The Battle of Buon Ma Thuot and National Unification

摘要

The first part of this essay, printed in the 2012 September edition of Vietnamese Studies, focused attention on the 'Memoirs of War' series published by The Gioi (World) Publishers, Ha Noi. In the second part, I will aim to widen the field of discourse as a response to a broadening of the flow of narrative discourses associated with this event leading to a lightning victory after only 61 days, rather than in a theoretical sense that would need to elaborate how the notion of discourse was developed to deal with narrative. So far, we have looked at two books that devote a major section to the Battle: one by General Van Tien Dung; the other by General Hoang Van Thai. Holding to the principle that first things must come first, story must go in the vanguard.