. Trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. The fate of the cat - Meo - READ the Book.
July 24, 2019
the best and most unique Vietnam War book i've read so far, and ive read about 25. you will feel as if youre right there in Saigon living the life of the reporters during the war. Laurence is a fantastic writer.
February 26, 2023
One of the best books on the Vietnam war that I've read. The writing is powerful and the author's experiences are harrowing. I can't help but wonder how much of his post-'nam reflections colored his "during the war" writings. An amazing effort.
October 22, 2023
Wow, what an adventure Jack had. I felt like I was there with him. Very well written, funny at times, sad at times. He wrote impartially at first, but well into the book, he starts to tell the reader how he felt about the war. The 800 plus pages flew by!
May 22, 2020
Entertaining first hand account of a reporter in Vietnam and all he experienced.
August 14, 2020
Well written synopsis of the turbulent war years of the late 1960's. Vietnam and all the action a newshound can find, displayed for the reader.
October 30, 2020
One of the best memoirs of the Vietnam War. Hard to believe how fast we forgot what a tragic mistake it is to screw with other people's countries.
October 28, 2021
One of the best memoirs I've ever read, and probably the best book on Vietnam I've read. Absolutely brilliant.
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