The Village of Ben Suc

With a new introduction by Wallace Shawn, a classic work of war reportage that describes, with unblinking vision, the systematic leveling of a Vietnamese village by American troops.

Ben Suc was a relatively prosperous farming village thirty miles from Saigon, on the edge of the Iron Triangle, the formidable Vietcong stronghold. It had been “pacified” many times, but because of security leaks no Vietcong were ever captured, and it always reverted to the villagers.

But on January 8, 1967, American forces launched a surprise assault kept secret even from their South Vietnamese allies. The plan was to envelop the village, seal it off, remove its inhabitants, destroy every physical trace, and level the surrounding jungle.

Jonathan Schell accompanied the operation from its beginning to its successful but dismal end, and reported it in depth as he saw it. This time no one slipped away. The story of the bewildering task of separating the Vietcong from ordinary villagers is the dramatic core of The Village of Ben Suc.

Here is an overwhelmingly affecting narrative of American skill and good intentions squandered in a cause made hopeless by misunderstanding, resistant traditions, and cultural gaps—not only between the Americans and the villagers, but between the villagers and the Saigon government. Schell’s report is devastating.