Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i Vietnam

An article on Marine fighter pilots (“Flying Leathernecks of the Vietnam War,” by Jon Guttman, October 2019) included a Sept. 11, 1972, aerial battle involving two Marine F-4J Phantom IIs—one with Lt. Col. Lee T. “Bear” Lasseter and Capt. John “Lil John” Cummings; the other with wingman Capt. Andrew Scott Dudley and 1st Lt. James Brady—and an unarmed MiG-21U trainer, with Soviet adviser Vasily Motlov and student pilot Dinh Ton. The article’s account of the battle was based on information in MiG Aces of the Vietnam War by István Toperczer, who had access to North Vietnamese records. The article said Lasseter fired AIM-9 and AIM-7 missiles that Motlov evaded. At that point, the article continued, the MiG was low on fuel, and Motlov ordered Ton to eject. Moments later Lasseter…

The U.S. Army Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, is putting together a display that shows what a Vietnam War field artillery base might have looked like. Constructed as a diorama, the fire support base exhibit will feature a 105 mm M102 towed howitzer and a 175 mm M107 self-propelled (tracked) gun. Mannequins will double for the gun crews. The diorama stretches out 25 feet from a wall painted with a mural 52 feet wide and 12 feet tall, yet shows just “a tiny slice of a Vietnam War fire support base,” museum Director Gordon Blaker told The Lawton Constitution newspaper in Oklahoma. He also explained that the display is not being designed to replicate any particular firebase. Hundreds of firebases and other artillery sites were scattered across South Vietnam,…

I grew up Catholic in a small North Dakota town. Catholic kids were taught to pray early on, and we did so every day. We prayed aloud together in school and when the nuns herded us to church for confessions. We prayed for everything and everyone. At bedtime we prayed for our families, relatives and friends. We prayed for the “poor souls in purgatory.” I guess that was to get them an early out. We prayed that it wouldn’t rain on the Saturday picnic and that we’d win the basketball game Friday night. Praying was very much a part of our lives, and I remember praying that I would pass tests, even in college. We still studied hard because we knew praying needed a little material help. Then I was…

A short video clip shows a flag-waving young boy, a toddler, really, dressed in a miniature U.S. Army uniform, exact down to the buttons and badges. On his sleeve are sergeant stripes and across his right breast is the white identification tag with “FITTS” stenciled on it. The uniform, of course, is a re-creation—except for one real military item: the Green Beret hat worn by the boy’s father in Vietnam. The clip was filmed shortly after U.S. Special Forces Staff Sgt. Richard A. Fitts was reported missing in action on Nov. 30, 1968. Richard A. Fitts Jr., just 2 years old when his father disappeared during a covert operation, has only a fleeting memory of that moment and his father. “Junior” was too young to realize that his dad was…

After the remains of four photojournalists, shot down in a helicopter over Laos in 1971, were recovered in the 1990s, they were interred at a journalism museum in Washington, D.C. The Newseum closed Dec. 31, 2019. And now the remains are stuck in limbo until someone finds a new resting place. The photographers were Larry Burrows of Life magazine, from England; Henri Huet of the Associated Press, from France; Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek, from Japan; and Kent Potter of United Press International, from Philadelphia. They had boarded a UH-1 Huey helicopter on Feb. 10, 1971, to cover Operation Lam Son 719, a South Vietnamese assault into Laos to strike the Ho Chi Minh Trail and communist-held sites. Headed toward the battlefield, the helicopter flew into heavy anti-aircraft fire, was hit…

A new memorial in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, is dedicated to the strong bonds between war dogs in Vietnam and their handlers. The Vietnam War Dog Team Memorial, outside the Motts Military Museum in Groveport, contains black granite panels with the names of 4,244 dogs that assisted American troops in Vietnam. Also honored on the memorial, inscribed with “The Unbreakable Bond,” are 300 dog handlers who died in the war. About10,000 men served as dog handlers in Vietnam. The centerpiece of the memorial is a lifesize sculpture of a dog and his handler. The models for the sculpture were Grove City Army veteran Ed Reeves, a volunteer at the museum, and his Vietnam companion, Prince. Reeves told The Columbus Dispatch that Prince saved his life. The memorial, dedicated Sept.…

