The official web site of A.H. Lloyd

Through a series of coincidences, I learned about War Trophies: Weapons from Vietnam by Keith Seafield and ordered a copy.

This is a self-publish work of very high physical quality, though (as is often the case) it would have benefitted greatly from an experienced editor.

The work is a series of vignettes about weapon brought home as war trophies from the Vietnam War.  It is lavishly illustrated, but the weapons get much less attention than the men who brought them back.  This is where better edition could have linked the stories, which are listed in a table of contents without any page numbers.

Some sort of narrative describing the logistics of the war from the Communist perspective would also have been helpful.

All that being said, it is of great interest to collectors because it describes how weapons were brought back through dozens of examples.  There are photographs of the paperwork, reports, and one gets a clear view of the process by which so many weapons could return to the US.

One generally thinks of Vietnamese weapons being of Chinese or Russian manufacture, but there was a ton of weapons floating around Southeast Asia, the detritus of world wars, civil wars and the Cold War.  Thus, there are many SKS carbines, but also Luger pistols, French and even American service weapons from previous conflicts.

Thus, while not as comprehensive as I would have liked, it has thrown much-needed light on a little-researched topic.