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Vietnam was a turning point in our history
When I served there in 68/69, the signs of disintegration were beginning
to show. I had requested thirty men to protect a village outside the huge base camp at Pleiku, in the Central Highlands. I
got eight, and they were not exactly soldier material: Cooks, clerks and bottle washers.
The village had been threatened by the Vietcong, ever since a few refugees
from a more remote village had sought refuge there. I had promised the village chief to see what I could do, and asked for
thirty men from base camp defense. I got eight.
During the first night, I had deployed our team personell carrier with
its .50 caliber machine gun near the "safe" side of the tiny Jarai village, in the direction of Camp Enari. I took the
eight men from base camp to secure the far side of the village, the one closest to the jungle which encroached on the outer
dwellings of the Montagnards.
Since dusk was beginning to envelope us, I briefed the men quickly: "We
are going to deploy in a line, ten meters apart, on the outskirts of, and perpendicular to the center of the village we are
defending. I will be in the center of this formation. We can expect that any attack will involve about twenty-five
to thirty Vietcong. You will engage as soon as you can see the outline of an enemy soldier. If we are unable
to stop them by fire, I will give the order for either our right or left wing to withdraw, depending on the situation.
We will withdraw in this manner to our personnell carrier, and we will be supported by fire from my men as soon as we are
within sight. The first team to arrive will go inside, the last to arrive climb on top. I have given base camp
defense the coordinates of the jungle from which I expect the attack, and we will be supported by artillery on our way back
home."
One man objected to my plan, suggesting that he would begin running at
the first sign of trouble, and jump on the personnell carrier. I assured him that we would deny him access to our
vehicle, that I had already given orders to that effect, and that he would have to walk the three miles back to
base, with the enemy hot at his heels.
By the time I had my advisory team at Trung Lap, and then Cu Chi, things
had gotten a lot worse. Trung Lap, at the edge of our enemy's "Iron Triangle", had been an uncomfortable assignment,
because of the nightly mortar fire, and the daily patrols. More often than not we had to pass through mined and
booby-trapped terrain, and my boss had moved my team to Cu Chi to rest, but even that assignment wasn't a picnic until
we had gotten things under control.
The Vietcong were easy: There were probably no more than thirty or so
in the immediate vicinity of the giant 25th US Infantry Division base, most of them in tunnels. The previous advisor
had been an air defense artillery captain with absolutely no understanding of infantry tactics, or the capabilities and limitations
of the various combat arms.
While I was still at Trung Lap, we were entertained as we listened to him
ask for a tank company to bail him out of a tight spot in his village. At that time, we really needed a good laugh
very badly. Of course, the request was denied. Tanks without infantry support are sitting ducks in a heavily
populated area, where an enemy can sneak up to them, and engage them at close range with cheap anti-tank weapons.
After our official welcome by that lively VC delegation, during
which they expended a lot of rocket-propelled grenades into our tiny post, and used up about a thousand rounds of excess AK-47
ammunition, we decided to prove to get them under control.
Every morning, I lined up twenty Vietnamese Popular Force soldiers from
the base I was staying in, and fifteen from the base on the other side of the village. Moving side by side, one meter
between us, we probed the sandy soil with three foot brazing rods contributed by the 25th engineers. At every step,
we probed at least six inches into the ground.
During the first day, we found ten or twelve tunnel openings, concealed four
or five inches under the surface. The openings were covered by wooden lids, bevelled to fit neatly into wooden
frames. We just dropped a grenade into each hole, put the wooden lid back on, and covered the site back up with
dirt, to give those guys down there some privacy after our rude morning intrusion.
The American combat soldiers and their sergeants were cool
and highly professional soldiers, and I tried to stack the odds in their favor: Before I had assumed responsibility for the
villages around the 25th base camp, the ambushes were being betrayed by some of the locals. Men left their houses near ambush sites to walk away, some waved lanterns from outside their dwellings.
I put a stop to all that, and the village chief who stayed in our
post signed the official order: No lanterns permitted, noone to leave their homes, once my teams were in their assigned positions.
If the villagers had to use their outdoor toilets, they had to stay in full sight of my ambushes at all times.
I deliberately reported incorrect ambush positions to my boss, the District
Advisor. Although I had a great deal of respect for him, I knew that he always posted the ambush locations on a map
in his tactical operations center. Vietnamese soldiers would continually walk in and out of that area, and who knew,
whether one or more of them were enemy spies.