In the summer and fall of 1967, the 4th Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, equipped with the M109 howitzer, was firing almost daily at North Vietnamese artillery positions on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams. The M109 155 mm self-propelled (tracked) howitzer was almost the perfect weapon for counterbattery missions because of its thick armor protection. During the communists’ 1968 Tet Offensive, the 4th Battalion provided critical fire support for the Marines fighting in Hue in northern South Vietnam. Intended to replace all M114 towed 155 mm howitzers, the M109 was born from a 1952 Army requirement for a self-propelled howitzer capable of rapid mobility to keep up with armored and mechanized units. It entered production in 1962. The vehicle’s General Motors Detroit…

During the spring of 1970, there was a threat to President Richard Nixon’s plan to end the war. In June 1969, he had announced an exit strategy focused on “Vietnamization,” a program to gradually transfer all of the war’s military operations to the South Vietnamese. At the same time, Nixon announced the beginning of phased U.S. troop withdrawals. Vietnamization was designed to strengthen the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and bolster President Nguyen Van Thieu’s government so the ARVN could stand on its own against the communist aggression from North Vietnam. At that point, all U.S. troops could be sent home. On Aug. 15, 1969, the Nixon administration issued a new mission statement to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the head of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, in charge of all U.S.…

As far back as the American Revolution, when British regulars haughtily dismissed the Continental Army, foreign adversaries have questioned the fighting ability of the American soldier. In Vietnam the U.S. military’s extensive use of firepower encouraged a new generation of skeptics to speculate how the average American “grunt”—Army and Marine infantrymen—would have fared against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army without heavy artillery and air support. Enemy forces beaten back by U.S. firepower tried to make the case that Americans relied on the might of their weapons because U.S. grunts lacked the skills and courage to achieve battlefield victories on their own. In William Broyles Jr.’s “The Road to Hill 10: A Veteran’s Return to Vietnam,” a 1985 article in The Atlantic, an unidentified communist veteran said Americans were…

The 371 service members from New York’s Queens borough who died in Vietnam or remain missing are now memorialized in a local park. The Queens Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Elmhurst Park on Dec. 20, 2019. “It’s recognition of the service of the men and women of Queens, and it’s long overdue,” said John Rowan, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America and a native of Queens, as reported in the Queens Daily Eagle. The memorial recognizes not only the men killed or missing in Vietnam, he said, but also those who “succumbed to illness back home after their service.” The idea for the memorial came from Marine Corps veteran Pat Toro, who died in 2014 from cancer related to Agent Orange, the toxic chemical sprayed in Vietnam to…

Current Kent State University students are often struck by the similarities they share with the students of the 1960s and ’70s. They can still grab a drink at J.B.’s or hear a destined-to-be famous band, like the James Gang or Devo, play at the Kent Stage. They can attend rallies for the biggest names in politics, from senators to presidential candidates, feverishly working to win the youth vote. And, of course, they can join a cause. Perhaps here the similarities are most striking. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s lives on in Black Lives Matter. The Women’s Movement echoes in the voices of #MeToo. The fight for equality, the environment and Native American rights—just to name a few—are still alive and well. Yet, there are some very big differences…

During Memorial Day weekend in 2019 Rolling Thunder’s bikers rode down the monument-lined streets of Washington for what the ride’s national leadership says was the last time, ending a 32-year run in the capital. The first Rolling Thunder ride was held on May 30, 1988, to heighten the public’s awareness of prisoners of war and missing in action whose fate still was not known. This year, the national Rolling Thunder organization is working with local chapters to stage runs in various communities elsewhere in the country. Officials said they canceled the Washington run because of problems related to bike parking areas, rising costs to host the event, corporate sponsorships and other issues. However, another group is picking up where Rolling Thunder left off. AMVETS, a veterans services organization for all…

Sarah E. Wagner’s excellent book, What Remains, is an exhaustively researched account of America’s quest to account for, recover and identify service members lost in combat so families can be reunited with the remains of their loved ones. Wagner, an associate professor of anthropology at George Washington University, reveals her heartfelt and moving interactions with families of the Vietnam War’s missing in action, bringing to life their—sometimes ongoing—struggles to deal with tragedy and loss. Yet, for this Vietnam War vet, one important part of Wagner’s book reopens a decades-old wound that continues to fester. Wagner rightly identifies scientific forensics as a landmark achievement that has co-opted the entire MIA issue. In 1998, three years after “normalizing” relations with the still-repressive government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, President Bill Clinton…