Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i Vietnam

The year 1965 saw many firsts in the Vietnam War. Congress had passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on Aug. 7, 1964, giving the president authority to increase U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, and seven months later U.S. forces were moving into the country in big numbers. Throughout 2015 Vietnam magazine has commemorated the 50th anniversary of events that launched the ground war: • The first U.S. ground combat troops landing in Vietnam (March 8), when two battalions from the 3rd Marine Division arrive at Da Nang. • Marines battling the Viet Cong guerrilla force for the first time (April 22). No Americans are killed. • The first Army combat unit arriving (May 3), as the 173rd Airborne Brigade puts troops in positions near Saigon. • The 173rd Airborne beginning…

• Frank E. Petersen Jr., a Vietnam veteran who was the Marine Corps’ first African-American pilot and general, died Aug. 25, at home in Stevensville, Maryland. He was 83. Petersen joined the Navy in 1950, entered an aviation cadet program and flew combat missions in Korea in 1953. In 1968, he went to Vietnam, where he commanded fighter squadron VMF-214 and flew more than 280 combat missions. He received the Purple Heart for wounds suffered when he ejected after his plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire over the Demilitarized Zone, according to the Washington Post. Petersen became a brigadier general in 1979 and retired as a lieutenant general in 1988. • William Conrad Gibbons, who wrote a comprehensive four-volume history titled The U.S. and the Vietnam War, died July 4…

A BLACKOUT affects 30 million people over 80,000 square miles in northeast U.S. and Canada on Nov. 9, lasting up to 13 hours. HEE HEE Pillsbury Doughboy “Poppin’ Fresh,” introduced earlier in the year, pops out of a can of dinner rolls for his first holiday season and shows off a new line of products sold in the refrigerated section of stores. FREEDOM FLIGHTS from Cuba to the U.S. begin on Dec. 1, under an agreement between the two countries to help reunite families who had been split since travel was suspended during the missile crisis of 1962. CHARLIE BROWN’S FIRST CHRISTMAS special airs on Dec. 9. Linus explains the real meaning of Christmas to Charlie Brown’s gang: Sally, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, Violet, Shermy, Marcie, Frieda...and Snoopy. 600+…

Donald Trump’s much ballyhooed comment about U.S. Sen. John McCain’s heroism deserves mention only because it illustrates how confused we are about words like hero, bravery, warrior and coward, and how loosely we define them. Acts of heroism are different from acts of bravery. People who are heroes go beyond what is expected of them, risking life and limb to benefit others. There is an altruistic aspect to heroism. All acts of heroism require bravery, but many acts of bravery are not acts of heroism because they are done for self-serving reasons. An excessively ambitious commander can exhibit bravery, and even be awarded a medal, but he often does so at the expense of his troops, rather than for their benefit. Those who serve under him would probably never denigrate…

Nixon’s Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War, by William Burr and Jeffrey P. Kimball, University Press of Kansas, 2015 Was the United States prepared to use nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War? In this book about a little-known incident in the war’s diplomatic history, the authors conclude that that’s at least what President Richard M. Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger wanted leaders in North Vietnam and the Communist country’s superpower sponsor, the Soviet Union, to believe. Nixon explained how he thought, in an era of U.S.-Soviet nuclear weapons parity with the risk of uncontrolled escalation, such “nuclear threat diplomacy” would seem credible to Soviet and North Vietnamese leaders: “I call it the Madman Theory….I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve…

My Guys in the A Shau Photo In “A Valley Soaked in Rain and Blood,” (October 2015), the men in the picture on pgs. 28 and 29 are my guys. Their names are, from left to right, Sgt. Carson Peters (standing), Keith Buckland, Fred Reader, Kevin Goodwin and Thomas Hackle. My captain, Kenneth Date, was riding in the helicopter (on its side in the photo) when it crashed. We were all members of the 4th Platoon, mortars, Company B, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. I was the forward observer for the platoon. — Patrick J. Connolly Aquebogue, N.Y. Same Bridge, Same Day “Fight for the Y-Bridge” (August 2015) states that the armored personnel carriers on the Saigon bridge belonged to the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry, scout platoon. While I don’t want…

• Vietnam veterans were honored at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol on July 8 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War service medal established by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 8, 1965. About 500 Vietnam vets attended the ceremony held in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall and organized by the office of House Speaker John Boehner. Congressional leaders from both chambers and both parties thanked the veterans for their service and sacrifices, which Boehner called an inspiration to other Americans. • A memorial to war dogs will be dedicated in Columbia, South Carolina, on Veterans Day. The project, in the works for more than a decade, is the sixth monument dedicated to dogs that assisted troops in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The website of the…

