Osprey's Vietnam 1972: Quang Tri

Vietnam 1972: Quang Tri by Charles D. Melson
Osprey's Campaign Series 362

Summary: 
The book begins with a section on origins of the campaign which starts with the French and the Viet Minh. That is followed by about seven pages on the development of the Vietnamese marine Corps and then about six more on the development of the U.S. Marine Advisory effort. There is a two page chronology in table form, going from 1946-1973. That consumes the first 22 pages.

Ten pages on opposing forces and commanders come next. Following that are four pages on opposing plans. Pages 37 through 85 deal withthe combat itself. The rest of the 96 page book is devoted to the aftermath, a bibliography and index. There are a number of maps, including three of what they call 3D map. These are well done for graphically describing the campaign. Lots of photos and some original artwork.

Thoughts:
I had really hoped for more about the battle for Quang-Tri. The author is much respected and I don't mean to be critical of him, just the scope of the book. It has a great deal on the organizational history of the Republic of Vietnam's Marine Corps, and the U.S. Marine Advisory. I think it is very important that those topics be documented for historical purposes. However, I think they were over done  for a book in this series and with this title. From having seen several of the U.S. government publications on organizations in the Vietnam War, I would suspect that this was already well covered in one or more of those.

The combat covered is not just the battle for Quang Tri, but starts with the action around Dong Ha. I would have preferred more battle detail, but I admit that is subjective.

Tom

That's disappointing Tom. It sounds like my Vietnamese book entitled "Quạ̉ng Tri 1972" (250+ pages) goes into more detail than the Osprey Book.

Yes, one could probably get as much detail about the battle from an article on the internet. What's more, all of that recital of organization and reorganization is very dry reading.

Shelby Stanton's Green Berets at War  can be dry with all of that stuff, but at least he includes quite a few detailed accounts of the actions. 

The artwork by  Ramiro Bujeiro in the Quang Tri book is very cartoony to me as I said in an earlier post about the book. But yesterday I pulled out Gordon Rottman's Osprey book Army of the Republic of Vietnam 1955-75. Bujeiro did the artwork there too. It was nearly all uniform illustrations and they are wonderful.

Tom

I have that book - it's a good one.