Every evening, at dusk, I briefed the six American soldiers and
the six Vietnamese who would join them, now split into two teams of three Americans and three Vietnamese. Instead
of a map, I used a four by six foot aerial photograph of our village, propped up on an easel. When I pointed out
the ambush sites for the night, the Vietnamese identified the houses of the enemy sympathizers, and plotted a way around
them. Each and very night, my teams reached their locations safely.
The Vietnamese were very good soldiers, the Americans were better
- more serious and better trained. The ambushes immediately hit paydirt, killing one or two enemy soldiers every
night.
The first time my ambushes struck paydirt, I decided to lead a "reaction
force", consisting of five Vietnamese soldiers, one of my sergeants, and of course, my medic, the most important man on my
team.
After we connected with the ambush team, I decided on a house to
house search of a dozen houses on the main street. We found no enemy soldiers, but that was not the purpose of my expedition.
I just wanted to rattle their cages, keep them off balance. In my mind, I was certain that they would expect me to to
repeat my action, the next time our ambushes struck, and, with malicous glee, I visualized them trying to predict which
houses I would search this time, and the ambushes they had carefully planned for us, should I have been foolish enough to
repeat my performance. I did not report this random search to my boss, since I knew he would most certainly report my actions
to higher headquarters. I feared that my team would then be forced to do these searches every night, in order to
boost our body count. We would then establish a predictable pattern, and that could very easily have gotten
us killed. You have to think ahead in war, not only in order to keep the enemy guessing, but also to head off any
acts of stupidity by your higher headquarters.
My unusual tactics seemed to work. As the days and weeks
passed, there was less and less hostile activity, and a friend in Vietnamese Intelligence told me we had temporarily driven
the enemy out of the village. We pretty much had it our way: None of our guys
were killed or wounded, while the other side lost more than their pride. My Vietnamese friend at District HQ confirmed that
we had booted the bad guys out of the village, but he didn't know where they had gone.
Every two or three days we did a little patrolling, and, quite honestly,
I didn't expect to find anything. But fortune was on our side. In one case, we chased them, all of us belly or
chest deep in the paddy water, across the muddy dikes.
It often seemed that my Vietnamese friends had seen too many John Wayne
movies. When we caught a small enemy patrol half a mile away, they fired their M-16's from the hip on automatic,
and I watched their bullets splash on the placid paddy water, only half way to their intended target.
After experimenting with the technique at Trung Lap, I fired single shots
of tracer ammunition, aiming in the general direction of the enemy, the butt of my weapon resting on a paddy dike. Watching
the flight of each tracer, I then adjusted my weapon, as if I were using a 60mm mortar, by changing the angle of the barrel
slightly, until I had brought the tracers close to the target.
Although I was unable to hit anyone, I was able to substantially quicken
our enemies' pace. In their haste, they dropped a cheap Radio Shack walkie talkie on some bushes. I still wonder about that
one. There were certainly no Radio Shack stores inour area, and I doubted that there were any in Saigon, only twenty
miles away.
On one of my other patrols, we discovered the enemy's nightly
hideout. They were sleeping in open 55-gallon drums, the opening only four inches above the waterline, anchored to
a tree trunk, surrounded by bushes, in a flooded riverbank, swamped by the monsoon rains. When I reached for some pomegranate-like
fruit in the nearby trees, my whole arm was immediately covered with ferocious, intensely stinging ants. That was
the first and only time in Vietnam, that I actually felt sorry for the Vietcong.
The problem was not the enemy, the problem was from unfriendly "friendly
fire" from the base camp warriors. They would shoot at my ambushes moving toward their nightly position, but fortunately
never hit anyone, a very real indication of their extremely poor level of marksmanship. Then, during
an otherwise uneventful night, they fired their many machineguns high into the air, bringing plunging fire - colorful
red tracers interspersed with heavier invisible bullets, which rattled the tin roofs above the sandbags in our tiny Popular
Forces outpost.
When I complained to their commander, he admitted that he could not control
them - they were blatantly refusing to obey his orders. I could only get them to stop by threatening to take out the
offending bunker with one of my "LAWS" - light anti-tank weapons. I had saved three of these for a rainy day, and it
was now indeed raining a very deadly "plunging fire" from unfriendly friendlies. I told the commander to impress
on his juvenile delinquents that I had not only the means, but also the motivation to defend myself and my men, by taking
out one of these bunkers.
