Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i Vietnam

I read Virginia Morris’ excellent article, Ho Chi Minh’s Shadow Government, in the June 2020 issue [about Viet Cong operatives who set up underground governments, known as the Viet Cong Infrastructure, which subverted the legitimate governments in villages] with much interest. I was in a unit which had very large and detailed records on the Enemy Political Infrastructure. One of the enemy in the article was Nguyen Van Lem, shot by National Police Maj. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The killing was photographed and raised all kinds of trouble for him and us. We had Lem in our files with his aliases, but not his real name. During the Tet Offensive, he surfaced like many other enemy in the “shadow government.” We and the South Vietnamese found out his real name…

On Aug. 18, 1968, a U.S. Navy armored troop carrier came under fire as it prepared to land Army troops on the bank of the Hai Moi Tan Canal. The mechanized landing craft took several hits from rocket-propelled grenades as it reached the bank. Enemy fire destroyed one of the .50-caliber machine guns. An Army sergeant then rushed to the mount and fired a Mark 18 40 mm grenade launcher. Working the firing crank as rapidly as he could, the sergeant swept the enemy’s defenses as the boat desperately struggled to back off the bank. The craft cleared in time to avoid the supporting fire of U.S. river monitors, but a jammed ramp prevented the troop unloading, The Mark 18 grenade launcher has the distinction of being America’s last hand-cranked…

After darkness fell on Dec. 17, 1966, the dead and wounded of Delta Company lay in an open area between North Vietnamese Army bunkers and hedgerows. In daylight it had been a no man’s land where anyone who moved was shot. Pfc. Michael Noone was shot three times—once in the leg and twice in the torso. The bullets broke his ribs and knocked his stomach out of the body cavity. Giant red-and-black biting ants, dubbed “blood ants” by American soldiers, crawled over him, feasting. He used his one good arm to slowly pick them off and bite them in self-defense. Under the light of flares, NVA soldiers crept out to execute the wounded and scavenge the dead. One approached Noone and peered over him. A flare went off and the…

As the war with Viet Cong insurgents was heating up in 1961, South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, had a serious problem. His government’s influ-ence rarely extended beyond the larger cities and towns, and Saigon’s Army of the Republic of Vietnam was simply not large enough to maintain an effective presence throughout the nation’s back-country. This was especially true in the Central Highlands, a remote, mountainous 25,868-square-mile region dominating the country’s midsection. Historically, the Highlands, isolated from the lowland coastal population centers, had been a mostly unmanageable territory, with government influence confined to provincial and district capitals. Worse, the Western Highlands sat adja-cent to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, an ancient labyrinthine system of footpaths snaking from North Vietnam through eastern Laos and Cambodia. The rugged, untamed border proved ideal…

After reaching its zenith in the 15th century as Lan Xang, “the Kingdom of a Million Elephants,” Laos underwent a decline that by the 19th century saw the country divided in three and, by the 20th century, part of the French colonial empire in Indochina. After the communist-led Viet Minh victory against the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Laos became one of four nations whose futures as independent countries were still being disputed by outside powers, including the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Politically divided between three contentious brothers—one rightist, one communist and one professing neutrality—Laos was a political backwater that should have been left to itself, but the country attracted a lot of attention because it had the three essentials of…

Ace Alan Cozzalio envisioned himself a cowboy from the Wild West. Cozzalio, born Aug. 19, 1946, in Ashland, Oregon, grew up on his family’s ranch along the Klamath River on the Oregon-California border. He was a 19-year-old cook and assistant manager at an International House of Pan-cakes restaurant in Sacramento, California, when he received his draft notice. Cozzalio was trained in armor, went to Officer Candidate School and became an armor officer. He then trained as a helicopter pilot at the Army’s aviation school in 1967. On Dec. 11, 1967, Cozzalio arrived in Vietnam, assigned to Troop D, 3rd Squadron, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). His unit adopted the Old West cavalry Stetson and yellow neck scarf. Cozzalio sometimes dressed in the 1860s uniform and carried a traditional…

In September 1994, a group of former Vietnam helicopter pilots met at the American Legion Hall in Mineral Wells, Texas, to form a local chapter of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association. Soon the talk turned to the legacy of the pilots and how to preserve it. The veterans formed a historical committee to consider options. The group decided to build a museum in Mineral Wells to commemorate the vast majority of Vietnam helicopter pilots who received initial flight training at nearby Fort Wolters. After more discussion, the committee broadened the commemoration to include the entire Vietnam War. Eventually the historical committee formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation to build a 50,000-square-foot facility with 11 galleries. In 1999, the organization’s board of directors, aided by private donations, purchased 12 acres in Parker…

Highest Rated TV Shows (1971-72 season) 1. All in the Family (season 2) CBS2. The Flip Wilson Show (season 2) NBC3. Marcus Welby, M.D. (season 3) ABC4. Gunsmoke (season 17) CBS5. The ABC Movie of the Week (season 3) ABC6. Sanford and Son (season 1) NBC7. Mannix (season 5) CBS8. Funny Face (season 1) CBS9. Adam 12 (season 4) NBC10. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (season 2) CBS Top Grossing Films (Domestic box office, in 1971 dollars) 1. Billy Jack $98,000,0002. Fiddler on the Roof $78,722,3703. Diamonds Are Forever $43,800,0004. The French Connection $41,158,7575. Summer of ’42 $32,063,6346. Carnal Knowledge $28,623,0007. Dirty Harry $28,153,4348. A Clockwork Orange $26,589,3559. The Last Picture Show $20,505,08510. Bednobs and Broomsticks $17,871,174 Top Singles 1. Joy to the World Three Dog Night2. Maggie May/Reason to Believe Rod…

