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MWSA Review
Author Bob Worthington has given us a very good book to read in his memoir Fighting Viet Cong in the Rung Sat. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a combat advisor to the Vietnamese military. His experiences gave Worthington excellent insight into the conflict. He has shared those experiences with us in this book. Fluent in both French and Vietnamese, the author got to know his host counterparts in a manner most American soldiers could never achieve. In his two tours, he fought the enemy in different regions of Vietnam, working with both the Vietnamese army and navy.
Although a memoir, much of the book reads like military history as the author explains the how's and why's of conducting combat operations in Vietnam. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in military history or the conflict in Vietnam.
Review by Bob Doerr (March 2022)
Author's Synopsis
The Vietnam War was not going well in 1968. The January Tet offensive showed the US military and the war-weary American public that the enemy remained no nearer defeat. Captain Worthington, stuck in an Army command position he despised after his first Vietnam tour as a combat advisor, decided to return.
He describes his participation, again as a combat advisor, in the fiercest fighting of the war on the Cambodian border, where he almost died of hookworm and was shot in a night operation. Transferred to Saigon to recuperate, he was tasked with creating an advisory team to train a South Vietnamese commando unit to conduct raids against the Viet Cong in the swamps of the Rung Sat Special Zone, south of Saigon. For seven months they were successful, with Worthington receiving seven combat decorations.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Number of Pages: 273