| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Military Medicine to Win Hearts and Minds: Aid to Civilians in the Vietnam War. By Robert J. Wilensky. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004. xvi, 207 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-89672-532-4.)
During the Vietnam conflict, the United States armed forces carried out several programs that provided medical assistance to South Vietnamese civilians. In the Medical Civic Action Program (MEDCAP), unit medical officers and aid men visited villages in their areas of operation to treat local people's illnesses and injuries. At the same time, the Military Provincial Health Assistance Program (MILPHAP) and the Civilian War Casualty Program (CWCP) provided military medical personnel and equipment to assist Vietnamese government hospitals in caring for civilians.	1
The U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, implemented these programs in part out of a simple humanitarian impulse to help people suffering as a result of war and inadequate indigenous health services, but other considerations also were involved. Medical civic action kept American military doctors, nurses, and corpsmen busy during lulls in the fighting, thereby improving their morale. Assistance to civilian war casualties helped to mollify U.S. domestic congressional and public criticism of the collateral damage caused by American firepower. Most important, U.S. officials believed that medical civic action could help the allies win the "hearts and minds" of the people, causing them to shift their allegiance from the Viet Cong to the Saigon government.	. . .

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