Agent-Orange Books

This book provides a unique account of the Viet Nam war seen through the eyes of psychiatrist. Doug Bey's account of treatment in the battlefields and the sidelines was compelling; I read it cover to cover and ignored all other demands until done.

I was captured by this journey of war that unfolds in stories both large and small with the insightful commentary that comes from the original experiences, tempered by long years in the field of psychiatry.

While this memoir is rooted in the Viet Nam experience it has implications for the current men and women in the armed forces and should be required reading for those involved in the treatment of mental illness and the trauma of war.

However, the heart of the story remains one man's voice telling us the stories of war with all it's characters, events, and personal change. It's a gem of a book.

We all know, or knew, someone in Nam. An easily readable, enlightening chronicle of the time with touches of humor. I highly recommend this book.

Great narration of life in a support unit in Vietnam, the problems faced when returning home and the lasting effect on the lives of those who served. Very much enjoyed and appreciated.

War memoirs rarely show up on my reading list. Therefore, my enthusiasm about this book is not based on widely comparative reading in this area, but rather on the merits of this book itself. I really enjoyed reading this book, viewing familiar material from a completely different perspective than I would ever have had from my own experience, and it is a darn good read as well. Bey was a young psychiatrist in his early 30s when his induction notice arrived. His time of military service included a tour of duty in Vietnam at the height of the war, 1969-1970, reflections on which form the heart of this book. Bey was one of a small group of psychiatrists assigned to combat divisions (Wizard 6 was his radio handle). Each of these divisions had one psychiatrist, one social work officer, and several social work and psychology techs. These teams of mental health specialists found themselves in the strange position of helping others adjust to an environment that was itself plainly bizarre. Bey relates these initial impressions in a masterful chapter, "Stepping Through the Looking Glass," drawing the comparison to the Lewis Carroll classic. As just one example among many of the young doctor learning the rules by which this strange world was governed, Bey relates a time early in his tour in which he was requested by a military court to evaluate a prisoner charged with criminal offenses. Bey dutifully wrote a lengthy evaluation, stating in as many ways as he knew how that this prisoner suffered from a personality disorder, not a mental illness, and was therefore likely to repeatedly criminally offend. Surprised that the court let the man off, Bey found out that the court had not read his evaluation at all, but surmised from the heft of it that this man had genuine psychiatric problems. However, they were so miffed at having to let this criminal offender off the hook that they really threw the book at the poor guy following in the docket!
There are many very interesting features of this memoir. Bey deals very forthrightly with issues of racial, class and cultural differences in relation both to military justice and to psychiatric and mental health issues. He approaches these issues with a clear, personal point of view, but is refreshingly aware of the strengths and limitations of his own perspectives. He also recognized the peculiar position he and his fellow medics were in as relatively high-ranking officers who had no long-range military career goals. Their indifference to military protocol was sometimes comical, sometimes rebellious, sometimes useful in getting things accomplished outside of channels, but it was also always a position of privilege.
One of the things that surprised me in this memoir was the almost complete absence of any discussion of politics. Although Bey does suggest that he was politically very conservative (just to the right of Genghis Khan, he says...) and generally supported the war effort (albeit, with grave doubts about the way the war was being conducted) candid discussion of war politics simply does not come up, either in the direct talk among the officers or in Bey's own interpretive narrative. The nearest to it is one episode in which, at the behest of a black fellow officer with whom he was very close, Bey attended a meeting of black enlisted men and relates the speeches presented there, which focused on their anger and resentment at fighting for the freedom of Vietnamese while having freedoms denied to them in the USA. This episode is related, however, not in the context of discussion of the war itself, but of racial tensions within the military. The main sense one gets here is that, aside from brief episodes of extreme action, the war was experienced by the soldiers themselves as grindingly boring. I suppose this strikes me so strongly exactly because, as I remember those years, heated discussions about the war seemingly consumed us stateside, and this brings home again the chasm of difference in perspective between those who actively participated in the war and those, like me, who did not.

"Velcome Captain. You are the new Vizard-Ya?" "Ya. I mean, yes sir." "Vell, I must tell you dat I don't know if I believe in psychiatry." "That's okay, sir; I'm not sure I belive in colonels." This interchange took place in 1969 when Doug Bey M.D. aarrived at the base camp of the 1st Infantry Division (The Big Red One) in Di An, Vietnam, to begin a one year tour of duty. His reponses to the U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with the German accent are vintage Doug Bey. They show his quick wit and his way with words, his irreverence and his college-wrestler toughness.
I write with familiarity because Doug and I took psychiatric residences togther at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas. We were goth in the Berry Plan, in which the Army allowed us to complete our training but then expected us to go on active duty for two years. Doug and I both ended up in Vietnam. I was hospital based at the 67th Evaucation Hospital in Qui Nhon.
Being assigned to a division meant that Doug had a Jeep and the freedom of movement to get a good pulse of the whole unit. His radio call sign was Wizard 6. He and his talented techs took care of all kinds of emotional problems but found the so-called combat fatigue of previous wars less prevalent in Vietnam. Instead were acting up personality disorders, racial issues, communications problems between officers and the often quite young soldiers, alcohol and drug problems, and anti-establishment attitudes reflective of the anti-warm movement in the U.S.
In Topeka Doug had studied the psychology of organizations under Dr. Harry Levinson. Doug applied the techniques of organizational case study to the 1st Infantry Division. His goal was to find stress points, such as abusive officers or nonsensical regulartions, and to try to deal with such problems before they became major. This emphasis prevades the book and provids exceptional insights of a unit at war.
Doug also writes of his own coping devices in an unpopular war far from home. He tried to forget about home, immersed himself in his work, developed relationships with his colleagues, observed and kept notes, isolated negative feelings and stayed away from war politics.He also admits that he overused alcohol to self-medicate. He reports one frightening experience when he was to intoxicated at the time of a Red Alert that he mistook a friend for the enemy and pointed and pulled the trigger on his .45. What saved a tragedy was that he forgot to remove the safety. Throughout the book he is unsparing in presenting his own failings, which makes his story ring true.
He writes of how his Vietnam experiences affect him even to this day. He has a lifetime of things to ponder, such as the obviously battle-hardened infantryman who barged into Doug's office and announced that he wanted the doctor to know that he was gay and who then ran off; or the grieving crowd around a Vietnamese boy who lay next to his mangled bicycle, the victim of a US military truck that didn't stop.
Doug also compares and contrasts Vietnam with Iraq. His disquieting conclusion is that the two conflicts are becoming more and more similar.
This book has value not only for the people with military interests but also for mental health workers. The descriptions of the smells and noises of the country and of the people and their sad plight rang so true to me. I found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read. Doug really got it the way it was. My biggest disappointment is that I didn't write this book. But I'm glad somebody did.

Ed Colbach M.D.

The other reviewers have done a great job of describing this book so I'll keep my review short. I was not prepared for this book. I'm not sure anyone can be prepared. Halfway through I started crying and had to put it away for awhile. Our country is capable of doing some wonderful things. We (and yes I mean we, because the actions of our leaders and military represent all of us) are also capable of doing some truly horrible things. This book shines a light on one of the horrible things we did in Vietnam.

