Meredith H. Lair. Armed with Abundance

Each year a large number of books is published in military history, ranging from scholarly studies of campaigns, tactics, battles, and biographies of commanders to privately published memoirs. Meredith H. Lair has chosen a seldom-explored topic, for she deals with the influence of consumerism on soldiers during the Vietnam War. Television reports of the time showed American combat troops in battle, training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or fighting the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong during the Tet Offensive. What was not often seen were the facilities—PXs, theaters, beer halls, swimming pools—constructed in large and relatively safe bases throughout South Vietnam. Lair touches on two military truths. First, an army with low morale has little chance of ultimate victory, and, second, the ratio of combat troops to support troops always favors the support force. She also correctly states a societal truth, that “material goods were the final measure of an individual's social worth, and that their frequent acquisition was the citizen's duty to the state” (p. 10). This was a view widely held by the “Greatest Generation,” the GI veterans of World War II who were now the parents of the soldiers in Vietnam. Those serving in Vietnam were the children of mass advertising, especially those ads which appeared on the new medium of television. Abundance was not a new idea for the army, because many of the ranking officers had served in World War II when morale services and an availability of civilian goods were offered through military institutions such as the Army Exchange System, which GIs called simply the “PX.” Lair's analysis of the importance of this institution for the American soldiers in Vietnam is certainly correct.

Ancient history · Battle · Communism · Duty · Memoir · Offensive · Operations research · Political science · Politics · Victory · Vietnam War · Vietnamese · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies