Innehållsförteckning för October 2020 från Vietnam

The Vietnam War, one of America’s most controversial wars in general, is laden with a multitude of specific controversies surrounding individual incidents and views. In our August issue, we introduced a segment called, “A Controversial Question,” to help readers better understand the war’s most contentious issues. Some questions can be answered with incontrovertible data. Sometimes there may be qualifiers: “it depends” or “it’s still not clear.” Our goal is to be more educational than confrontational. The questions will be addressed by Dr. Erik Villard, a Vietnam War specialist at the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Erik is the author of Staying the Course, October 1967 to September 1968, one in a series of books about the Vietnam War published by the Center of…

“We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South VietNam who have bravely borne this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Viet-Nam—and all who seek to share their conquest—of a very simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.” —President Lyndon B. Johnson, April 7, 1965, in a speech at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, explaining his administration’s objectives in Vietnam. On March 8, the first U.S. ground combat unit, the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, had landed at Da Nang.…

Beginning Aug. 4, 1959, the CIA conducted a series of U-2 missions over North Vietnam that provided the first confirmed evidence of the communist country’s airfield construction and other military activities. In the era preceding satellite imagery, the U-2, nicknamed the “Dragon Lady,” was America’s only reliable way to produce concrete views of developments in nonaccessible regions. The Air Force rejected Lockheed Corp.’s initial design, the CL-282, in 1953, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to purchase the plane for the CIA to collect photographic evidence of Soviet nuclear weapons and bomber production. Lockheed’s pioneering engineer Clarence E. Johnson led the design team, designating the plane a utility aircraft (general-purpose transport plane) to maintain secrecy. The prototype first flew on Aug. 1, 1955. Everything but the engine was unique. The…

Men of the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), had little time to rest in the early months of 1968 as enemy activities increased in northern South Vietnam. Throughout January, major elements of the 1st Cav, which had the most firepower and mobility of any division-sized unit in Vietnam, moved their base of operations northward from An Khe in the Central Highlands to Camp Evans, about 15 miles northwest of Hue to support Marine Corps operations in the region. The move involved 20,000 men, 450 helicopters, artillery and supplies. Troops riding in huge truck convoys passing through Hue never suspected they would return in two short weeks to fight thousands of North Vietnamese Army regulars and Viet Cong forces during the communists’ Tet Offensive, launched Jan. 31,…

On Dec. 21, 1962, the last in a formation of 15 “Flying Bananas,” the nickname for H-21 Shawnee troop transport helicopters, taxied into position at 2:55 p.m. for their scheduled 3 p.m. departure. The 15 helicopters lined up on the Pleiku airstrip in South Vietnam were quite a sight. In a standard 18-aircraft helicopter company, a troop lift involving 10 aircraft was considered normal and 12 was borderline for helicopter availability. A mission with a 15-aircraft request was extraordinary. The 15 helicopters of 81st Transportation Company, in which I served as a captain and 2nd Platoon leader, would join the 8th Transportation Company the next day on a mission to deliver hundreds of South Vietnamese soldiers to a jungle battlefield. This mission would also deliver an awful blow to both…

Dwight Hal Johnson had no dreams of being a hero. In his youth, the large, strapping boy had a fighter’s body but a peaceful spirit. Johnson grew up in the deteriorating Corktown neighborhood of Detroit with his single mother and younger brother. Bullies often chased him home. “Don’t you fight, honey,” his mother told him, “and don’t let them catch you.” He didn’t. Drafted at age 19, Johnson arrived in Vietnam in February 1967. He was a tank driver in Company B, 1st Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. By January, Johnson, a specialist 5, had orders to return home in two weeks. He had never seen combat and was content with that. Johnson’s destiny changed on Jan. 14, 1968, when he was transferred from his usual tank to…

Two Vietnam veterans, Bart Fabian of New Jersey and Douglas W.Evans of Utah, were recently presented with medals that they had expected to receive decades ago.“Doc” Fabian, who served as an Army medic in Vietnam, received the Silver Star for saving the lives of about 10 men when his outfit was ambushed by Viet Cong.The medal was presented by U.S.Rep.Chris Smith, R-N.J., in a July 18 ceremony in Freehold. In an August interview with the Asbury Park Press, Fabian said that when he arrived in Vietnam, assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, he was “a 19-year-old from Brooklyn who six months ago was hanging out in front of a candy store.” During a 90-minute fight on April 13, 1969, the medic continually treated wounded men and saved the lives…

