Hi Sierra,
I'm glad you turned in your paper early.  You were the first in class.  Students can always run their papers by me before a deadline, but they should definitely Moodle message me about it.  I'm pretty sure you were NOT asking me to go over your paper early, but I took a look anyway and would like to offer a couple of helpful hints based on just a quick look.  (You have until the Sunday deadline to make changes, rewrite, and resubmit.)

While your paper length is just above the minimum, which is fine, Part One is too brief and lacks some analysis of my difficult questions.  I wrote:

"More importantly, how reliable, trustworthy, and believable do you believe that speaker to be? After all, unlike you or me, they were there, at that specific moment in time. Does that give them more or less credibility? Are they objective and factual or do they suffer from too much subjectivity, too much time having passed, too much forgotten? (These are not easy questions... please take some time to analyze what I'm asking for here.)"

Part One should have been about half your paper length.  Currently it is only 25-33% of it.

In Part Two, I think it is just a story "counting" issue.  The instructions read:

"Which story or stories (definitely one, but not more than two) were the most disappointing for you to read and why?"

I'm counting three stories, by Giap, Hare, and Long.  While I'm sure you can find even MORE interesting stories, your job is to limit yourself and THEN to more thoroughly analyze and answer the posed questions.  I'm more interested in the depth, rather than breadth, that students can provide on their written assignments. 

I hope this is helpful for you.





Sunday, October 7, 2012, 11:55 PM
Last edited:	Friday, October 5, 2012, 08:46 AM (808 words)
The story that had the most impact on me was George Watkins. He was a regular solider who was sent to Vietnam knowing next to nothing about the war and the Vietnamese people. His story was unique because although he lost his legs and eyes when a mine blew up, he was not bitter. Watkins regrets the men that died, and questions what was gained for it? That statement touched me the most. All these brave men had sacrificed their lives andAmericahad not even won the war. What was there to show for all those sacrifices? Watkins believed there was nothing to show and the war was a mistake. His story was very objective. He did talk about the personal injuries he suffered from the war but he never blamed the Vietnamese. Watkins didn’t even mention them in his story, although the Vietnamese were the reason he was there. No matter how much time passes there is no way you can forget the searing images from war that are burned into your head. Watkins may have told this story to the reporter decades later; but it still holds the same amount of truth in it as if he told it the day he lost his sight and legs. Perhaps the story was clearer to him years after simply because he was able to look back objectively. “Why did all these people die? What was gained from it?”  (25)

Von Nguyen Giap’s story was very frustrating to read especially when compared to a story like George Watkins. Giap was a general who led over 300,000 revolutionary Vietnamese against the French. Giap believed that Americashould not have involved themselves in the war in Vietnam. He acknowledged that there was really nothing for America to gain. “History is not made of ‘ifs,’ but if American leaders had been wiser I think we could have been spared a war. In my opinion, the Vietnam War was not in the American interest. It was a big mistake.” (42) Throughout his story he mentioned several times that America was approaching the war wrong. Everything from the attitude America had towards the war to the fighting methods we used were all wrong. Giap’s story and many other stories in this book tell us that the methodsAmericaused weren’t effective at all. How can it be that so many people on the Vietnamese side and the American side knew this but nothing was changed?Americafought a war everyone knew it was losing and nobody really believed it should be in.

Paul Hare’s account of his time spent in Vietnamsounds eerily familiar to many other soldiers and generals. Hare was selected it seemed at random to go to Vietnam. He arrived knowing next to nothing about the Vietnamese and the war there.  He spent four years in Vietnam helping rebuild the cities that had been destroyed by war. “I spent four and a half years inVietnam and I never felt sure about my understanding of the Vietnamese or where they stood with respect to this conflict.”(77) How is it that our soldiers could have spent that much time there and still not be aware of all the issues? Our leaders and our soldiers were dreadfully ill informed. This contributed to our defeat.

One of the best stories I have read so far was Ngo Vinh Long’s. He grew up under French rule in Vietnam wanting to come to the “beautiful country” called America. His father joined the revolution against the French and was horribly tortured. Long used the education his father had given him to help America. He traveled all over Vietnam and was able to see the effects of the war on everyone there. When he and the American map making team entered a starving village it was Long who decided to stay and share their food. He and the team nursed an entire village back to health. This brave young man was accepted to Harvard University. Long predicted that the U.S.would invade Vietnam and the result would be a very long war. He stated this when he was only 20 and he turned out to be right. This story was really amazing because it documented a young Vietnamese boy rising above the dreadful situations of this country. For being so young he was able to predict that this war would be no small issue for America and he turned out to be right.

All the stories in Patriots by Christian Appy have given new prespective on the Vietnam war. Suddenly these stories have made it more personal. These aren’t just soldiers on a page in a history book. These are real men and women both Vietnamese and American who fought for their countries. All of them sacrificed something and their stories ought to be remembered