Their commander admitted to me that the men in his base camp defense
group were high on drugs, and they were choosing to disobey his direct orders. My response: "Report this to your commander,
and make sure these guys go to jail". His answer: "It won't do any good". I had the opinion at that time, that base
camp defense had deteriorated to the point, that any serious attack by our enemy would penetrate the outer defenses with ease,
and only after they ran against some off-duty combat veterans far inside the base would they have encountered any serious
resistance.
In another incident, a 2.5 ton truck broke down only 500 yard outside
the southeast gate of the Cu Chi base camp. We found the driver to be stoned out of his mind on drugs, and barely able
to communicate with us. My request to base camp defense to open the gate and have a wrecker pull the vehicle inside
was declined. Seemed that the "mighty base camp" personnell were afraid to go outside, unless escorted by several hundred
heavily armed combat veterans. I had no choice but to pull my ambushes out of the village, and to use both of them to
protect the truck and its incapacitated driver until the dawn ended our night-time vigil.
Next morning, we saw another U.S. Army two and a half ton truck driving
out of the southwest gate, our military police at the wheel. It was headed for a ramshackle Vietnamese laundry, which
washed the uniforms of our American soldiers in dirty paddy water - crisply starched and ironed, but highly unsanitary.
There was a bar next doors, if you could call it that. Mostly it was a dingy house of prostitution, but
the Vietnamese owners made a lot more money on beer sales. A the time, we could buy beer for less than half its
cost in the United States. The military police soldiers who sold the beer to the Vietnamese doubled their money on that
bulk sale. The Vietnamese women who took those cans, placed them into a plastic-lined canvas bag, and followed
American troops into combat, selling cokes and beer to our men, under fire, made a small percentage of that markup.
Their illegal black market activities were probably the main
reason for their cowardice in the performance of their duties, such as rescuing the stoned truck driver we were forced to
protect against our communist enemy, only a few feet outside the massive American 25th Infantry Division base.
After I left Vietnam, the situation deteriorated even further.
Colonel Robert D. Heinl wrote in the Armed Forces Journal of June, 1971: "The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the
U.S Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century, and possibly in the
history of the United States. By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state
approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and no commissioned
officers, drug ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.." Click on the link: "The Collapse of the Armed Forces"
for his complete report.
"The Collapse of the Armed Forces" by Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr.
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Why does an army fall apart?
What happened in Vietnam can happen again. During the
Vietnam war, we were told that we were fighting to prevent the communist system of government from engulfing every country
in the world, ultimately leaving us isolated, and vulnerable to a takeover of our own country.
We found that many of the Vietnamese thought of us as replacements
for the French colonial occupation forces they had kicked out a few years earlier.
Many of our soldiers in American units were unable to overcome
their racial prejudices against the Vietnamese. Being ambushed and wounded by pro-communist enemy soldiers their
hatred became equally directed against all Vietnamese. They started calling them "gooks", and the only good one was a dead
one.
I was able to escape this absurd attitude because I lived
and worked with the Vietnamese on our side in this conflict, and I understood the deep and agonizing divisions within
Vietnamese families, and the steady, then cataclysmic destruction of their ancient culture.
It is the commonly held value systems within our cultures
that unite us. These shared beliefs alone make it possible for a nation to exist, tolerating our inevitable
inadequacies to live up to the ideals and standards of our society. The deef fissures within Vietnamese society occurred
long before I reached Vietnam, and were never healed. Many thoughtful and moral Vietnamese stayed on the fence, because
they were really not certain of the proper direction for their nation, and many had friendships on both sides of the conflict,
cultivated by family and religious ties for many decades. As a result, many tried to remain neutral, a balancing
act which became ever more difficult as the violence escalated.
One of my teachers in the ROTC department at Sam Houston University
was an advisor a few miles from Saigon in 1961. One of his very close friends was a Vietnamese factory owner.
Both were into philosophy in a very big way, and they argued argued various theories long into the night, during their
bi-weekly meetings.
One day, the advisor received a visit from an American intelligence
officer, who warned him that his friend had met a Vietcong colonel on several occasions. Angrily, he drove
his jeep to his "friend's" villa, and confronted him with the information, and the enemy colonel's photo.