The primary forces fighting the communist side during the Vietnam War were the militaries of South Vietnam and the United States. At its peak strength in April 1969, the U.S. military had 543,400 service members in-country. During the war South Vietnamese forces grew to more than 1 million men. The two powerhouses were assisted by the armed forces of seven other countries whose contributions in troops ranged from less than a dozen to 50,000 at peak strength. The anti-communist fighters were collectively labeled Free World Forces. TAIWAN PROVIDED ROUGHLY 30 MILITARY ADVISERS DURING THE WAR YEARS, AND SPAIN STATIONED ABOUT 10 ARMY MEDICAL PERSONNEL IN SOUTH VIETNAM. SOURCE: ALLIED PARTICIPATION IN VIETNAM, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, 1975…

Sept. 11 The day after General Motors Corp. rolls out its first subcompact, the Chevrolet Vega, Ford Motor Co. counters with the Pinto, priced below its rival’s offering. In 1978 Ford had to recall 1.5 million Pintos because of fuel-tank fires and explosions that erupted after the cars were rear-ended. Sept. 12 Five Easy Pieces premiers with Jack Nicholson as a classical pianist who decides to become an oil-rig worker. The movie was noteworthy for its lively dialogue and then-unusual emphasis on complex, not particularly likable characters rather than on a plot line. Sept. 17 Nightclub comic Clerow “Flip” Wilson hosts his first weekly variety show. His guests include David Frost and James Brown. In the first two of its four seasons on NBC the show was the second-highest rated…

Throughout the mid-to-late 1950s, Dr. Thomas Anthony Dooley III was widely celebrated as embodying the great and unselfish good of American aid. His humanitarian medical assistance in rural areas of Laos and Vietnam during the early U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia was widely praised. President John F. Kennedy awarded Dooley, who died in 1961, a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal. There was a movement to have Dooley, a Roman Catholic, canonized as a saint. Yet there was a hidden side to Dooley, U.S.government records revealed later. After World War II, when U.S. foreign policy focused on containing communism, Dooley was the consummate “cold warrior.” He assisted the CIA by gathering intelligence on North Vietnamese operations in Laos and South Vietnam, while creating and promoting U.S. “disinformation” as a CIA propaganda weapon…

WHEN EXACTLY DID THE WAR BEGIN? GIVEN THAT THE UNITED STATES NEVER issued a formal declaration of war, reaching a unanimous agreement on a precise start date for the Vietnam War is tricky. There are several choices. The first is May 16, 1945, the date the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) sent an Army special operations group, code-named the Deer Team, to assist Viet Minh rebels fighting the Japanese occupying their land. A second noteworthy date is July 8, 1959, when American advisers Maj. Dale R. Buis and Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand became the first U.S. soldiers to die from enemy fire. They were killed in a guerrilla attack at Bien Hoa, near Saigon. A third contender is Aug. 7, 1964, when Congress passed a joint…

The 1935 Marine Corps Manual for Field Musics noted: “A march played to signal that the troops will be paid,” known simply as “Pay Call,” would be sounded to announce payday. In the days before check-to-bank, an officer at the company, squadron, battery level paid his enlisted men in cash. This created a direct link from the unit to the men for services rendered. The pay officer designee, accompanied by an armed guard, was required to present himself at the disbursing office, verify the amount of cash received and sign for his unit’s payroll. He would then set up his own “disbursing office”—usually in the unit’s classroom, where he would lay out the money on a table and organize it by denomination: ones, fives, tens and twenties. The armed guard…

From 1965 to 1967, Navy photographer Patrick Althizer sailed in the Gulf of Tonkin aboard USS Hancock and USS Midway, where he took photos that vividly show what he describes as the “controlled chaos” of aircraft takeoffs and landings. Althizer, who served in the Navy from October 1963 to August 1967, was assigned to photo school in Pensacola, Florida, after training in San Diego. In August 1964, he began a tour aboard the Midway, flagship of the 7th Fleet. Subsequently he lived and worked on the Hancock for about two years and completed two additional Vietnam tours. After his discharge, Althizer applied his photography skills in industry, advertising and real estate. His work took him inside the Apollo 11, 12 and 13 space capsules during their assembly. In 2009, he…

By the time this reviewer returned home from a tour in Vietnam as an artillery battery commander circa 1970, the stereotypical image of Vietnam veterans was well-established in the consciousness of the general public. We were all assumed to be incurably and permanently traumatized by the war: drug-addled, unemployable, homeless misfits; or soulless, psychopathic killers deserving of fear. The typical villain-of-choice in Hollywood films and TV “cop shows” of that era was a “deranged Vietnam vet” driven by combat experiences to commit homicidal mayhem. Years of daily bombardments by “all the bad news that’s fit to print” media coverage of the war convinced the public that those who fought in Vietnam were poor, ignorant dupes who should be either pitied or feared—no “in-between.” In They Were Soldiers, co-author Marvin J.…