“Why?”
“There being used as
markers for jets dropping what sounds like 750-pounders. Tell TOC thanks for the
warning. Also tell them two of the markers bracketed our position. I hope to
hell they knew where we are.” A long
pause.
“TOC says they don’t
know anything about flares or jet bombers.”
Another screwup. “Well how about
somebody finding out something and when they find out, how about telling us unimportant folks? In the meantime, I hope
that gooniebird (C-47 plane) has its running lights
on.”
“Why?”
“Because any moment now
the pilot is going to find he is dawdling around in a bomb run pattern. Come
back early in the morning and give men the hot skinny.”
“Roger—we’re
leaving—out.”
I was mad, a pretty good
sign that I was scared. The bombing continued through the night. Sometimes it
was “crump” and sometimes it was “crack,” depending on how close the bombs fell.
When it finally stopped sometime before dawn, I realized that it was a dazzling
exhibition of flying—worthless—but impressive. The flare ship had to fly so low
because of the cloud cover that its flares were burning out on the ground
instead of in the air. The orbiting jets would then dive down through the
clouds, break through, spot the markers, make split-second corrections, and
release their bombs. However, while it was going on, considering what a small
error became at jet speeds, a small error would wipe us out. Should this happen,
I could see a bad case of “C'est la guerre” next day at air operations.
I couldn’t help wondering also how “Charlie” was feeling about all
this—specifically the ones only 25 or 30 meters away. It didn’t seem possible,
but I wondered if the shrapnel tearing through the tree tops was terrifying him
as much as us.
First thing in the
morning, my Vietnamese counterpart made contact on the big radio (HC-162D).
After some talk into the mike, he turned to me with a helpless look:
“They say we must cross
plantation to housing area again.”
“What? It’s
impossible—tell them so.”
More talk. “They say we
must go. They want to talk to you.”
When the hollow voice
came through on the side band, I couldn’t believe it—it was the same order. I
told them it was impossible and that we were not going to
go.
“You must go. That is an
order from way up.”
That figures. The Saigon
wheels smelling glory have taken over our TOC. “My answer is, Will Not Comply; I
say again, Will Not Comply. Tell those people to stop
trying to outguess the man on the ground. It they want someone to assess the
damage on the housing area send a plane with a camera. Better yet, have the
Rangers look at it, there’s more of
them.”
“There are no other
friendly troops in the area. You are the only ones that can do it. You must go.
There will be a plane in your area shortly. Out.”
Up to this point we had
assumed friendly troops were in the area and that if we got in trouble, maybe we
could hold out until they could help us. No troops. Little wonder the Viet Cong
are roaming all over the place not caring who hears them.
Soon a plane arrived and
I received: “We must know how many Viet Cong are still in the housing area. You
must go and look. It is imperative. The whole success of this mission depends on
your report. Over.”
“I will say again, Will
Not Comply. Over.” (Hello court martial.) I looked at
the Vietnamese team leader. He was tense and grin, but
silently cheering me on. While watching for the plane I asked him what he was
going to do. He replied:
“We go, we die. Order say we must go, so we go. We will
die.”
Tell me Vietnamese have
no guts. Another transmission from the plane:
“Why won’t you comply?
Over.”
These type questions
aren’t normally answered. I knew, however, that the poor bastard up there had to
take an answer back to the wheels. Well, he got one: “Because we can’t. One step
out of this jungle and it’s all over. I’m not going to have this team wiped out
for nothing. There are no Viet Cong in the village; not since 1400 yesterday.
The mission was screwed up when you started the bombing without sending in
troops yesterday. As for the mission depending on us, you should have thought of
that yesterday before you scrapped the plans and didn’t bother to tell us. Over.”
“Where are the Viet Cong
now? Over.”
“Which
ones? The ones 25 meters from
us, or the ones 35 meters from us? They’re in the
jungle all around us. Over.”
“Roger. Understand Viet
Cong have left houses—now in jungle—have information necessary—you do not have
to go across plantation.”
This was unbelievable.
On TV it would be a comedy—a bad one.
Shorty after this uplifting
exchange, the bombers returned, and we spent the remainder of the day moving
from one Viet Cong group to another. We would come upon them, pull back, and
then an A1-E (bomber) would come whining down, machine-gunning or dropping
bombs.
