Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i Vietnam

In the very early and dark morning of Aug. 9, 1972, my Vietnamese driver and I departed Saigon on a special mission to Tay Ninh, about 45 miles northwest of the city. I was on my second tour in Vietnam. On my first, I had been an Army captain in a quartermaster battalion at Cam Ranh Bay during the communist Tet Offensive in 1968. Now I was a major in the 3rd Area Logistics Advisory Team 9, assisting the commander of the Saigon-area quartermaster group, which provided rations, fuel, uniforms and other items to South Vietnamese troops. That morning I went to Tay Ninh to deal with a fuel crisis. I returned to Saigon at about 9:30 a.m. The streets were jammed with a sea of motorized bikes, pedicabs, cars…

Relations between top Army and Marine commanders became testy in early 1968 as generals with clashing views on battle tactics attacked not only the enemy but also each other. The squabble was focused on the northernmost region in South Vietnam, the only part of the country with a heavy concentration of both Army and Marine units. The spark for the feud was lit when Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of all U.S. combat forces in South Vietnam as head of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, decided to add a top Army commander to the northern region, where a Marine general was already in charge. In the South Vietnamese army, the northernmost region of the country was under the command of its I Corps unit and designated the I Corps Tactical…

Jay Phillips’ book, at just under 450 pages, takes a deep dive into U.S. actions in the A Shau Valley during the Vietnam War. Analyzing that information, Phillips makes the case that the fighting in that densely forested mountainous territory in northern South Vietnam on the Laotian border became the “crucible” of the American war. The valley was a heavily used entry point for North Vietnamese Army troops moving into South Vietnam from the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In A Shau: Crucible of the Vietnam War, Phillips argues that the failure of American and South Vietnamese forces to “wrest control” of the strategically important territory during nearly 10 years of often brutal fighting “contributed, in a major way, to the final outcome of the war.” Phillips served with the 1st…

Soldiers who disappeared on a top-secret flight over the Pacific in 1962 have been honored with a memorial unveiled in Columbia Falls, Maine, on May 15. On March 16, 1962, three years before the U.S. sent the first ground combat troops into Vietnam, a plane carrying 93 American soldiers, three South Vietnamese and an air crew of 11 vanished over the Pacific Ocean between Guam and the Philippines en route to Saigon. An explosion in the area was reported, but the remains of Flight 739 were never found. Family members have tried for decades, without success, to learn more about Flight 739, which took off from Travis Air Force Base in California and stopped in Hawaii and Wake Island before landing in Guam. The men were aboard a propeller-driven Lockheed…

At approximately 8 p.m. on Dec. 18, 1972, Operation Linebacker II opened with a wave of 16 cells of B-52 Stratofortress bombers—three planes in a cell—that rolled over Hanoi. President Richard Nixon ended the operation 12 days later after North Vietnam agreed to resume peace negotiations. Line-backer II’s B-52s had dropped more than 15,237 tons of bombs, destroying major military and transportation facilities in Hanoi and Haiphong. The bombers’ effectiveness, combined with heavy North Vietnamese losses during the communists’ 1972 offensive in South Vietnam, as well as Chinese and Russian pressure on Hanoi, drove North Vietnam to sign the Paris Peace Accords on Jan. 27, 1973. First flown on April 15, 1952, the prototype YB-52 Stratofortress was America’s first all jet-engine intercontinental strategic bomber. The B-52D was the most numerous…

I joined Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon as a private first class around Labor Day 1966, about two weeks after six men in the company were killed and others wounded in the Ia Drang Valley of South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. I was one of about 30 to 35 replacements sent in late August and early September to the company, part of 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Charlie Company returned to the valley on a reconnaissance mission a few days before Thanksgiving. During September and October, we had been operating in the central coastal mountains and plains of Binh Dinh province, where we lost 11 men to combat, drowning and friendly fire. We then flew on short notice to the Cambodian border to join the 4th and 25th…

In the 1950s, parachuting, land combat skills and guerrilla warfare were added to the repertoire of Underwater Demolition Teams. The most fearsome combat personnel in the U.S. Navy evolved from Underwater Demolition Teams first organized on Aug. 15, 1942. As amphibious landings became a regular part of American offensive operations in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, UDTs preceded landing forces, gathering intelligence and removing natural or created obstacles. After the war, scuba gear became a part of UDT equipment. During the Korean War in the 1950s, parachuting, land combat skills, guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency were added to the UDT’s repertoire. President John F. Kennedy’s focus on the importance of unconventional warfare increased the prominence of U.S. Army Special Forces. Around that time, in January 1962, the Navy…

Since the early 2000s quotes attributed to Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, North Vietnam’s top commander for most of the war, have been circulating online as evidence that North Vietnam would have surrendered if the United States had applied just a bit more military pressure. In one version, Giap purportedly says in his 1985 postwar memoir How We Won the War that the United States had been on the verge of defeating North Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive. In the second version, the quote relates to the intense U.S. B-52 bombing campaign in December 1972 during Operation Linebacker II, which struck Hanoi and Haiphong. The alleged quote is something along these lines: “What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on…

I went to the dedication service of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the cold November of 1982 and left with an inspiration. I envisioned a team of veterans in a triathlon crossing the United States from the Pacific to Washington D.C. and placing a baton at the base of the Wall in homage to the names imprinted on the shimmering black granite panels. I was confident that an accomplished team could do it in two weeks and resolved to recruit a group of national-class veteran triathletes. Twice before, I had finished among the top 20 percent in the acclaimed Ironman Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii. I considered my success a demonstration of veterans’ pride and spirit. In the 1982 Ironman competition, I thought I was the lone veteran in the 900-competitor…

President John F. Kennedy didn’t live long enough to “lose” the Vietnam War, but on July 23, 1962, his State Department signed an agreement that arguably made it nearly impossible for his successors to “win” it. The U.S. naively signed the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, which put the key to battlefield victories in Hanoi’s pocket. This diplomatic blunder essentially guaranteed that the Ho Chi Minh Trail would remain intact, providing an uninterrupted network that North Vietnam could use to move troops and supplies through eastern Laos and Cambodia on their way to South Vietnam—controlling the tempo of the war. After years of CIA-led clandestine operations and prolonged bombing—both failures—President Richard Nixon in April 1970 permitted a limited incursion into Cambodia by the U.S. and the Army of…

John Charles Bahnsen, born in Albany, Georgia, on Nov. 8, 1934, early on acquired the nickname “Doc,” after his grandfather Peter F. Bahnsen, who emigrated from Denmark with his family and in 1890 became Georgia’s first state veterinarian. That moniker followed Bahnsen to Vietnam where he used the skills of a helicopter pilot, rather than those of a physician, to save lives. Bahnsen completed prep school at Marion Military Institute in Alabama and received an appointment to West Point. He graduated in 1956. Following fixed-wing flight school and aviator service in the 3rd Infantry Division, he became an armor officer. Bahnsen later attended the Rotary Wing Aviator Course and the Armor Officer Advanced Course. In October 1965, he arrived in Vietnam as a captain and helicopter gunship pilot with the…