In Buddha's Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory

by Richard A. Ruth

In Buddha's Company explores a previously neglected aspect of the Vietnam War: the experiences of the Thai troops who served there and the attitudes and beliefs that motivated them to volunteer. Thailand sent nearly 40,000 volunteer soldiers to South Vietnam to serve alongside the Free World Forces in the conflict, but unlike the other foreign participants, the Thais came armed with historical and cultural knowledge of the region. Blending the methodologies of cultural and military history, Richard Ruth examines the individual experiences of Thai volunteers in their wartime encounters with American allies, South Vietnamese civilians, and Viet Cong enemies. Ruth shows how the Thais were transformed by living amongst the modern goods and war machinery of the Americans and by traversing the jungles and plantations haunted by indigenous spirits. At the same time, Ruth argues, Thailand's ruling institutions used the image of volunteers to advance their respective agendas, especially those related to anticommunist authoritarianism.



Drawing on numerous interviews with Thai veterans and archival material from Thailand and the United States, Ruth focuses on the cultural exchanges that occurred between Thai troops and their allies and enemies, presenting a Southeast Asian view of a conflict that has traditionally been studied as a Cold War event dominated by an American political agenda. The resulting study considers such diverse topics as comparative Buddhisms, alternative modernities, consumerism, celebrity, official memories vs. personal recollections, and the value of local knowledge in foreign wars. The war's effects within Thailand itself are closely considered, demonstrating that the war against communism in Vietnam, as articulated by Thai leaders, was a popular cause among nearly all segments of the population. Furthermore, Ruth challenges previous assertions that Thailand's forces were merely America's mercenaries by presenting the multiple, overlapping motivations for volunteering offered by the soldiers themselves.

In Buddha's Company makes clear that many Thais sought direct involvement in the Vietnam War and that their participation had profound and lasting effects on the country's political and military institutions, royal affairs, popular culture, and international relations. As one of only a handful of academic histories of Thailand in the 1960s, it provides a crucial link between the keystone studies of the Phibun-Sarit years (1946-1963) and those examining the turbulent 1970s.

Genres: History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2010

Reviews

[Cioran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading textbooks one often sees this nation did that and that. This nation modernized. This nation westernized. As if a nation state is a living breathing person. In this book you see westernization from the street view. Thai volunteers in the Vietnam War often end up as pillars of their community back home spreading westernization, Americanization, capitalism, better than any capitalist spy can do. In Vietnam they learn all this not as a orchestrated plan by the US but subtly from daily life. Seeing GIs drinking beers in cans taught them individualism, one soldier, one can, no sharing, whereas at home beer is a luxury in a big bottle to be shared with everyone. But all this works both ways as the GIs are amazed at these Thai soldiers lacking so much in material comforts have so much in spiritual comfort and seemingly do not care if they die and are not afraid of anything except the deer which they think is the ruler of the jungle. How the GIs are all like have so much to lose while the Thai soldiers seem like they are on a school trip. The GIs give the Thai soldiers material comforts like can beers, refrigerators, Colt 1911 pistols in exchange for spiritual comfort in terms of marijuana, Thai strong spirits, Buddhist amulets and deep conversations about the meaning of life from the perspective of Buddhism adapted to the tropical rainforests of mainland southeast asia. And as the GIs return home broken they pass on this southeast asian wisdom to the West as they take part in the counterculture of the 60s and 70s.

[Steve Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really excellent piece of social history that ties together for me two of the primary strands of my life experience. I have lived among Thai people's in Thailand and Laos for over 15 years and I served in Vietnam with the Australian army and though award of the presence of Thai troops, they manned a fire support base to the north east of the Australian TAO and I encountered the occasional Thai on leave in Vung Tau, I didn't really knw that much about their contribution or the way in which the war was viewed in Thailand. there were several things that turned up that surprised me, one was the overwhelmingly positive perceptions among both volunteer participants and the wider Thai population of the war and Thai participation. This is in marked contrast to the American and Australian experience. On the other hand the ethnocentric view of the Thais as "superior" to any other Free World contributing nations did not surprise. That is the general Thai view of their culture,other culture do have it but among the Thai people's it is very pronounced though rarely stated to outsiders.

Their enthusiastic participation in corrupt practices through the PX and the military supply system was not a surprise. From black market transactions in whiskey and electronics right through to the theft and trading in military equipment was rife. One senior officer actually "appropriated" a UH 1B helicopter for his private use, and the then Thai Prime Minister's son ran a thriving drug smuggling trade that netted millions while he was an officer serving in SVN, I have always experienced the Thai as an opportunistic and materially driven people who historically have systematically looted their neighbors and their environment in any way possible over centuries. This rather unappealing aspect of the Thai character has become more pronounced as their enmeshment with the west has progressed.

The massive effect of Thai involvement with the US, both on Thai culture and the progress of infrastructure and economic development was also no surprise,in fact in my view the Americans did as much to formulate what is now modern Thailand as the Thais themselves.

What was of most interest to me was the detail of personal experience of the war by the lower ranks. Particularly the spiritual aspect of their experience. Having seen it all operating in both Thailand and Cambodia, it was truly enlightening to gather their interpretations of the influence of the spirits on the battle flied and throughout the country. From what I could gather and given my own experience the similarities between the physical landscape of SVN and Thailand and the upbringing of most volunteers in rural Thailand certainly gave the Thais a certain advantage, there is little to suggest that they were any more successful in small scale infantry actions than other participants.

The book was a great read for me and I enjoyed in immensely, it shed yet more light on my understanding of the Thai character and confirmed my own experience of a great citral divide that I believe is unbridgeable in most instances. It seems that the interaction between Thai and western cultures has simply led to an accentuation of the worst in both in modern Thai society, a shame. Thailand of today, so thoroughly actuated by western attitudes and values with an underpinning of the absolute Thainess that most westerners find so inimical, is mch less appealing than the Tahs of the 70's when I first knew them.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times, tedious. But overall In Buddha's Company is quite informative, especially on a subject about which so little has been written. Not only does Ruth take us into the mostly ignored military and political history of Thai troops serving in Vietnam during the American War in Vietnam, but he also gives us a heretofore undisclosed social history, describing the cultural impact of Thai soldiers who went to Vietnam, encountered the bounty of American consumer goods available to them, and who also gained advantages in training and schooling.

[Johns · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I served as a US Marine aviator on a Royal Thai Air Force base during the closing days of our ill-considered and ill-led campaign in SE Asia, I was interested in this recent book about the involvement of Thai ground combat forces in South Vietnam. Detailed in this book are the many epiphanies (and not a few problems) that occurred to the average Thai soldier as he lived and fought as an ally of the USA.