Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2019 i Vietnam

Vietnam veterans who served on offshore Navy ships have been battling the government over Agent Orange benefits for years, and now they have a new law on their side. Under the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019, signed by President Trump on June 25, veterans who were on ships in South Vietnamese harbors will no longer face a hurdle that had made it difficult to get disability benefits for medical illnesses associated with the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, sprayed on vegetation that provided food and cover for Viet Cong soldiers. Many veterans suffer from—and die from—diseases linked to Agent Orange exposure, including several cancers, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. Veterans who served on the ground or in the Brown Water Navy, manning boats on inland rivers, don’t have to…

Paul Findley, a Republican congressman from Illinois who opposed the Vietnam War and was one of the primary authors of the War Powers Act, died Aug. 9 in Jacksonville, Illinois, at age 98. A World War II Navy veteran and member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 22 years, first elected in 1960, Findley was considered a moderate Republican whose views occasionally aligned with Democratic members, particularly on civil rights issues. He was an early opponent of American involvement in Vietnam and believed the executive branch had encroached on Congress’ authority in waging war. The 1973 War Powers Act curbs the president’s ability to commit military forces to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress. The act requires the president to report to Congress within 48 hours after…

Nov. 4 The Allman Brothers Band is released as the debut album of a rock group formed in Jacksonville, Florida, by Gregg and Duane Allman with four other musicians. The Southern rock album also includes components of country music, jazz and the blues. Nov. 10 The first episode of Sesame Street, where preschool kids learn reading, arithmetic and social skills through funny skits, cartoons, games and Jim Henson’s Muppets, is broadcast on National Educational Television, a nonprofit network replaced by the launch of PBS in 1970. Nov. 15 In the war’s largest protest at a single site, some 500,000 demonstrators descend upon Washington. The event included speeches by Sens. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, and folk singer Pete Seeger roused the crowd with John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” Nov.…

Named in honor of Civil War general Charles Devens, a Boston native who later served as attorney general under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Fort Devens was established in September 1917 in north-central Massachusetts to help address the burgeoning manpower demands of World War I. As an active-duty installation for nearly 80 years until it closed in 1996, Fort Devens housed and trained combat units to fight in the nation’s wars, including the Vietnam War. The Fort Devens Museum, a private nonprofit museum that displays artifacts representing periods throughout the fort’s history, held its inaugural “Vietnam Living History Day” in June. Visitors were treated to a panel of veterans who reflected on their time in Vietnam and a discussion with a former Huey helicopter pilot who had flown combat missions with…

In French Foreign Légionnaire versus Viet Minh Insurgent, North Vietnam 1948-52, No. 36 in Osprey’s Combat series, Martin Windrow provides a fascinating study of two forces, one of hardened professionals, the other of peasants and the political cadres who motivated them, as they evolved over the course of five years of fighting in the savage crucible of Indochina. Windrow, an expert on the French Foreign Legion, compares the Légionnaires’ training, equipment and doctrine with those of their opponents during crucial years in Vietnam’s fight for independence from France. The Foreign Legion was the elite backbone of French infantry in a colonial war in which France would commit little of its main army, and it often had to fight with whatever weaponry was available. The same could be said of the…

Marc Leepson, an Army clerk in a personnel services unit, says that after the war people who didn’t serve and even some veterans contended that the service of rear-echelon troops (like clerks, cooks and truck drivers) was inferior to that of “combat veterans,” even though troops in the rear also came under fire and were killed. He suggests that veterans and the public should stop using the term “combat veteran” and instead simply say “Vietnam veteran.” I take issue with the views expressed in the article “What did you do in Vietnam?” by Mark Leepson (Reflections, October 2019). Vietnam Veterans, including me, are very grateful to all support personnel who served in the war. However, it is absurd to suggest that the term “combat veteran” be stripped from those who…

In preparation for nationwide events in September 2019 commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ho Chi Minh’s death, the Vietnamese government examined the condition of the revolutionary leader’s embalmed corpse. Displayed in a glass coffin inside the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Ho’s body was recently analyzed by a specially formed council of Vietnamese and Russian scientists, who assessed its current condition, Reuters reported. In July, the government announced that the body is in “great condition and has been well preserved.” As part of their preservation efforts, mausoleum officials are planning regular exchanges of information with the Moscow Biomedical Research Center. The process can be costly and labor-intensive. Embalming fluids must be applied every two years. Ho led the successful campaign for independence from France and the initial years of…

