For the Glory of France

About the Book

For the Glory of France offers a plausible explanation of how the American phase of the Vietnam War could have been avoided. The story is based on historical fact. If the United States had taken appropriate measures to keep France from reclaiming her former colony at the end of World War II, thirty years of bloody conflict might have been avoided. For reasons that now seem trivial, the United States, contrary to its grand pronouncements of democracy and independence in documents such as the Atlantic Charter, was unwilling or unable to guide the French on a path that would eventually lead to independence for their former colony.

The central character, Rudyard Kipling Glynn, Jr., is a composite of several heroic figures who served their nation with honor and dedication during World War II. Known to his friends as "Rudder Glynn," he sacrificed a promising military career in a quixotic attempt to persuade his government to keep the French out. He was haunted by his failure, and although he was agonized by a war that should have been avoided, he was unable to bring himself to oppose it openly. The tragic consequences of his inability to sway American policy were visited on his family in 1969, just a few weeks before his son was to complete a second tour in Vietnam.

If there is any historical justification for the thesis of this book, it is contained in the testimony of two witnesses who appeared before Senator J. William Fulbright´s Foreign Relations Committee in 1972. In a report entitled, Causes, Origins, and Lessons of the Vietnam War, former OSS Major Frank W. White, and former Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs in the State Department, Abbot Low Moffat, made powerful arguments that our involvement in Vietnam could have been avoided in 1945.

In 1945, Ho Chi Minh wanted nothing more than to become an ally and friend of the United States. Many of the OSS agents serving in Indochina saw Ho Chi Minh as more a nationalist than a communist, and they strongly believed the U.S. should have supported him in his quest for independence. The story is based on the premise that if the United States had followed their lead, we would have prevented the French from reclaiming their former colony, and the thirty-year Vietnam tragedy, including the American phase of the war, would have been avoided.

The Vietnam War is a tragedy in world history, and the horror of that tragedy was visited upon millions of families around the world. The family of Rudder Glynn paid the ultimate price for this unnecessary war, a price borne by all the families of the world who suffered similar fates.

For more information, please visit the author’s Website at http://www.floydduncan.com/, or feel free to send an email to fhd@floydduncan.com.