In September, 1976, just back from eight years helping homeless streetchildren in Viet Nam, I wrote an Op/Ed piece for the New York Times ( "Learning From the Vietnamese -- And Giving", 12/04/76) that concluded: "And I'm at a loss how to tell my own people that Vietnam's needs are our remedy - to say that what the Vietnamese people have to offer us - as they did me - is so great that for our own sake we must help them." I was attempting to make a connection between the spiritual strengths the people of Viet Nam had to offer us and the technological assistance we, in turn, could give them. Philip Jones Griffiths, in his book "Agent Orange, 'Collateral Damage' in Viet Nam" has made an even more compelling, if depressing, case for interdependency, i.e., because of the American military's chemical spraying in south VN during the war years there are now thousands of people in both the U.S. and Viet Nam who are dealing with deformities and death because of a ticking "time bomb" planted in Indochina decades ago. Griffiths, author of "VIETNAM, INC.", an award-winning photography book on America's longest war, has included here some unsparing images of humans beings brutally deformed by man's more fiendish dalliance with Weapons of Mass Destruction. Here is a "legacy" that must give all of us pause by a brilliant photographer's tireless effort to bring almost unbearable evidence to us of man's inhumanity to man. Like the Holocaust itself, the full impact of these atrocities took years to come to the fore, but "Agent Orange" makes a compelling case that two countries once at war remain linked in a tragic bond that will not soon go away. This is not an easy book to read or, should I say, to view, but I think we ignore it at our peril. Griffiths knows what of he "speaks", having spent years in Indochina and seen un-speakable carnage firsthand. Here he has placed the evidence before us, as well as a precious opportunity to understand where we have gone wrong and how we may become better human beings in the future. "Agent Orange, 'Collateral Damage'", it almost goes without saying, may be the ultimate brief on America's own WMDs. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------

For those already committed to voting for the so-called 'antiwar' candidate, I recommend putting this book in front of Sen. John Kerry and demanding to know what he will do as president to address American responsibility and pay reparations for the genocidal assault on the people of Vietnam. Such action will constitute a litmus test for this candidate, his "band of brothers" and future warriors about how the USA intends to solve the problem of terrorism. Will they acknowledge international law and prosecute the guilty parties including politicians, bureaucrats, executive military officers and defense contractors? Will they honor, finally, the Paris Accords and repair the ecocide brutally wrought upon the Vietnamese by their chemical weapons? Or will they continue to cover up a deliberate, malefic genocide by honoring war criminals like Kissinger and McNamara who now cries cinematic tears while his Pentagon successors plan the mass destruction of any nation that dares to oppose American hegemony?

Philip Jones Griffiths's AGENT ORANGE, COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN VIETNAM is a complex, dense statement that can be viewed and read several ways. Foremost, it is unquestionably the greatest work of photojournalism ever published. I do not make this statement lightly or without professional judgement. For twenty-five years, I edited the work of distinguished photojournalists -- Capa, Richards, Salgado, Peress, and Nachtwey among many others. Comparable only to W. Eugene Smith's MINIMATA: LIFE -- SACRED AND PROFANE, a passionate chronicle of the devastating effects of post-WW II industrial pollution on a Japanese town, AGENT ORANGE surpasses all previous attempts to synthesize the medium of still photography with historical documentation. Griffiths's masterly images unselfconsciously insert readers into the scene of an historical crime and guide them through the evidence page by excruciating page as a means to elicit direct testimony from the perpetrators and their victims. With the possible exception of Erich Maria Remarque' s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, no other monograph so successfully confronts citizens with the folly of leaders who commit atrocities in their name. The stares of genetically deformed children struggling to articulate humanity across the threshold of pain and disability give absolute lie to the facile excuses of national security used by politicians to conduct high tech assault-and-battery on unwitting, innocent populations. Then it was Vietnam, today Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beginning with his eloquent book, VIETNAM INC. first published in 1971, Griffiths has pursued an unrelenting inquiry into the truth of violence and war. He reported from the Mekong Delta battlefront and also the brothels of Saigon. Returning years later, he earned the trust of farmers who had rebuilt their devastated villages with the detritus of war. Pushing his inquest further he located and photographed war orphans, now shunned as the miscegenated offspring of foreign invaders (DARK ODYSSEY, 1997). Infrequently supported by the mass media, Griffiths parlayed his skills as a commercial photographer to raise the cash necessary to return periodically to Southeast Asia, as if excavating its pitted landscape for some fragment of reason that might explain the macabre body counts and haunting trans-generational birth defects. Some photographers are celebrated for their commitments in documenting a family coming of age or the rise and fall of a nation. Journalism schools promote the virtues of in-depth or extended coverage (sometime a whole week!) while network and cable news personnel embrace the fame of sticking with a big story only to defer, in the final analysis, to the desire of corporate sponsors. By contrast Griffiths has the determination of a seasoned forensic scientist. Although no maverick, he has paid the price of banishment from the newspapers and magazines "of record" whose editors remain too frightened by management to commission or publish his work. Why would they want to remind subscribers of their own inaccuracies and slavish pandering to the official story?