I discovered that the
old prop fighter bombers were more terrifying than the jets. The jets came in so
fast that the man on the ground couldn’t hear them until the bombs were dropped
and they were climbing away. The props were something else. First the droning
noise while in orbit. Then they would peel off and the droning noise would
change to a growl, increasing steadily in pitch until they were a screaming
whine. Under the jungle canopy this noise grabbed at the heart of every man. And
every man knew that the plane was pointed directly at him. The crack of the bomb
exploding was almost a relief. Many of these bombs landed 25 to 35 meters from
where we were lying on the ground. The closest any of us came to being hurt was
when a glowing piece of shrapnel lodged in the pack on my back. I couldn’t help
thinking, “These are our planes. They know where we are. What must it be like
for a woman or child to hear that inhuman, impersonal whine directed at them in
their open villages? How they must hate us!” I looked around at my team. Others
were thinking. Each of us died a little that day in the
jungle.
At 1730 (5:30 p.m.) the
last bomb was dropped. A
great day for humanity. Almost 28 hours of bombing in the small area with
barely a break.
On the next afternoon we
were told my radio to quickly find an LZ and prepare
to leave the area. We knew of only one within reasonable distance and headed for
it. A short distance from the LZ we could hear voices.
Viet Cong around the opening. We were now an equal
distance between two groups of the Viet Cong.
Finally they allowed the
pick-up ship to come in. Just as the plane touched down and we started toward
it, two machine gun positions opened up—one from each side of the clearing. The
bullets sounded like gravel hitting the aluminum skin of the chopper. My
American assistant took one position under fire and I started firing at the
other. Our backs were to the aircraft and our eyes on the jungle. The rest of
the team started climbing aboard. The machine guns were still firing, but we had
made them less accurate. I was still firing when two strong hands picked me up
and plumped me on the floor of the plane. Maximum power and we still couldn’t
make the trees at the end of the clearing, but had to make a half-circle over
the machine guns. All of a sudden something slapped me in the buttock, lifting
me from the floor. A bullet had come through the bottom of the plane, through
the gas tank and the floor. When it ripped through the floor it turned sideways.
The slug left an eight-inch bruise but did no penetrate. Through some miracle,
we were on our way to base—all of us. We would all get drunk tonight. It was the
only way we would sleep without reliving the past days. It would be at least
three days before anybody would unwind. That much was typical.
I had seen the effect of
the bombing at close range. These bombs would land and go for about 15 yards and
tear off a lot of foliage from the trees, but that was it. Unless you drop these
things in somebody’s hip pocket they don’t do any good. For 28 hours they bombed
that area. And it was rather amusing because, when I came out, it was estimated
that they had killed about 250 Viet Cong in the first day. They asked me how
many Viet Cong did I think they had killed and I said
maybe six, and I was giving them the benefit of the doubt at that. The bombing
had no real military significance. It would only work if aimed at concentrated
targets such as villages.
One of the first axioms
one learns about unconventional warfare is that no insurgent or guerrilla
movement can endure without the support of the people. While doing research in
my job as an Area Specialist, I found that, in province after province, the Viet
Cong guerrillas had started as small teams. They were now in battalion and
regimental strength. Before I left, the Viet Cong could put troops in the field
in division strength in almost any province. Such growth is not only impossible
without popular support, it actually requires an
overwhelming mandate.
We were still being
told, both by our own government and the Saigon government, that the vast
majority of the people of South Vietnam were opposed to the Viet Cong. When I
questioned this contradiction, I was always told that the people only helped the
Viet Cong through fear. Supposedly, the Viet Cong held the people in the grip of
terror by assassination and torture. This argument was also against doctrine.
Special Forces are taught that reliable support can be gained only through
friendship and trust. History denied the “terror” argument. The people feared
and hated the French, and they rose up against them. It became quite obvious
that a minority movement could not keep tabs on a hostile majority. South
Vietnam is a relatively small country, dotted with thousands of small villages.
In this very restricted area companies and battalions of Viet Cong can maneuver
and live under the very noses of government troops; but the people don’t betray
these movements, even though it is a relatively simple thing to pass the word.
On the other hand, government troop movements are always reported. In an action
against the Viet Cong, the only hope for surprise is for the government to move
the troops by helicopters. Even this is no guarantee. General Nguyen Khan, while
still head of the of the Saigon government, acknowledged that Viet Cong
sympathizers and agents were everywhere—even in the inner councils—when he made
the statement: “Any operation that lets more than four hours elapse between
conception and implementation is doomed to failure.” He made these remarks in
the last days of his regime, right after a personally directed operation north
of Saigon ended in disaster.
To back up the terror
theory, the killing of village chiefs and their families were pointed out to me.