Nov. 14 NASA’s Mariner 9, launched May 30, 1971, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is the first spacecraft to enter Mars’ orbit. It took photos of 85 percent of the surface. Mariner 9 was shut off on Oct. 27, 1972, after running out of the gas used to control it, but the craft remains in orbit. Nov. 15 Intel Corp., of Santa Clara, California, markets the first microprocessor, squeezing the electronic circuitry for core processing functions, the computer’s “brains,” onto a single chip. The Intel 4004 chip booted up the revolution in small, personal computers. Nov. 24 On a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, passenger “Dan Cooper” (misreported as D.B. Cooper in an early news story) presented a note saying he had a bomb and demanded $200,000. After a stop for the…

On Halloween night in 1966, Petty Officer 1st Class James Elliott “Willy” Williams, commanding a two-boat patrol using craft specially designed for combat on Vietnam’s inland waterways, was gunning for enemy vessels infesting the Mekong Delta. Williams in Patrol Boat River 105 destroyed one of two Viet Cong sampans spotted on the My Tho River. Pursuing the second down a narrow canal, PBR 105 and PBR 99 surprised two VC regiments just beginning to move downriver in sampans and junks. Williams ordered his small fiberglass boats, introduced in Vietnam just eight months earlier, forward in attack formation. With guns blazing from both sides, the PBRs struck with bows high above the water, slicing through the enemy flotilla at full-throttle, twisting and turning to present a poor target—their wakes washing over…

The United States counted heavily on technology to overcome the large numbers of communist soldiers and guerrilla fighters in its defense of the Republic of Vietnam. This applied particularly to the U.S. Air Force, whose unofficial presence presaged the United States’ formal introduction of ground combat troops on March 8,1965, and whose last combat missions were flown after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The years in between saw a wide variety of special operations conducted by highly skilled units of the Air Force. The first such unit was the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron, formed on Oct.1, 1961, in response to the activation of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, in 1960. Equipped with 16 B-26 Intruder bombers, armed T-28 Trojan trainers and SC-47…

One of the most enduring yet baseless myths of the Vietnam War alleges that communist prisoners were thrown out of high-flying helicopters to induce others to talk. In my 21 years as a U.S. Army historian, I have never seen credible evidence that such an event occurred or that American military or civilian personnel participated in such practices. I have examined all relevant material at the National Archives, including the files of the War Crimes Working Group, a Pentagon task force established after the 1968 My Lai massacre of innocent civilians to investigate potential war crimes committed by American personnel. I have also consulted CIA intelligence analysts who served in Southeast Asia and military personnel who conducted top-secret operations in Laos and Cambodia as members of Military Assistance Command,…

The young soldiers of Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap’s newly formed 308th Division, freshly trained and equipped by the communist Chinese, showed off their skills in stealth operations against the French in May 1950. Four of Giap’s infantry battal-ions scaled steep limestone heights surrounding the town of Dong Khe in northeast Tonkin, the northernmost region of Vietnam, without being detected even though they were hauling five American-made 75 mm pack howitzers. At dawn on May 25, they opened fire with a devastating sustained barrage on the French defenses and the 800-man garrison, consisting mostly of Moroccan riflemen under French officers. Giap, commander in chief of communist-led Viet Minh independence fighters at war with colonial ruler France since December1946, lifted the barrage after two days of shelling. His troops then attacked in…

Why, one must ask, would a healthy young man in the prime of life throw his body onto a live grenade and simultaneously pull a second one underneath himself, knowing it meant his certain death? On Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967, while desperately battling North Vietnamese Army regulars near Vietnam’s Demilitarized Zone during Operation Beacon Hill, U.S. Marine Pfc. Douglas Dickey, 2nd Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, did exactly that. Knowing he would surely die, 20-year-old Dickey leapt on the grenades, smothered the blasts with his body and saved the lives of five Marines in his platoon. For Dickey’s selfless “final valiant act” he posthumously received the Medal of Honor. The reason why Dickey consciously dove on those grenades cannot be known with absolute…

For 94 of his 100 days in Vietnam (May 10 to Aug. 11, 1972), Joe Tallon, who piloted a U.S. Army OV-1 Mohawk observation plane, spent much of his time trying to get a dysfunctional motor pool in working order while also flying dangerous re-connaissance missions over North Vietnam. The American presence in South Vietnam was dwindling. Tallon’s unit, the 131st Military Intelligence Company at Marble Mountain in Da Nang, was chronically short of materiel and personnel. Tallon’s life changed forever on his 95th day in-country, Aug. 12, 1972—the day the last U.S. ground combat unit in Vietnam was deactivated at Da Nang. Minutes after Tallon took off on his 66th mission, the Mohawk’s No. 2 engine was hit by groundfire and burst into flames. Tallon tried to control the…