In this respect, AGENT ORANGE can also be read for its scholarship because it presents new historical research about the manufacture and deployment of chemical weapons during the Vietnam era. It has been almost twenty years since American courts acknowledged the gravity of dioxin poisoning in rulings on lawsuits filed by military veterans. Yet companies who supplied the military with these chemical defoliants continue to falsify experimental data on their products' potential for birth defects. Our government stands mute on the issue of "peace with honor" and refuses to contribute any meaningful economic assistance, nonetheless stipulated in the treaty with Hanoi. The war's apologists and neoliberal ideologues continue to deride Vietnam as a failed socialist experiment. Griffith's photographs and words rip their lies to shreds and dissolve their chauvinism in the cold truth of twisted limbs, hare lips, and hydrocehpalic fetuses preserved in formaldehyde. AGENT ORANGE is the black book of American infamy, its author has given citizens a priceless instrument to test their politicians sincerity and commitment to peace. Buy a copy and ask Kerry for a clear statement of conscience!

Philip Jones Griffiths is among the unsung heroes of our time, photographing the otherwise untold, unsavory aspects of a mean-spirited war completely lacking in human decency. Agent Orange is masterfully conceived, researched, photographed and written in prose that at once is dark, beautiful poetry.

George Hay's book was well writen, and well read by William Shatner, which was the perfect voice match for the reading!

To book covers the life of David Quinn, almost your anti-hero, and the trials and tribulations he goes through with two trips to Vietnam, initially before the US was offically there, and then a few years later when the US is there in earnest. Between those two trips he goes through some intense training, never thinking he would go back to Nam.

This book is spell binding and keeps you guessing through out the entire book. Well worth listening to Shatner read to you, or, using the software reading it to yourself!

Five stars and well worth the money!

Here is a powerful little e-book and software package that boldly goes where no e-reader has gone before, with more gadgets than the Starship Enterprise. You can read text and/or listen to audio, both with easily adjustable controls, plus bookmarks, highlighters, search and print functions, all on one screen. Another bonus is Captain Kirk himself -- William Shatner -- who reads this action-packed, hard-core military thriller with his gritty, drill sergeant voice. The story itself is jammed with all the weaponry, fighting, intrigue and betrayal to please any war novel reader; the complex, highly-detailed plot will keep you guessing. The characters go through infantry, Special Ops, and SEAL-type mental and physical training; all manner of land, sea and aircraft -- even a submarine -- keep the mission moving. Like the Vietnam War itself, AGENT ORANGE includes elements of chaos, brutality and humanity. A unique addition to Vietnam-era literature -- and a great new way to experience it.

BACK IN THE DISTANT HAZY PAST I WENT TO VIETNAM AND THE THINGS THAT I WITNESSED AND LIVED THERE CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER. TANGERINE SKY BROUGHT IT BACK INTO FOCUS IN A POSITIVE WAY. IT AMAZES ME THAT A LADY WRITER HAS THE PERCEPTION TO SO VIVIDLY PRESENT SO MANY SEGMENTS OF MY EXPERIENCES THERE.

EVERY VETERAN OF THE VIETNAM CONFLICT, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, WITH ANY SERVICE, WILL ENJOY THIS GREAT BOOK. IT WILL BE A BOOKSHELF KEEPER THAT WILL BE READ AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Tangerine Sky is superbly written, gutsy and gripping as it follows the emotional destruction of a Vietnam veteran and his family. Clearly, Barbara Fleenor Turner wrote this novel from painful first-hand experience. It's not fun, but it's a rare jewel, and I recommend it with enthusiasm.