The Vietnamese looked at him impassively, then he smiled. "It
is true that I have met this man many times, for he is my best friend. We grew up together, we attended the same
schools". With that, he searched for, and found an old photo album. "We started our first year of school together,
and here we are both eleven years old, and this was taken right after our graduation."
"Yes, he comes to my home at least once or twice a week,
and you come about every two weeks. He is my friend, and always will be. I hope that you will also continue to
remain my friend, and continue to visit me when you can. There is only one thing I ask of each of you: Please
don't come at the same time".
One of my very close friends in Cu Chi was the Assistant
District Chief. For a Vietnamese, he was slightly overweight, but he liked to think of himself as a swashbuckling
hero. I think he weighed about the same as John Wayne, but he was a lot shorter. When there was nothing going
on, he and I used to drive a few miles out of Cu Chi, toward Bao Trai, and near an old quarry, to some bomb craters created
during the 1968 communist "Tet Offensive".
Using the sides of the crater as a backstop, we would shoot
at empty beercans we had brought along as targets. Actually, they weren't empty when we brought them, but we managed
to empty each one before the previous target had been shot to pieces. My friend was a lousy shot, drunk or sober,
so, after a few rounds, I asked to see his pistol.
It was a Belgian made piece with a fine bluing
job, but the rifling in the barrel had been ruined by excessive use. Several weeks before, it had been used by a Vietcong
tax collector to persuade reluctant citizens to give their fair share to the Vietcong war effort. By now, it was almost a
smooth-bore. When I let him borrow my Colt .45, my friend's marksmanship improved immediately.
We were as close as any friends can ever be under the circumstances
at that turbulent time, yet I could not fully trust him to remain loyal to our side in that war. What if he were hedging
his bets on the future of Vietnam, not for his own benefit, but at least to protect his family? He would have to live with
whatever the outcome of that conflict. Would he be willing to risk the lives of his family - his parents, his brothers
and sisters - on the remote possibility of our victory there. I knew even then, that I would definitely not take that
risk. While I had the right to risk my own life, I could not gamble with the security of my loved ones on the very
remote possibility that "our" side would ultimately prevail. It seemed very certain to me that the ARVN forces, which
were barely holding their own with our enormous logistical support, and many of our finest combat units in Vietnam,
could possibly survive our inevitable withdrawal from that country.
If I could not envision our final victory, why would my friend
believe in such an impossible dream? During our target practice socials, I was always prepared to kill him on the spot,
should he suddenly point a loaded gun in my direction. I could not know, whether he ever sensed that intention, but
I suspected that he did, and, while we respected each other, that ever present question mark devalued our friendship.
My morbid "kill on the spot" inclination was limited to the
times that we were alone, during our beer-soaked target practice sessions, and was not a problem during normal combat operations.
Walking on Water
On my way to Saigon, I passed Cu Chi District Headquarters,
when I noticed my friend waving his arms furiously. Although I suspected that he wanted to talk, that there was
something of a serious nature on his mind, I decided to press on, and just wave back at him.
Five minutes later, I noticed my friend, this time on his
motorcycle, racing down the highway toward me, getting ever larger in my rear view mirror. There seemed no
way of escaping him, so I slowed down just a little. Within seconds, he had pulled along my left side, and motioned
me over. When I refused, he pulled his pistol and pointed it at my head, then waved it toward the shoulder of the road,
to emphasize the seriousness of the situation, but he was smiling at the time.
After he had rested his motorcycle on his
kickstand, he walked over slowly, reminding me somewhat of a motorcycle cop in the States, after I had edged my Camaro
a few miles past the legal speed limit. "I need you to go with me on an operation right now" were the first words
out of his mouth. My response: "I have heard about that one, and I know that an advisory team has been assigned to you."
"They no good, so I fire them!" came the instant response.
I knew the men and that team, and I had a great deal of respect for them, but there was no use in arguing with my friend,
so I gave up my appointment with personnel and prepared myself mentally to go on another combat mission, but I decided to
harrass my friend a little before would officially accept his kind invitation: "Alright, I know this is just going to
be another wild goose chase, but what the heck." "No, no" was the response. We have very good information this
time.
I parked my jeep on the side of the road, leaving
my sergeant behind to guard the vehicle. With his M-16, he would not have any major problems during daylight hours.