Those that were quick to point at these murders ignored certain facts. Province,
district, village and hamlet chiefs were appointed, not elected. Too often petty
officials are not even people from the area but outsiders being rewarded for
political favors. Those that are from the area are thought of as quislings
because they have gone against their own by cooperating with Saigon. Guerrillas
or partisans who killed quislings in World War II were made heroes in American
movies. Those who look on the Viet Cong killings of these people with horror and
use them as justification for our having to beat them, don’t realize that our
own military consider such actions good strategy when the tables are reversed.
When teaching Special Forces how to set up guerrilla warfare in an enemy
country, killing unpopular officials is pointed out as one method of gaining
friends among the populace. It is recommended that special assassination teams
be set up for this purpose.
I know a couple of cases
where it was suggested by Special Forces officers that Viet Cong prisoners be
killed. In one case in which I was involved, we had picked up prisoners in the
valley around An Khe. We didn’t want prisoners but
they walked into our hands. We were supposed to stay in the area four more days,
and there were only eight of us and four of them, and we didn’t know what the
hell to do with them. Food is limited, and the way the transmission went with
the base camp you knew what they wanted you to do—get rid of them. I wouldn’t do
that, and when I got back to operation base a major told me, “You know we almost
told you right over the phone to do them in.” I said that I was glad he didn’t,
because it would have been embarrassing to refuse to do it. I knew goddamn well
I wasn’t going to kill them. In a fight it’s one thing, but with guys with their
hands bound it’s another. And I wouldn’t have been able to shoot them because of
the noise. It would have had to be a very personal thing, like sticking a knife
into them. The major said, “Oh, you wouldn’t have had to do it; all you had to
do was give them over to the Vietnamese.” Of course, this is supposed to absolve
you of any responsibility. This is the general attitude. It’s really a
left-handed morality. Very few of the Special Forces guys had any qualms about
this. Damn few.
Little by little, as all
these facts made their impact on me, I had to accept the fact that, Communist or
not, the vast majority of the people were pro-Viet Cong and anti-Saigon. I had
to accept also that the position, “We are in Vietnam because we are in sympathy
with the aspirations and desires of the Vietnamese people,” was a lie. If this
is a lie, how many others are there?
I suppose that one of
the things that bothered me from the very beginning in Vietnam was the
condemnation of ARVN as a fighting force: “the
Vietnamese are cowardly … the Vietnamese can’t be disciplined … the Vietnamese
just can’t understand tactics and strategy … etc., etc.” But the Viet Cong are
Vietnamese. United States military files in Saigon document time and again a
Viet Cong company surrounding two or even three ARVN
companies and annihilating them. These same files document
instances of a Viet Cong company, surrounded by ARVN
battalions, mounting a ferocious fight and breaking loose. I have seen
evidence of the Viet Cong attacking machine-gun positions across open terrain
with terrible losses. This can’t be done with undisciplined bandits. For many
years now the tactics and strategy of the Viet Cong have been so successful that
massive fire power and air support on our side is the only thing that has
prevented a Viet Cong victory. These are all Vietnamese. What makes the
difference? Major “Charging Charlies” Beckwith, the
Special Forces commander at Plei Me, used the world
“dedicated, “tough”, “disciplined”, well-trained”, and “brave” to described the Viet Cong—and, almost in the same breath,
condemned the Vietnamese on our side.
It became obvious that
motivation is the prime factor in this problem. The Viet Cong soldier believes
in his cause. He believes he is fighting for national independence. He has faith
in his leaders, whose obvious dedication is probably greater than his own. His
officers live in the same huts and eat the same food. His government counterpart
knows that his leaders are in their positions because of family, money or reward
for political favors. He knows his officer’s primary concern is gaining wealth
and favor. Their captains and majors eat in French restaurants and pay as much
for one meal as they make in a week. They sleep in guarded villas with their
mistresses. They find many excuses for not being with their men in battle. They
see the officers lie about their roles in battle. The soldier knows that he will
be cheated out of his pay if possible. He knows equipment he many need is being
sold downtown. His only motivation is the knowledge that he is fighting only to
perpetuate a system that has kept him uneducated and in poverty. He has had so
many promises made to him, only to be broken, that now he believes nothing from
his government.
I have seen the South
Vietnamese soldier fight well, and at times
ferociously, but usually only when in a position where there is no choice. At
those times he is fighting for survival. On Project Delta there were many brave
Vietnamese. When I know them well enough to discuss such things, I asked them,
“Why do you go on these missions time and again? You are volunteers. Why do you
not quit and do less dangerous work?” The answer was always the same: “We are
friends. We fight well together. If we quite, it will make the project bad.”
