Innehållsförteckning för October 2019 från Vietnam

A recent four-year study has concluded that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Wall, in Washington contains duplications, misspellings and other errors. The black granite wall, dedicated on Nov. 13, 1982, comprises 144 panels engraved with more than 58,000 names of those killed in the Vietnam War or missing in action and still not accounted for. Specifically, the Wall lists 58,390 names, but after taking the duplications into account, the total number of people listed is 58,276 individuals. The study was initiated by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the nonprofit organization that built and maintains the Wall, so it could compare the names on the wall with databases of the war dead. “We needed to know exactly what’s on the Wall…warts, errors and all,” Jim Knotts, president of the fund, told…

The Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, a museum focused on the history of western Pennsylvania, has set up an exhibit titled The Vietnam War: 1945-1975. The museum says the exhibit, which opened April 13 and runs through Sept. 22, “showcases the key players and turning points of the complex war and explores how the conflict heavily impacted our nation’s trust in government, economics, popular culture, and identity.” Through photography, artifacts, murals and firsthand stories, the exhibits examine personal experiences of people affected by the war, especially men and women from the Pittsburgh area. The artifacts in the exhibit, a partnership with the New-York Historical Society, include a U.S. Army UH-1H “Huey” helicopter, medical equipment in a hospital setting and even a display showing the Pentagon Papers, the multivolume,…

On April 1, 1968, two battalions of Marines moved out from Landing Zone Stud and started to drive up Route 9 toward Khe Sanh. As the Marines advanced, elements of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) seized key terrain dominating the route ahead. By midday, CH-54 Tarhe helicopters, whose particular talents earned them the more popular name “Skycranes,” delivered bulldozers and 155 mm howitzers to establish hilltop firebases. The Skycranes also carried heavy equipment to the Marine engineers rebuilding the road. The 1st Cav’s 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, linked up with Khe Sanh’s garrison on April 8, and the engineers declared Route 9 open three days later. The Vietnam War’s heaviest-lift helicopter first flew on May 9, 1962, demonstrating a far greater lift capacity than any other rotary-wing aircraft then…

The common image of the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam is a scene with Leathernecks on the ground, holding off—and beating back—a larger enemy force. But Marines in Southeast Asia who fought their country’s battles did so, as the Corps’ hymn states, not only “on land and sea” but also “in the air.” Marine aviators in Vietnam continued a legacy that stretches back to the birth of aerial combat. During World War I, Marine 2nd Lt. Ralph Talbot and Gunnery Sgt. Robert G. Robinson, returning from a bombing mission over Flanders in a Liberty D.H. 4 biplane, fought their way through a dozen German Fokker D.VII fighters on Oct. 14, 1918, and were both rewarded with the Medal of Honor. Less successful was 2nd Lt. Charles F. Nash, who flew…

This past fall, the United States and Vietnam finished a joint project at Da Nang airport to clean 74 acres contaminated by the toxic chemical dioxin, a byproduct of the herbicide Agent Orange. Now the countries have set their sights 500 miles south to Bien Hoa, a town near Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) that, like Da Nang, was a major storage area for Agent Orange during the war. Loaded onto aircraft, Agent Orange was sprayed over the land to destroy jungle vegetation that could provide cover or food to communist forces. On the ground at Bien Hoa, mishandling of the toxin contributed to leaks, spills and improper disposal that contaminated the soil around the base and water used by residents in the area. Even now, a half century after…

Sept. 20 The new No. 1 single is “Sugar, Sugar,” by the The Archies, a band that exists only in a CBS cartoon, The Archie Show. The singers were uncredited artists hired by the record label. “Sugar, Sugar” was on top for four weeks and also became the No. 1 single for all of 1969. Sept. 23 Outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid begin their run in theaters. The tale of Butch (Paul Newman), Sundance (Robert Redford) and Etta Place (Katharine Ross) offers a new take on the old Western, adding humorous banter to the gunplay and stunning scenery. Sept. 26 The Brady Bunch airs on ABC, starring Robert Reed as Mike Brady, with three sons, who marries Florence Henderson’s Carol Martin, three daughters. The show, which had so-so…

