Vietnam: The Australian War- The Illustrated Edition

Not my style of history. I would have preferred this to be a touch more academic than the Popular/Populist delivery that this book is. Author Paul Ham has let his disgust and anger at just about everybody involved, other than the Australian soldiers, get in the way of the narrative to the point that it made the book far too long.

An example of this was the ridiculous populist overkill such as the first two pages of Chapter 34 “Australian Viet Cong” when he listed a plethora of persons and cultural events over 2 very long pages and then wrote that this was a “Tumble of people, pop and paraphernalia providing the stuffing of the social revolution in Australia in the 1960's; these were some of the voices, sounds and influences that heralded the over throw of the established order”. He then writes “In retrospect, the decade seems rather to have left a faint indent on time's shifting sands, blown on the wind like other youthful fads and ideals, the pale faced prelude to a long, adult hangover of dazed disillusionment.”

The actual narrative of events was constantly scattered with strange thought bubbles such as the above, use of slang and vernacular, historical inaccuracies, and intermittent use of endnotes. One thought bubble that caught my attention was that the author was not keen on elections being held after the French left and glad that they were not as the wrong side might have won. The occasional use of slang such as “daft” “Sheila” “yanks” to name a few. The constant analogies and vernacular used in the body of the narrative seemed out of place for me for what was a serious subject. A couple of noteworthy mistakes also come to mind. Gough Whitlam is quoted a few times and endnoted in Hansard but one controversial comment Ham has cited has no date against the Hansard extract. All other Hansard extracts do. Black American soldiers refused entry to Australia during World War II due to the White Australia Policy he states at one point. I can find no reference to the truth of this anywhere. The author writes that Nixon was impeached. Was he? I thought he resigned before impeachment could occur.

As usual there is a lot to learn from books such as this so I do recommend it to anyone that has an interest in the subject. I am just not keen on populist history.