This novel brings to life the feelings of an era most
Americans would rather forget. I think that this is probably Mr. Hay's intention - That Americans never forget. What our soldiers were asked to do by our government was unpopular and by most accounts unrealistic, however the level of dedication and sacrifice these men and women gave our nation is no less incredible than those members of the "greatest generation" in World War II

To whom it may concern:

This informative and educational book is especially interesting to this honorably discharged Vietnam veteran, and I'm sure it will be of interest to anyone else who served over there and has helped explain why the major health problems that have struck me in the prime of my life. I'm quite sure that Agent Orange had a lot to do with my heart problems and my neurological problems, as well. This molecule, the MOST dangerous ever made by man, is not only responsible for my figurative death, but, also, the ongoing deaths of those unfortunate and innocent Vietnamese who are STILL dying in record numbers. Of course, this supposedly caring country will NOT own up to its evil and willful destruction of Vietnam and its once-beautiful country. It used Vietnam as a proving ground for its further poisoning of other 3rd world countries, such as Iraq. What a tragedy and a farce!

Here we are in 2007, trying to manage the world affairs by telling everyone how responsible the US Government is in protecting the world from nukes, chemicals, and mass terrorist activity worldwide, yet for all intent, our own cause has been 100 times far more reckless.

These authors have gathered up the news, reports, research, and propaganda, where our own Government, using our own money, placed its own population, and that of other sovereign nations, as well as military personnel, and unsuspecting, trusting citizens IN HARM'S WAY!!!!

A very interesting narrative, with pictures. Shows above ground nuke blasts with military personnel only a few hundreds of feet away from the blast in foxholes; many of which felt the full force of the shockwave and heat flash, then had to get up and march into the maelstrom. Not once, but in at least 20 similar exercises; many of which for no actual testing purposes, but rather like some other sort of needless, expensive 'fireworks' show for the press, and public. thousands fried, and no subsequent medical care for the symptoms developed. Radioactive dirt clouds over Eastern NV and Western UT, and a few over Las Vegas itself. And the cleanup crews sent in on the battleships of Bikini Islands.

Or the indiscriminate use of defoliants in Viet Nam, that destroyed old forests and farm lands. Big money was made by DOW and Monsanto, among others; the key ingredient being dioxin, the most toxic synthetic chemical ever produced. though the Spraying began in the late 1950s and early 1960's, and DOW claimed the product was safe and inert on humans, the original German plant that made the chemical, also determined that dioxin was the active component, and that in 1954. It was a short step to between its steps and that of other makers, yet lives stand no chance when the US Government gets involved, and some outfit have a chance to the deep pockets of US Defense.

This very well written book stopped in 1979 or 1980, but we all have witnessed even more of like irresponsible behavior of our own mediators, governors and legislators. Drugs, experiments, goals, etc., .... if the US G is around, everyone else is going to lose out.

This is a powerful and moving book, beautifully written with emotion and grace. The author transports the reader to the heat and humidity and culture of south Viet Nam from first sentence to last. A must read for anyone who has ever been to Viet Nam, who has ever thought of going to Viet Nam or who has ever even heard of Viet Nam.

This book is wonderful. The characters are very well thought out and the development is great. The battle at the end would keep a skinny man sweating naked outside in alaska during winter. yes its that good. But if you didnt read the 11 books that came before it, you will miss out on some of the books finer points. its a shame these books never caught on here in the states. They'd blow harry potter out of the water.

Wilcox personalizes the tragedy of Agent Orange by telling the individual stories of those who suffered from the side effects of Agent Orange and the terrible treatment they received. My family is among those who suffered. We lost my father, a Vietnam Veteran, at age 33 from melanoma cancer. And it is a comfort to me that someone is willing to tell the story of the government's mistreatment of its veterans.