There are a few different accounts of the Eye of Sauron being seen during the Vietnam war:

Humphrey Carpenter's Biography: 'At festivities in Siagon a Vietnamese dancer was seen bearing the lidless eye of Sauron on his shield"

Michael White's Biography: American GI's stationed in Vietnam encounted tribesmen carrying shields bearing the Eye of Sauron"

and Daniel Grotta's Biography: "An American Green Beret Officer serving in Southeast Asia made an unoffical translation of LoTR into Vietnamese. General Loc, the commander of the Vietnamese II Corps, was so impressed by it that he chose the lidless eye of Sauron as his battle insignia, thinking it would frighten the superstituous enemy"

I find the three different accounts intriguing and I have been trying to find out if one or all of these accounts are true or if the similarities are due to them deriving from the one account but being altered, a bit like Chinese whispers.


All attempts to track down a picture of the battle insignia has failed so far, (my father collects insignia and was in Vietnam last year but could not locate The Lidless Eye).

So far I have tracked down 2 articles from 1967; one from the Science Fiction Times and the other from Publishers Weekly.

Does anyone know of any Fanzines or newspaper articles that discuss the Lidless Eye in Vietnam? Any help would be appreciated

I cannot help you, but what you write remindes me of one of the conferences I heard last year in Birmingham. The president of the Mexican Tolkien Society talked about the alleged influences of Tolkien's writings on the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Citing a confidential source, he told us that the highest ranks of the ZNLA are full of Tolkien-fans, and that tLotR is a compulsory reading for all members of the Army. He also made many parallels between passages in tLotR and in Sub-Comandante Marcos' speeches.

That's intersting. I hope the speech is published in one of the Tolkien Society Publications that come out every now and then.

It should be contained in the proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 conference, whenever that will be published.

Thanks Soronel,

I'll have to keep that in mind and keep checking for its publication..
I still haven't had much luck with my original query, but I'll be visiting our National Library next month, so I might come up with some more info then