Marine Sgt. Larry Groah, a door gunner on big transport helicopters, had just returned from a secret mission in September 1970 when he was summoned to the intelligence officer’s desk and handed a piece of paper to read and sign. The 23-year-old sergeant was told that if he ever discussed the mission he would go to prison for 10 years and pay a heavy fine. The covert mission, called Operation Tailwind, was conducted in Laos by Marine helicopter squadrons, Air Force planes, U.S. Army Special Forces troops and militiamen from nearby Montagnard tribes, an ethnic minority in South Vietnam. Largely unknown for decades, the operation gained notoriety in a June 1998 CNN/Time magazine report that incorrectly asserted the use of an outlawed nerve gas by U.S. troops during Tailwind (see…

The jungles, rice paddies, rivers, coastal waters and mountainous terrain of Vietnam presented extraordinary challenges when troops were wounded or injured in combat. An estimated 96 percent of American casualties survived if they made it to nearby military hospitals. The key was getting them there, which was where the helicopter, to an unprecedented degree, came in—often under intense enemy fire. Until the medevac copter, called a “dustoff,” arrived, though, it was up to the medic to do all he could with first aid, triage and whatever unconventional improvisations it took to keep the casualty alive long enough to be picked up and rushed off for more specialized treatment. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, lacking the technology of their opponents, had little alternative to carrying their casualties from the battlefield…

Rode the Army’s Green Dragon Thanks for doing a great job of letting others know of what we in the “Mech” units endured (“Riding the Green Dragon,” by Dana Benner, August 2019). I noticed that the story centers around the mechanized infantry units in the 25th Infantry Division. I have something to add to that story. There was another mech unit to include on that list, and that was the 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 22nd Infantry Regiment. The “Triple Deuce,” as we called it, was originally a unit of the 4th Infantry Division. But because of logistics, the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Division and the 25th Division swapped division affiliation. I served with B Company, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 22nd Infantry Regiment, 25th Division, in 1970. I am pleased to see…

On July 10, 1969, I walked out of an administration building at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia. I had just finished the paperwork that processed me out of the Army. I was a civilian for the first time in two years. I felt damn good. I also felt very lucky. On July 11, 1967, the day I was drafted into the Army, I felt a lot of things, but lucky was not one of them. As I slogged through eight weeks of basic training, the drill instructors rarely missed an opportunity to tell us draftees that we would be headed for infantry Advanced Individual Training at the notorious Fort Polk in the swamps of Louisiana, before going straight to Vietnam—where we’d be lucky to survive our first week. My good…

Fifty years after the war in Vietnam, Americans are still debating the morality of U.S. involvement there—the reasons the government went in and the way it got out. Political scientist Eric Patterson has compiled a checklist of sorts that provides one way of judging the justness of the war-making strategies pursued by four presidents. In Just American Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in U.S. Military History, Patterson, a professor at the Robertson School of Government at Regent University and a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, lays out eight principles that serve as the basis for ethical, moral conduct in war. He traces those principles to writings of philosophers such as Cicero in ancient Rome and St. Augustine in the early years of Christianity. The…

In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, as Japan relinquished its hold on Indochina, French forces seeking to reestablish control over their colony confronted a rising independence movement led by the Viet Minh, a coalition of nationalist groups under the command of communist leaders. Strongest in northern Vietnam (then known as Tonkin), where Ho Chi Minh had established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945, the Viet Minh attacked French positions throughout the north in December 1946, initiating the First Indochina War. The French command in Indochina, governed by the principle that “every blow to the opponent in the north weakens him in the south,” believed that war in the southernmost region of Vietnam (Cochinchina)—the “centerpiece” of France’s position in Southeast Asia—would be won by destroying Viet Minh…