Never, “We are fighting for democracy … freedom … the people …” or any cause.
The “enemy” he was fighting had become an abstraction. He was
fighting, and fighting well, to sustain the brotherhood of his friends.
The project had created a mystique of individualism and eliteness. He felt important. Trust and faith was put in him
and he returned it in kind. The Americans didn’t condescend to him. The life of
every American on the team was dependent on the Vietnamese, and we let them know
we were aware of it. We found out early that appealing to them on the basis of
patriotism was a waste of time. They felt that they were nothing more than tools
of the scheming Saigon government.
ARVN troops and their
commanders know that if they don’t bother the Viet Cong they will be safe from
Viet Cong attacks. I’ll never forget what a shock it was to find out that
various troop commanders and District Chiefs were actually making personal deals
with “the enemy.” The files in Saigon record instances where government troops
with American advisors were told by the Viet Cong to lay down their weapons and
walk away from the Americans. The troops did just that and the Viet Cong
promises of safety to the troops were honored.
In an effort to show
waning popularity for the Viet Cong, great emphasis was placed on figures of
Viet Cong defections. Even if the unlikely possibility of the correctness of
these figures is accepted, they are worthless when compared to ARVN desertions. The admitted desertion rate and incidents
of draft dodging, although deflated, was staggering. Usually, only those caught
are reported. Reading OPSUMS (Operational Summaries)
and newspapers while in Vietnam, I repeatedly saw references made to hundreds of
ARVN listed as missing after the major battles. The
reader is supposed to conclude that these hundreds, which by now total
thousands, are prisoners of the Viet Cong. They are definitely not listed as
deserters. If this were true, half of the Viet Cong would be tied down as guards
in POW compounds—which, of course, is ridiculous.
This lack of enthusiasm
and reluctance to join in battle wasn’t difficult to figure. The majority of the
people are either anti-Saigon or pro-Viet Cong, or both, and ARVN is drafted from the people.
I was not unique among
my contemporaries in knowing most of these things. However, whenever anybody
questioned our being in Vietnam—in light of the facts—the old rationale was
always presented: “We have to stop the spread of communism somewhere … if we
don’t fight the commies here, we’ll have to fight them at home … if we pull out,
the rest of Asia will go Red …these are uneducated people who have been duped;
they don’t understand the difference between democracy and communism
…”
Being extremely
anti-Communist myself, these “arguments” satisfied me for a long time. In fact,
I guess it was saying these very same things to myself
over and over again that made it possible for me to participate in the things I
did in Vietnam. But were we stopping communism? Even during the short period I
had been in Vietnam, the Viet Cong had obviously gained in strength; the
government controlled less and less of the country every day. The more troops
and money we poured in, the more people hated us. Countries all over the world
were losing sympathy with our stand in Vietnam. Countries which up to now had
preserved a neutral position were becoming vehemently anti-American. A village
near Tay Nihh in which I had
slept in safety six months earlier was the center of a Viet Cong operation that
cost the lives of two American friends. A Special Forces team operating in the
area was almost decimated over a period of four months. United States Operation
Mission (USOM), civilian representatives, who had been
able to travel by vehicle in relative safety throughout the countryside, were being kidnapped and killed. Like the military, they now
had to travel by air.
The real question was,
whether communism is spreading in spite of our involvement or because of
it.
The attitude that the
uneducated peasant lacked the political maturity to decide between communism and
democracy and “… we are only doing this for you own good,” although it had a familiar colonialistic ring, at first seemed to have merit. Then I
remembered that most of
the villages would be under Viet Cong control for some of the time
and under government control at other times. How many Americans had such a close
look at both sides of the cloth? The more often government troops passed through
an area, the more surely it would become sympathetic to the Viet Cong. The Viet
Cong might sleep in the houses, but the government troops ransacked them. More
often that not, the Viet Cong helped plant and harvest
the crops; but invariably government troops in an area razed them. Rape is
severely punished among the Viet Cong. It is so common among the ARVN that it is seldom reported for fear of even worse
atrocities.
I saw the Airborne
Brigade come into Nha Trang.
Nha Trang is a government
town and the Vietnamese Airborne Brigade are government
troops. They were originally, in fact, trained by Special Forces, and they
actually had the town in a grip of terror for three days. Merchants were
collecting money to get them out of town; cafes and bars shut down.
