Once a Warrior King: Memories of an Officer in Vietnam

by David Donovan

Book Overview

He Was a young American soldier -- and the most powerful man in a remote rural District of Vietnam. In the spring of 1969, First Lieutenant David Donovan arrived in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam to work as military advisor with village chiefs and local militia to win the war. But as he was the highest-ranking person in the entire district, his life there was far more complex than anyone could have imagined. This is Donovan's gripping account of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070175926
• ISBN13: 9780070175921
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 323 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book. Easy to read; hard to put down

'Once a Warrior King' is an excellent book. Written by Terry Turner using the pen name David Donovan. I served on MACV Advisory Team 88 in Ben Tre, Kein Hoa Province, IV Corps, Sept. '68 - Aug. '69. (That was where 'We had to destroy the town in order to save it.' A dumb statement which was not true. Some buildings were damaged but were quickly repaired.) I was fortunate to be at Province headquarers where we were able to live in a decent manner. By comparision, the MAT and District team where Terry Turner served, near the Cambodian border, had very little personal and US military support. It is obvious to me, as a former MACV officer, that the book 'Once A Warrior King' could have only been written by somemone who was actually there. The fact that T. Turner used a pen name is OK. Many of the names in the book were changed for reasons of privacy. A good book.

On the short list of Vietnam must-reads

Splendid book. Entertaining and minimally technical, it is strongly recommended for non-veterans who want to get a feel for "how it really was." Donovan, as a mere First Lieutenant, was the senior U.S. military officer in a rural district near the Cambodian border. The Vietnamese District Chief cared little and higher authority was far away. By default, therefore, he became a kind of proconsul, a king. In charge of four Amercans and two platoons of Vietnamese militia, he ran his "own" war. At first full of idealism and self-importance, he resembled Alden Pyle of the "The Quiet American". He mused that he could have any villager killed on his orders, and that he was treated like a lord. But he believed in the cause, loved the Vietnamese people, hated the Vietcong, disdained the corrupt and incompetent South Vietnamese government, and was appalled at the occasional coarseness of his fellow Americans. Like Horatio Hornblower, he was incredibly brave, but filled with internal fear and doubt. All of the grand complexities of That War are conveyed in microcosm through anecdote. There is much humor (the pubic-hair contest he was asked to judge while holed up in a bar; the Keystone Cops escape in a Jeep with the Vietcong blazing away), pathos (the burned child he could not save), frustration (the Province Chief on the take; the District Chief who cared more for his own comfort than his people's safety; the air-conditioned REMFs who inhabited a separate world in Saigon), anger (the Vietcong-planted bomb that shredded a schoolhouse full of children), and harrowing action (assaulting a Vietcong bunker complex in a motor-driven sampan). I served in the PBRs--river gunboats--that he often mentions, in a nearby area and at roughly the same time. This is the book that I would have written, if I had Donovan's diligence, sensitivity, and craft.

Uncomfortably Realistic

I was stationed in Duc Pho, Southern I Corp, and spent over 8 months living in a remote village with my platoon during 1969 and 1970. I saw so very much and understood so little. This book brought back the conflicts that haunted me for years and helped me come to grips with the most significant year of my life. Fear, anxiety, exhaustion, isolation, and confusion blended into an environment that this book describes like none that I have read.

Just like I remembered it!

I was the leader of MAT III-27 and served in Long An province, not far from where the author was located. The experiences he wrote about could have been mine and this book brought it home to me. I agree with the author's viewpoint concerning the attitude of the Vietnamese MACV was trying to turn around. Although I have not returned to Vietnam, I would expect nothing has changed in their way of life over the past thirty years. And that's not bad!

An underground classic in Fort Bragg's SOF community.

Among soldiers of the close-knit special operations community at Fort Bragg, NC, this book is considered a classic. It presents the salient events of a district advisor's year-long Vietnam tour of duty. A college ROTC student, Donovan became an infantry officer and, after additional training in civil affairs, deployed to Vietnam in the mid-1960's. The book was written after his return to the U.S. as a form of therapy. The true value of this book is not the events it recounts, but the insight it provides into the interplay of moral values with stress, anger, temptation, sleep-deprivation, fear, frustration, and other emotions as experienced by various members of a 5-man military advisory team in a remote province of Vietnam. Each incident reflects intense introspection and reflection; the result of the author's struggle to overcome the psychological demons that accompanied him home. One of the best personal memoirs of wartime experiences which has been written.