Dave Sabben. Through enemy eyes.

Dave Sabben. Through enemy eyes, Allen & Unwin, NSW; ISBN 1 74114 561 9. card cover, 380 pp., nine maps, ten diagrams and a glossary, $29.95.

Through enemy eyes is a Vietnam War story about the Battle of Long Tan told from the point of view of our enemy. As a book of fiction it adds nothing to the historical record but it does offer the reader another perspective on this historic battle.

The idea of writing about a campaign or a battle from the point of view of the enemy is of course, not new. In fact many books, when supported by painstaking research of enemy documents and augmented with interviews of enemy combatants, have provided a most welcome and helpful insight into various battles.

The difficulties facing an author trying to gain accurate and authentic documents from a communist regime such as Vietnam are acknowledged. It is also acknowledged that interviews with Vietnamese combatants by other authors has proved to be largely useless because of distortion of the facts and subsequent brain-washing that occurred at the time and subsequently.

However, having been written by a person who was at the battle, this book does carry some authority because those of us in that position gained a feel for what was going on. The author has coupled knowledge from the occasional captured document with what we knew about communist insurgency tactics and strategy at the time and has produced a plausible story.

The aspiration expressed by the author in the Preface that; "It is my hope that introducing fictional characters will not detract from the otherwise historical authenticity of this book." is forlorn to say the least. This book is certainly not history. Not only has research of the enemy been totally inadequate, the author has not made good use of material and witnesses on the side of the Allies in this conflict.

The lack of accurate enemy data (however reasonable the difficulties of acquiring such data may be) is not the only aspect to condemn this book. The reader is continually distracted by a tangle of tenses and the personification of inanimate objects with inappropriate use of the possessive case. There is 'the village's south', 'the hill's red earth', 'the regime's support base', 'the operation's progress', 'the camp's protection force'; all in just the first few pages.

Even in this age of the computer it seems some typographical errors are inevitable but the dozens in this book and the inconsistencies are surely intolerable.

The term 'tortured language' comes to mind when we read about 'dug-in trenches', vehicles that 'settled down on punctured tyres, shredded and smoking', 'the sound and tracer of what seemed like a multitude of rifles whipped past and shrieked off into the formed-up ranks around him', and 'the pall of cigarette smoke that hung in the air like the sense of defeat that created it.'

The list of enemy characters in the front of the book, though incomplete, is very useful and goes some way towards making the story comprehensible. Unfortunately, the battle scene is totally confusing with more detail than can possibly be absorbed by even the most attentive reader. Even with constant reference to the excellent maps and diagrams, I had difficulty following the action--and I was a participant in this battle. If it was accurate, one could be sympathetic but it appears the complications are nothing more than a blatant attempt to try and enhance the author's real life participation in the battle.

Errors of verifiable fact are legion. They reflect the very limited military background of the author and seriously detract from the usefulness of this book. On page 45 we read about the French in Vietnam in 1944. It is not clear if he means the Japanese in 1944 or the French in 1954. On page 193 the author tells us Australian training did not include night exercises! On page 240 we see the Australian Task Force Commander call for After Action Reports that would not have been prepared until days later. And on page 241 a report that Alpha Company 6 RAR had contacts on 16 August but with 'No known casualties to either side'. Of course the facts are that Alpha Company not only captured weapons and documents in those clashes but also inflicted several enemy casualties, including two confirmed dead.

Throughout Chapter 17, narrative about the Australian Relief Force is grossly distorted. Against all readily available evidence, the author has the enemy firing first, the enemy anti-tank weapon firing on the second wave of APC instead of the first and an APC driver being wounded when in fact it was an APC commander. It is acknowledged that facts about the enemy in this action are difficult to verify but there is no excuse, particularly in a book aspiring to be of historical significance, for the distortion of facts about Australian forces involved in the battle.

However, this book does finally give some credit to the Australian, New Zealand and US artillery without whose support the author and his comrades almost certainly would have died at the Battle of Long Tan.

In summary, although this book adds another dimension to the story of the Battle of Long Tan, the narrative is seriously marred by poor literary skills, inadequate military knowledge and poor research. In a nutshell, Through enemy eyes is another example of a good idea poorly executed.

Charles Mollison is a retired Lieutenant Colonel who, as the Officer Commanding Alpha Company 6 RAR in 1966 commanded the relief force at the Battle of Long Tan. He was a co-author and one-time editor of The Battle of Long Tan as told by the Commanders to Bob Grandin until his insistence the hook include the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth led to a parting of the ways. He is the author of Long Tan and Beyond, (Cobb's Crossing Publications, 07 5442 1589) an authentic account of the relief force operation.