The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes

by Deborah Nelson

Overview

In 2005, Deborah Nelson joined forces with military historian Nick Turse to investigate an extraordinary archive: the largest compilation of records on Vietnam-era war crimes ever to surface. The declassified Army papers were erroneously released and have since been pulled from public circulation. Few civilians have seen the documents.

The files contain reports of more than 300 confirmed atrocities, and 500 other cases the Army either couldn't't prove or didn't't investigate. The archive has letters of complaint to generals and congressmen, as well as reports of Army interviews with hundreds of men who served. Far from being limited to a few bad actors or rogue units, atrocities occurred in every Army division that saw combat in Vietnam. Torture of detainees was routine; so was the random killing of farmers in fields and women and children in villages. Punishment for these acts was either nonexistent or absurdly light. In most cases, no one was prosecuted at all.

In The War Behind Me Deborah Nelson goes beyond the documents and talks with many of those who were involved, both accusers and accused, to uncover their stories and learn how they deal with one of the most awful secrets of the Vietnam War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786726783
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/28/2008
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and professor at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She previously worked at the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Seattle Times, and Chicago Sun-Times and currently writes for Reuters. She lives in Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

Nelson, who wrote a series on war crimes with a military historian when she was at The Los Angeles Times, is a diligent, passionate reporter…this is an important book. Nelson demonstrates that cover-ups happen in plain sight and that looking for an exclusive can blind reporters to the real story. She also points out that these crimes are endemic to counterinsurgency operations. When troops fight among a civilian population, in conflicts that extend for years, atrocities are almost bound to happen.
—The New York Times

Tara McKelvey

In 2005, Nelson (Carnegie Visiting Professor, University of Maryland Coll. of Journalism), a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Seattle Times, gained access to the largest collection of declassified U.S. Army Vietnam War records. This collection, which was later reclassified by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), documented more than 320 acts of army torture and the killing of innocent citizens and demonstrated, as described by an anonymous soldier, that the war involved "a My Lai each month for over a year." These records provided the leads for interviews by Nelson and historian Nicholas Turse, with veterans who are now more willing to talk about the true war. The most engrossing stories Nelson presents, however, are those of Vietnamese who saw their families destroyed by indiscriminate killing. A catalog of brief summaries of the crimes provides a good overview of the extent of the mayhem produced in a war where success was measured by body counts and ordinary citizens paid as great a price as enemy forces. Although this book does not grip the reader like Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss's Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War, it contains enough alarming stories and important lessons for a country "hell-bound to repeat" the same mistakes. Recommended for public libraries.
—Karl Helicher

Library Journal

Library Journal
“Alarming stories and important lessons for a country ‘hell-bound to repeat’ the same mistakes.”

Lt. General (USA, Ret.) Robert G. Gard, Jr.
“In her well-written and carefully documented report, Deborah Nelson highlights our shocking failure to deal with, and learn lessons from, our extensive commission of war crimes during the Vietnam War. A must read for all who are concerned with restoring the moral credibility of our country.”

Brig. General (USA, Ret.) John H. Johns
“Deborah Nelson has done a superb job in summarizing the problem of atrocities in counterinsurgency operations and has performed a patriotic service by bringing this problem to the attention of the public. Perhaps the most important lesson here is that we should not allow our leaders to commit our military forces to such wars unless it is essential to our vital national interests.”

Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History
“Young Americans went to Vietnam imbued with a high moral purpose. But the war dehumanized many, as Deborah Nelson vividly illustrates in a book that evokes a shameful chapter in our history.”

Dana Priest,

The Washington Post
“Nelson takes readers along with her on an unusually intimate journalistic journey to uncover what the government had hoped to keep secret—war crimes too cold-blooded and routine to fathom. As her riveting book reminds us, war is hell—for everyone involved. A must read for soldiers, scholars, journalists and any one else interested in both courage and cover-up during wartime.”

Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
“The War Behind Me establishes, sadly, the terrible fear that emerged from the horrors of My Lai—that its easy cover up suggested that deliberate killing of civilians was widespread in heavily contested areas of south Vietnam. Yes, this book says, it did happen, and yes, as at My Lai, many of those GIs who did the killing were as much victims as those they fired upon.”
 

Seattle Times
“Remarkable… Nelson is one of the most experienced, talented investigative journalists alive.”
 

New York Times Book Review
“Nelson, who wrote a series on war crimes with a military historian when she was at The Los Angeles Times, is a diligent, passionate reporter… An important book”
 

From the Publisher