On Thanksgiving Day 2018 I found myself in Vietnam, just over 50 years after I had rotated back to the United States in March 1968. Thanksgiving is just another workday in modern Vietnam, of course, but I found myself reflecting on differences between this Thanksgiving and the one in 1967, when I was in the 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, then part of the 9th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade. Since Nov. 3, 1967, the 1st Brigade had been committed to Operation Santa Fe, which also included the 1st Australian Task Force and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam’s 18th Division. Our mission was to clear out the 5th Viet Cong Division’s base in the May Tao Secret Zone, a mountainous area to the east of Saigon. We were to…

The newly installed administration of President Richard Nixon had gotten the message loud and clear from the POW/MIA wives that it had better take notice of their husbands’ plight. Right now. The women and their families were Nixon supporters and voters—at least for the moment—and the administration wanted to keep them in that camp. Sybil Stockdale, wife of James Stockdale, a Navy pilot shot down in September 1965, was pleased to see the results of her January 1969 “telegram-ins,” her version of the sit-in used by other activists. She had urged wives and family members of men who were prisoners of war or missing in action to deluge the president with telegrams telling him to put the POW/MIA issue at the top of his agenda. Nixon received more than 2,000…

Col. Roy A. Knight Jr., an Air Force pilot, never made it back from the war to see the young son who watched him leave—he was shot down and killed—but now the airman is finally home, his remains brought there by that son, a Southwest Airlines pilot. Knight, a 36-year-old resident of Millsap, Texas, was flying an A-1E Skyraider attack aircraft in the 602nd Tactical Fighter Squadron when he was hit by anti-aircraft fire during a mission over northern Laos on May 19, 1967. His plane went down in a fiery crash. No parachute was seen, and Knight was declared dead in 1974. Joint American and Lao teams began investigating the likely crash site in 1991 and conducted multiple excavations in the following years. In early 2019, they recovered human…

One of the more exotic North Vietnamese Army tanks to crash through the gates of Saigon’s Presidential Palace on April 30, 1975, was similar to the Soviet-built PT-76 amphibious light tank, but with a rounder turret and a larger gun. This latecomer to the Vietnam War did not arrive from the Soviet Union, however. It came from the People’s Republic of China. China had acquired some PT-76s in the 1950s, but its continuing tensions with the exiled Republic of China on Taiwan led to the need for an amphibious light tank with better performance and armament for landing operations. The first design, designated the Type 60, was unsatisfactory, particularly because its engine overheated. A second prototype, while better, still experienced problems during its first tests in 1959. Those problems were…

Seven North Vietnamese Army soldiers, carrying packs and rifles, strode nonchalantly down the trail toward a small stream that slowly meandered through an overgrown rice paddy at the base of the hill. As the NVA column approached one of the numerous bomb craters dotting the surrounding landscape, something caught one soldier’s attention. He glanced in that direction—an instinctive act that signed his death warrant. Suddenly a concentrated burst of small-arms fire from concealed Marines in a 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company team scythed through the North Vietnamese formation. Moments later the recon team itself was under fire and would spend two days trying to survive deadly combat with an overwhelming enemy force in February 1968. The eight-man Force Reconnaissance Team 2-1, call sign “Box Score,” led by 2nd Lt. Terrence C.…

On the night of May 8, 1972, President Richard Nixon was preparing for a major TV speech. He wanted to communicate his dissatisfaction with the leaders of North Vietnam and their allies, especially the Soviet Union. The speech also had a more militarily important purpose: to announce an operation that would hasten the end of a war that had been waged by U.S. combat troops for almost 10 years. Nixon, dressed in a blue suit and holding a large wad of paper, began the speech in a calm tone, with pauses between declarations: “Good evening. Five weeks ago, on Easter weekend, the communist armies of North Vietnam launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam, an invasion that was made possible by tanks, artillery and other advanced offensive weapons supplied to…

Beyond the Quagmire: New Interpretations of the Vietnam War Edited by Geoffrey W. Jensen and Matthew M. Stith University of North Texas Press, 2019 Geoffrey W. Jensen and Matthew M. Stith, history professors and good friends, believe the accepted historical narrative of the Vietnam War as a tragic, if foreseeable, American military and foreign policy disaster discourages a deeper understanding of other aspects of the conflict. That theme is reflected in Beyond the Quagmire, a diverse collection of essays edited by Jensen, associate professor of history at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and Stith, associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler. Their selections provide new interpretations of leadership, political activism, race and gender, and the role of the environment during the war. Presented as individual…