Innehållsförteckning för June 2018 från Vietnam

Billy Graham, a Christian evangelist who preached to millions around the world and spoke to troops in Vietnam, died Feb. 21 at age 99 in Montreat, North Carolina. Graham, who began preaching in 1943, eventually reached vast radio and television audiences. He met every president from Harry Truman through Barack Obama. The ardent anti-Communist supported the Vietnam War and visited troops in 1966 and 1968. In April 1969, he sent a memo to Richard Nixon outlining options if peace talks failed. One called for using North Vietnamese defectors to bomb dikes holding back floodwaters, which would destroy the North’s economy—and kill thousands of civilians. Graham later moderated his stances on various issues. Marcus Raskin, a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and co-founder of the progressive Institute for Policy Studies,…

Some accounts of the air war over Vietnam have portrayed American fighter pilots, particularly Air Force pilots, in a bad light compared with Korean War aviators who shot down 10 enemy planes for every U.S. fighter lost, a kill ratio of 10-1. But the kill ratio cited for Korea counted only fighter planes lost in combat with enemy fighters, while the Vietnam calculation included not just the fighter planes lost but all downed American aircraft, some unarmed. A more apt comparison for Vietnam: enemy fighters vs. U.S. fighters in “combat air patrols” going on the attack against North Vietnamese MiG fighters—MiGCAP missions. In an “apples-to-apples” comparison, shown in red, American aircrews in Vietnam get much higher marks.…

Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs, who had been wounded during a 1969 ambush while serving in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, had begun urging Congress in 1977, through his writings and testimony, to create a national memorial honoring those who served in the war. But nothing happened. In early 1979 he decided to take on the project himself and announced his intentions at a meeting that veterans had convened in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1979, to discuss ways to create publicity for their needs. One of the men at that meeting was Robert W. Doubek, who had served in Vietnam in 1969 as an Air Force intelligence officer and, after the war, earned a law degree at Georgetown University. Doubek told Scruggs the memorial idea was a good one and…

The article in the April issue regarding Operation Pegasus (“The Pegasus Ride Through Hell,” by John McGuire, April 2018) was much appreciated by me and my 1st Cavalry brothers who fought there. Most history venues, print and video, seem to downplay this action, if they mention it at all. I was in Company B (Mongoose Bravo), 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), and served under Capt. Michael Nawrosky, who was mortally wounded on Landing Zone Wharton. He was a brave commander, a natural leader and a telling loss to our company. We lost three more troopers killed in action that night. By the time I left the field on April 15, 1968, we had eight more Mongoose KIA, and I can’t recall how many wounded. Jim Dunnigan…

At 10:48 a.m. on Nov. 14, 1965, UH-1B helicopters delivered the lead units of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), to Landing Zone X-Ray in South Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley. North Vietnam’s 33rd Regiment attacked, triggering the first major battle between the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies, immortalized in the book We Were Soldiers Once.. and Young and its film adaptation. Media coverage of the battle featured images of what became the war’s iconic American weapons, the M16 rifle and the UH-1 “Huey” helicopter, commonly called a “slick” because no guns were mounted on its sides, giving the chopper a smooth, slick surface. The Huey was at every major battle, making Vietnam “the helicopter war.” When the aircraft, made by Bell Helicopter Co., entered production in…

After Communist forces took a beating during their Tet Offensive that raged across South Vietnam in early 1968, the battered North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong regrouped in the spring to try again with another series of widespread assaults. The NVA and VC hit about 120 sites in the May Offensive, or Mini-Tet. Two of those targets were the U.S. Army Special Forces camp at Kham Duc and the nearby outpost of Ngok Tavak, in the highlands of northern South Vietnam. The Green Berets and their local allies at the bases were surrounded and badly outnumbered. Courage, obstinacy, treachery by allies and luck—good and bad—played a role in the effort to save American troops during the May 10-12 battles. By early March 1968, the most intense battles of the Tet…

Vietnam has hundreds of miles of irregular coastline, along which the enemy spirited boatloads of men and supplies to supplement troops moving overland on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Meanwhile, Viet Cong vessels plied the Mekong Delta, where they encountered U.S. and South Vietnamese riverine forces patrolling the delta. Perhaps the most significant legacy of the naval war was the creation of U.S. Navy SEAL (sea-air-land) teams in January 1962. Using members of underwater demolition teams, the SEALs expanded the UDT’s combat roles and honed their skills to the fine edge that they have demonstrated ever since. The Viet Cong occasionally conducted their own waterborne commando operations. In May 1966, they laid a mine to sink the supply ship Eastern Mariner in Nha Be anchorage and in August used a…

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks burst through the gates of Saigon’s Presidential Palace, bringing an end to the Republic of Vietnam. Halfway around the world, ralliers in New York’s Central Park celebrated the fall of South Vietnam as a victory for national liberation and the defeat of American imperialism. They waved placards embossed with “VIETNAM IS FREE,” and self-congratulations were the order of the day. Hardcore radicals and the Old Left protest movement were present—including Dr. Benjamin Spock and priests/brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Yet this gathering was different from the anti-war protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. There was a paucity of students, academics and, most important, moderate politicians who supported legislation limiting U.S. assistance to South Vietnam. North Vietnam’s Politburo members, always keen observers of…

Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam By Gregory A. Daddis, Oxford University Press, 2017 Modest in number yet extraordinarily influential, proponents of the “better war” narrative maintain that Gen. Creighton Abrams, who became the top commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam in June 1968, jettisoned the failing strategy of his predecessor, Gen. William Westmoreland, and achieved a military victory, only to have it squandered by feckless politicians in Washington. Withdrawal, the latest from esteemed Vietnam scholar Greg Daddis, nimbly addresses the “better war” narrative and the limits of American military strategy in the post-World War II era. According to “better war” theorists, Westmoreland was hopelessly wedded to conventional warfare and pursued a flawed attrition-based strategy predicated on big-unit search-and-destroy operations at the expense of “pacification” programs that brought…

FRIDAY, MAY 25 9 p.m. Candlelight Vigil, Vietnam Veterans Memorial. SATURDAY, MAY 26 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. Thunder Alley open. The official vendor site for Rolling Thunder XXXI is on 22nd Street and Constitution Avenue Northwest. Rolling Thunder patches, pins, T-shirts and leather goods are on sale, along with food and drink. Featured speakers will also be at Thunder Alley. 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. Barbecue at Harley-Davidson of Washington, 9407 Livingston Road, Fort Washington, Maryland. SUNDAY, MAY 27 6 a.m. Reveille wake-up call for all riders taking part in the Rolling Thunder XXXI First Amendment Demonstration Run. Bikers rally in the North and South Pentagon parking lots at 7 a.m. for a noon departure. 9 a.m. Thunder Alley opens. 12 noon Rolling Thunder XXXI First Amendment Demonstration Run. Bikes leave…