U.S. and ARVN military vehicles were constantly moving in both directions, and I left him our team radio, in case he
needed help. My concern in leaving him there was not that someone would steal the vehicle, but that some enterprising Vietcong
sympathizer would leave a booby-trap behind, the designated expendable booby being me.
There was no doubt in my mind that my "professional
competence" was only a minor reason for hijacking me away from my trip to Saigon. The most important reason was
the artillery support an American advisor provided. Although the Vietnamese artillerymen were outstanding, the equipment
tehy were forced to work with was not. In too many cases the tubes were worn out to the point that the accuracy of their
fire seemed highly questionable.
Off we went into the tree-covered terrain surrouding
an abandoned rice paddy. After spending a few minutes fishing around an abandoned well, the Vietnamese commander left
three men to continue working on that project, while we turned our attention toward the neglected paddies before
us.
It had been so long since farmers had tried to produce rice
here, that weeds had spread over much of the water surface, in many areas covering the water with six or eight
inches of floating weeds.
My Vietnamese friend looked at me and grinned: "The District
Advisor seems to think highly of you. Now we find out, if you really can walk on water".
The American troops had nicknamed this floating carpet
"Jesus Grass", because mortal men could actually walk on the water's surface with some success, but not with nearly as
much style as the original water walker.
More than a dozen Vietnamese soldiers had preceded me, and
were stretched in line well over a hundred feet toward the far edge of the rice paddy. Since I weighed over 160 pounds,
more than most of the Vietnamese soldiers, I had a lot of reservations about taking that first step. All eyes
seemed to be focused on me, as my left foot trod gently on the wobbly floating carpet. It sank about an inch or so, but
the carpet held.
Relieved, I took the next step, still remaining on top of
the situation. Minute by minute, my confidence grew, and my friend had now joined me, walking five feet to my
left. Ten, then fifteen feet, and all was still well. My next step was a big one, two feet forward, and five
feet down, as the grass parted, and the murky water rushed past my reddened ears. When my head emerged above
the surface, the soldiers behind me were laughing quietly, and my friend tried very hard to suppress a good-natured grin:
"I must tell your boss, that you do not walk on water after all".
After I drained the water out the barrel of my M-16, I
walked slowly, resigned to my fate, on the right edge of our formation, with only my shoulders and arms above the surface.
In a way, I was relieved to get the dunking over with, instead of worrying about the next step.
Then another splash. It seemed my friend had gained
a few pounds in the last few weeks, and now weighed almost as much as I did. While I walked over to give him a hand,
I noticed that there was no laughter from his men, and seemed to even have noticed his embarrassing faux pas.
Bad things might happen to a soldier who has the audacity to laugh at the misfortune of a Vietnamese commander.
The patrol ended when voices to our rear announced an
important find. The three men at the well had found something. It was a heavy plastic bag. Inside were two
brand new AK-47 automatic rifles, still wrapped in the oiled paper supplied by the Soviet manufacturer. It
didn't seem like much, but, all things considered, I thought it was worth cancelling my trip to Saigon.
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The first signs of the end
The speed of information flow continues to increase at an ever-accelerating
pace, and the half-life of a government's deceptive information, carefully calculated to persuade young men to sacrifice
their lives and health to the pagan god of war, continues to decrease at approximately the same rate.
Increasingly, a government lie is a dish best served cold, before
the nauseating stench of its decomposition offends even the most ardent believer in the benevolence of their
rulers.
Beware of those who criticise an administration, only to seek an
opportunity to perpetrate the same or even greater offenses against our citizens, and the people of other nations.
Unless they belong to the select group of the criminally insane, their motives will be economic: Wealth for themselves and
their families, for their friends, and for their business associates, in that order.
Whenever they begin to beat the drums of war, urging gullible
young men to sacrifice their youth, their health, and their lives, ask yourself how these politicians are going to benefit
personally from this high-risk adventure. Their motives, in most cases, will be a lot easier to read than the tea
leaves of a gypsy fortune teller. At least, give it a try, and that, my friend, is what democracy is all about, the truly
noble experiment, which has never been fully implemented.
I know that most of the information on this page is not new, and
far better people than I: Philosophers, poets, and dedicated religious leaders have tried to turn us in that direction, to
point the way toward a more rewarding future for all of us. I look forward in sharing this noble adventure with you.
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