Uphill Battle: Reflections on Viet Nam Counterinsurgency (Modern Southeast Asia) Paperback – Illustrated, July 14, 2014

Frank Scotton (see accompanying photo) was something of a legend to those of us who served in the pacification program in South Vietnam.But much as I knew OF him, I did not come to know the man himself until reading this mind-blower of a book. While others trusted vainly in B-52s, tactical air power and big-unit ground operations to subdue the communist insurgency in Vietnam, Frank Scotton trusted his knowledge of the Vietnamese language, culture and people. He quickly befriended many of the latter, then trained them into small mobile teams which, while the Vietnamese government was slowly collapsing around them, took back hamlet after hamlet from the Viet Cong. They did it by protecting and enlisting local people threatened by the VC and helping them improve their lives. It took determination, savvy, guts and above all a willingness to stand up not just to the enemy, but also to the seeming legions of top-level American bureaucrats who felt threatened by Scotton's unconventional ways of fighting the war.As others have noted, this big book is for readers who take counterinsurgency very seriously. Scotton's novel approach to COIN - much akin to that of T.E. Lawrence during World War I - is filled with detailed descriptions of tactical and organizational gambits, and tips on everything from training locals to staying safe to interrogation techniques. Some may find his painstakingly reconstructed recollections, in both the footnotes and text, hard going, but most will thank him for his rich and careful effort.I sure as hell do.

Tremendous! Frank Scotton's account of early years of counterinsurgency is amazing. A a must read for what went into the shaping of the CI strategy and organization that ultimately consolidated in CORDS. I evacuated by helicopter off the roof of Embassy Saigon on the last night in 1975 ... after serving 1969-71 as a civilian deputy district pacification advisor in the Delta.Scotton relates what came before CORDS, as Ev Baumgartner, John Paul Vann, George Jacobson, himself and others sought -- and ultimately failed -- to embed village-level political motivation at the core of U.S. aid programs. Fluent Vietnamese, a loose organizational structure and overflowing personal moxie empowered Scotton to free-lance in a way that eluded those of us who followed. Well documented, but embellished with near total recall, Scotton's account is a great read. " A house leaks from the roof," and Scotton for all of his brains and guts never got to operate at the political level where the fatal mistakes were made.

Uphill Battle is not the story that I was expecting. Slow, very little action. Not very good.

This book is must reading for any American civilian who served in Vietnam from the early '60s to the end. And many of you will know, or know of, Frank Scotton. A U.S. Information Service Foreign Service officer, Frank was deeply involved in psychological operations during most of the '60s and returned several times to Vietnam during the last years of our involvement there. His wide, and sometimes dangerous, traveling throughout Central & Northern South Vietnam; and his eidetic memory (or excellent notes) allow him to name the hundreds of Vietnamese and Americans with whom he worked, not to mention the highways and byways he traveled. He has a keen eye and a trained ear, and a realistic assessment of what went right, what didn't and what might have made the end of the conflict more successful from a U.S. perspective.

The author understood the nuances of rural South Vietnam better than most. He was there from 1962-1975, with a few comings and goings, and saw the whole tragedy unfold. The book is about his story as a civilian employee of the US Information Agency (and then later USIS). He was, in his own words, a "true believer" and really got out and saw the country firsthand. I'm quite jealous of his experiences.However, the book is at times a "stream of consciousness" travel guide with little to no context or illustrations / maps to assist the reader in keeping up with him. I'm career US Army, have been to Vietnam and have read and studied this war extensively, but I was at times completely lost in the book.Even when I tried to use mapping services to give me a frame of reference it was still confusing. Either the villages no longer exist, have been renamed, or his naming convention is off. Whatever the case, this book desperately needs maps and organizational charts as he changes jobs quite frequently. I also had trouble understanding what he was doing, who he was advising, and where he was in time in space several times.I wish the author would make a few updates and re-issue this book. That would make it more readable, accessible, and relevant for future historians and foreign policy movers and shakers.

Amazing book, so much detail....He saw the war from the beginning and he details it all in this book. I just got back from a trip to Viet Nam and this helped me understand the war from a different perspective. If you read this book, get a map of Thailand, the book does not have any and this helps appreciate the book better....overall a must read for anyone who wants to better understand the Viet Nam War....

Frank Scotton has written the definitive book on psychological operations to bolster conventional warfare. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in organizing such an effort successfully. Wish the U.S. had had hundreds, even thousands more Frank Scotton's, but we didn't - or didn't bother to look for them. Von Clusewitz wrote that "War is the extension of politics - by other means." Scotton proves in "Uphill Battle" the validity of von Clausewitz's sage observation. Bravo, Frank!

This belongs up there with A Bright Shining Lie (Sheehan) and Secrets (Ellsberg) as among the best books on the war (the nature of it, why it failed). The author was one of a handful of Americans in Vietnam (Vann, Baumgartner, Ellsberg) who understood that the war was primarily political and had to be approached in a more subtle and sensitive manner than certain political and military leaders were inclined to do.