A Rookie Reporter in Vietnam Captures the War’s Futility

When Jonathan Schell landed in Vietnam, he was a neophyte as a journalist. Knowing little of the war, he was stunned by the tragic futility of the military’s strategy. “The more we won in Vietnam, and we won every day, in practically every battle, the more we lost the political war,” he said later. Schell’s long account published in The New Yorker, “The Village of Ben Suc,” details the strategic demolition of an entire village and the villagers’ transformation into refugees. It shocked readers, who were accustomed to the press recapitulating the military’s Cold War logic.  

Schell, who died in 2014, spoke about his experience with the historian Christian Appy, in 1999, as research for Appy’s book “Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides.” Excerpts from “The Village of Ben Suc” are performed for the Radio  Hour by Noah Averbach-Katz.