Judge Advocates in Vietnam: Army Lawyers in Southeast Asia, 1959-1975 (review)

Most military historians are aware of the significant role judge advocates (JAs) have played in recent armed conflicts. Advising commanders, vetting targets, and prosecuting criminality are among the more visible tasks JAs execute in today's Army. In this brief but wonderfully readable and elegantly written monograph, Fred Borch, an active duty JAG Corps colonel, has recorded the no less impressive accomplishments of Army lawyers in wartime Vietnam. An officer of many accomplishments, Col. Borch, the Chief Prosecutor for the Guantanamo military commissions, has previously written several other books, including the highly respected and well-received, Judge Advocates in Combat: Army Lawyers in Military Operations From Vietnam to Haiti, to which this volume is a seamless companion.

The Vietnam War's constant need for manpower brought soldiers in-country whose dubious suitability for military duty outweighed even their minimal value as quota fillers. Drugs, war crimes, and racial conflict kept Army JAs in makeshift courtrooms, trying serious criminal cases in the combat zone. Command-by-command, author Borch highlights the problems and cases faced by young JAs, often in their first assignments.

Colonel Borch opens with the first JA assigned to South Vietnam in 1959, detailing how he and his successors built an in-country legal system from scratch, dealing with a venal local government, increasing atrocities on both sides, and creating a system that supported courts-martial in the field which, but for a modest number in the Korean War, had not been done before. Eventually, more than 25,000 Army courts-martial were tried in South Vietnam. The author ruefully notes, "By the end of American involvement in the war, 'more soldiers were being evacuated to the United States for drug problems than for wounds'" (p. 87). He traces the difficult growth from one Army JA in 1959 to the 350 who eventually served in Vietnam. Along the way, he describes in fascinating detail how JAs dealt with 241 war crime allegations, the thorny issue of American civilian offenders, and combat refusals. Bleak as the legal picture often was, Borch makes clear that dedicated JAs, and legalmen of all grades, made the system work with relative efficiency.

One of those JAs was Capt. Howard Andrews, killed in a helicopter crash. He was the only judge advocate of any armed service to be killed in Vietnam. Andrews is only one of the many Army lawyers briefly but skillfully limned by Borch, whose own background lends an expert viewpoint to all he writes.

This fully-researched and artfully written history is a fine testament to the military lawyers of a past era. This important book should not be overlooked by lawyers or laymen.