NOV 4 Dickey Chappell, a 46-year-old photo journalist for the National Observer, becomes the first-ever American female war correspondent killed in action, when a Viet Cong booby trap explodes near Chu Lai, killing Chappell and four Marines. NOV 14–18 The Battle of Ia Drang in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands, the first large-scale clash of the U.S. Army and North Vietnamese Army regulars, pits the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) against units of two NVA regiments. Both sides claim victory. More than 300 Americans are killed and 540 wounded in the battle and skirmishes leading up to it. Estimates of NVA dead range from 1,064 to over 1,700. DEC 2 The Navy’s aircraft carrier Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered warship to conduct combat operations, when it launches more than 100 air sorties…

AS MONSOON CONDITIONS SWEPT ACROSS South Vietnam in September 1966, the deluge flooding the Mekong Delta presented an opportunity to the U.S. Navy: High waters allowed speedy river patrol boats to operate in normally unreachable areas while restricting the Viet Cong’s mobility and reducing ground cover for attacks. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Morton E. Toole, commander of River Division 53, established a 24-hour patrol near Ngo Hiep Island, 15 miles west of My Tho, a delta town southwest of Saigon. He hoped to head off the Viet Cong trying to infiltrate the Plain of Reeds south into Kien Hoa province. Late in the afternoon of October 31, Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class James E. “Willy” Williams, patrol officer for Patrol Boat, River 105 and PBR-107, part of River Section 531 (RS-531), spotted…

President Bill Clinton formally normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995, more than five years after President George H.W. Bush began the effort. It would be almost two more decades, however, before the first meeting of the two countries’ leaders, which occurred in July 2013 when President Barack Obama met Truong Tan Sang, president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, in Washington. This July, another—more unusual—historic meeting took place. On July 7 Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, met Obama at the White House to discuss trade ties and the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal Obama believes will lay the foundation for shared economic growth. Obama seldom meets with a national representative who is not a head of state, but Trong holds considerable power, even though…

The two letters arrived the same day in spring 1967. One was from the Peace Corps, offering to send Peter Prichard to Micronesia as an English teacher, the other from the Selective Service System, instructing him to report to an induction center. Prichard called the Peace Corps, mentioned the two letters and accepted the agency’s offer. The Peace Corps said, Sorry, the Defense Department takes precedence. After his tour in Vietnam, Prichard took a job in 1970 as assistant to the editor of Greenwich Time in Connecticut. He was one of the founding editors of USA Today in 1982 and its top editor from 1988 to 1994. Born Dec. 18, 1944, Auburn, California Residence Essex, Connecticut Education Bachelor’s degree in English, Dartmouth College In Vietnam January 1968 to May 1969,…

A single Bell AH-1G Huey Cobra en route to Muc Hoa on Sept. 4, 1967, noticed a sampan carrying four armed Viet Cong on the waterway below. The 1st Aviation Brigade commander gave the order to attack. He achieved the Cobra’s first combat kill in Vietnam, sinking the sampan and killing its crew with rocket and minigun fire. The day of the specifically designed attack helicopter had arrived. The first six Cobras had landed at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon just five days earlier. Three were hand-built, pre-production models. A Pentagon review board for Army aviation needs had recommended the creation of air cavalry units. Early experience in Vietnam had shown the importance of attack helicopters that could escort helicopters carrying troops and supplies and support air-assault unit landings.…

“Just six days ago, the people of America were jolted by an announcement. Our casualties in Vietnam in a single week had exceeded the average weekly dead and wounded in the Korean War,” pronounced Walter Cronkite at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1965, during a CBS News special report on a battle in the Ia Drang Valley. An attack on the American Special Forces Camp at Plei Me on Oct. 19, 1965, had turned into a campaign for, perhaps, all of Vietnam. Correspondent Morley Safer, narrating film of his reporting at Ia Drang, told viewers that American casualty rates would be growing. U.S. ground troops— which came to Vietnam in March 1965 and had been mostly involved in battles with Viet Cong insurgents—were now fighting large-scale professional forces of…

James E. “Willy” Williams is the most decorated enlisted sailor in Navy history, according to the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation. Williams, born in Fort Mill, South Carolina, on Nov. 13, 1930, enlisted in 1947, served in Korea and Vietnam and retired from the Navy in 1967. He died on Oct. 13, 1999. A guided missile destroyer commissioned in 2004 was named after Williams. His decorations include: • Medal of Honor • Navy Cross • Silver Star (with gold star) • Legion of Merit (with “V” for valor) • Navy and Marine Corps Medal (gold star) • Bronze Star (“V” for valor, two gold stars) • Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (“V” for valor, gold star)…