A Unique Look at the History of the Early Days of the Vietnam War

BY MARC LEEPSON

The portentous American-supported military coup against the authoritarian South Vietnamese President Ngô Ðình Diem in November 1963 had many fathers. Frederick “Fritz” Nolting, the career U.S. Foreign Service diplomat who became the American Ambassador to South Vietnam on May 10, 1961, was not one of them. Nor was his number two at the Saigon embassy, William (Bill) Trueheart, Nolting’s close friend who followed him from Paris to Saigon to serve as the deputy chief of the U.S. mission.

Bill Trueheart supported the regime, albeit reluctantly, until the summer of 1963, when he came to believe that Diem had to go. In doing so, he fell in line with the official policy approved by President Kennedy and put in place by Henry Cabot Lodge, Nolting’s successor as ambassador. Lodge arrived to Saigon that summer to aid and abet the military coup that would oust Diem and his brother, the ruthless Ngô Ðình Nhu, who commanded the South Vietnamese secret police.

The Kennedy Administration’s best and brightest believed that getting rid of the widely unpopular Di?m and his out-of-control brother would be the best way for South Vietnam to get enough public support to defeat the growing Viet Cong insurgency. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The U.S.-backed anti-Diem coup, which ended in the assassination of the Ngô brothers, all but “sealed America’s commitment to a decade of war,” that did not exactly end well for South Vietnam or the U.S., writes Charles Trueheart (Bill’s son) in his brilliant new history/memoir, Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict (University of Virginia Press, 368 pp. $34.95, hardcover; $26.49, Kindle).

Trueheart, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent, notes that the coup also had “sadly private” consequences, “abruptly end[ing] the friendship between” his father and Fritz Nolting. “A matter of state had broken personal bonds,” he writes. “The two men never spoke to one another again.” After the coup, Bill Trueheart’s Foreign Service career suffered, and Fritz Nolting remained bitter about it to his dying day.

Nolting and Trueheart’s 180-degree disagreement is at the core of Charlie Trueheart’s new book, in which he deftly blends solid historical research and analysis of the political events of 1961-63 in South Vietnam and the U.S. with an intriguing and consequential family story. He handles both aspects well, making excellent use of official State Department and other government documents, as well as other primary source materials, including oral histories and interviews.

Aside from the first-rate history and the compelling family stories, Charlie Trueheart offers up revealing portraits of the main American and Vietnamese players in the Ngô drama, including the war correspondent David Halberstam who was on the ground reporting the war and who later detailed the Trueheart-Nolting clash over Diem in The Best and the Brightest, his acclaimed indictment of Kennedy and Johnson Vietnam War policymaking. And also the great Vietnam War correspondent Neil Sheehan, an Army veteran who came to Vietnam supporting the budding war, but soon turned against it—and later wrote the acclaimed, award-winning, A Bright Shining Lie, a biography of Army Col. John Paul Vann and a history of the American war in Vietnam.

Trueheart also gives us memorable looks at the clueless U.S. Gen. Paul Harkins, the first MACV commander; the controversial and powerful Madame Nhu (Tran Le Xuân); legendary CIA operatives Ed Lansdale, one of Diem’s staunchest supporters, and Lucien “Luigi” Conein, who worked directly with the coup plotters; as well as CIA Station Chief William Colby and Washington insider Averell Harriman, a prominent coup backer who was Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs.

Diplomats at War, in short, is an important and unique contribution to the crucial early history of the Vietnam War.

Many books about the Vietnam War and its veterans have made it onto the bestseller lists over the decades. But precious few have hit No. 1 on virtually every list. Hue 1968, Mark (Black Hawk Down) Bowden’s outstanding evocation of the fighting in the old Imperial City during the Tet Offensive, which came out in 2017, is the last one to top the charts.

Now comes The Women (St. Martin’s Press, 480 pp., $30), Kristin Hannah’s sprawling, compelling new novel centering on Vietnam War nurses, which shot to the top of all the bestseller lists when it came out February 6 and has hovered at or near the top ever since. The book’s enormous popularity is no surprise. Hannah has written 19 best-selling novels, most of them historical romances, that have been translated into 43 languages.

In The Women, Hannah, a gifted storyteller, tells the tale of Frankie McGrath, an idealistic, naive young woman from an affluent Southern California family. She joins the Army Nurse Corps at 20, soon learns that her beloved brother has died in Vietnam, and then determinedly completes her training vowing to do her part in the war.

As soon as Frankie arrives at the 36th Evac in Vung Tàu, she finds herself hip deep in the war’s mud and blood during a chaotic day of treating mass casualties. Frankie quickly realizes when hit with the real thing that her training had been grossly inadequate. But with the help of two fellow nurses who become close friends, she finds the resolve to grow into her job and eventually thrive at it. What follows are more heavy emotional bumps, though, including matters of the heart, which lead to Frankie volunteering for a second tour.

She survives her two years in the medical trenches intact, but is an emotional wreck after coming home. Who wouldn’t be, facing the decided non-welcome-home that virtually every female Vietnam War veteran received from family, friends, the old-line VSOs, and the VA? Just as Hannah doesn’t make it easy for Frankie in-country, the author throws her subject into a years-long emotional wringer trying to deal with the trauma she experienced in Vietnam and the underwhelming reception all of us who served in that war faced after coming home.

It’s a very well-told story, helped immeasurably by Hannah having wisely sought out several former Vietnam War nurses—including Diane Carlson Evans, Winnie Smith, and Dr. Beth Parks—to get the details right. And 99 percent of them are. In showing the public reaction to returning veterans, though, Hannah has hippies spitting on Frankie more than once. That simply didn’t happen. But having Frankie put up with it does make the metaphorical point that for too many Vietnam War veterans their war-time trauma did not end when they came home. And that it was particularly difficult for The Women.

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