The troops were
accosting women on the streets. They would go into a place—a bar or café—and
order varieties of food. When the checks came they wouldn’t pay them. Instead
they would simply wreck the place, dumping over the tables and smashing dishes.
While these men were accosting women, the police would just stand by, powerless
or unwilling to help. In fact, the situation is so difficult that American troops, if
in town at the same time as the Vietnamese Airborne Brigade, are told to stay
off the streets at night to avoid coming to harm.
The whole thing was a
lie. We weren’t preserving freedom in South Vietnam. There was no freedom to
preserve. To voice opposition to the government meant jail or
death.
Neutralism was forbidden and punished. Newspapers that didn’t say the right thing were closed down. People are
not even free to leave and Vietnam is one of those rare countries that doesn’t fill its American visa quota. It’s all there to see
once the Red film is removed from the eyes. We aren’t the freedom fighters. We
are the Russian tanks blasting the hopes an Asian Hungary.
It’s not democracy we
brought to Vietnam—it’s anti-communism. This is the only
choice the people in the villages have. This is why most of them have embraced
the Viet Cong and shunned the alternative. The people remember that when they
were fighting the French for their national independence it was the Americans
who helped the French. It’s the American anti-Communist bombs that kill their
children. It’s American anti-communism that has supported one dictator after
another in Saigon. When anti-Communist napalm burns their children it matters
little that an anti-Communist Special Forces medic come later to apply
bandages.
One day I asked one of
our Vietnamese helicopter pilots what he thought of the last bomb raid. “I think
maybe today we make many Viet Cong.” In July, when Mr. McNamara asked me how
effective the bombing was in War Zone D I told him, “It’s an expensive
defoliant. Unless dropped in a hip pocket it was only effective in housing
area.” He didn’t seem surprised. In fact, his only comment after my recital of
my team’s experiences in War Zone D, was when he turned
to General Westmoreland who was sitting on my right, “I guess we still have a
small reaction problem.” Ambassador Taylor said nothing.
While I was in Vietnam
the American and/or Saigon government was forever carping about North Vietnam
breaking the Geneva Accords. Yet my own outfit, Special Forces, had first come
to Vietnam in civilian clothes traveling on civilian passports for the specific
purpose of training and arming the ethnic groups for the CIA, a violation of the
Accords. The Saigon respect for the Accords was best symbolized by a political
cartoon in the Saigon Post. It showed
a man urinating on a scroll labeled Geneva Accords 1954. When the troops of
Project Delta uncovered the arms cache at Vung Ro Bay,
General Nguyen Khan pointing at the weapons, happily presented them to the three
ICC men as proof to the world that Hanoi was breaking the Accords. Evidently
they were too polite to point out that they had been found by men wearing
American-supplied uniforms, carrying American weapons; men who had been trained
by Americans and were being paid by Americans. Neither did they mention that the
General flew to this spot in an American helicopter and that the weapons were
being loaded onto an American-made ship manned by American-trained
sailors.
It had taken a long time
and a mountain of evidence but I had finally found some truths. The world is not
just good guys and bad guys. Anti-Communism is a lousy substitute for democracy.
I know now that there are many types of communism but there are none that appeal
to me. In the long run, I don’t think Vietnam will be better off under Ho’s
brand of communism. But it’s not for me or my government to decide. That
decision is for the Vietnamese. I also know that we have allowed the creation of
a military monster that will lie to our elected officials; and that both of them
will lie to the American people.
To those people, who,
while deploring the war and bombings, defend it on the basis that it is stopping
communism, remember the words of the Vietnamese pilot, “I think maybe today we
make many Viet Cong.” The Nazi bombing of London didn’t make the Londoners quit.
We have no monopoly on feelings for the underdog. People of other nations will
continue to be increasingly sympathetic to this small agrarian country that is
being pounded by the richest and most powerful nation in the
world.
When I returned from
Vietnam I was asked, “Do you resent young people who have never been in Vietnam,
or in any war, protesting it?” On the contrary, I am relieved. I think they
should be commended. I had to wait until was 35 years old, after spending 10
years in the Army and 18 months personally witnessing the stupidity of the war,
before I could figure it out. That these young people were able to figure it out
so quickly and so accurately is not only a credit to their intelligence but a
great personal triumph over a lifetime of conditioning and indoctrination. I
only hope that the picture I have tried to create will help other people come to
the truth without wasting 10 years. Those people protesting the war in Vietnam
are not against our boys in Vietnam. On the contrary.
What they are against is our boys being in Vietnam. They are not
unpatriotic. Again the opposite is true. They are opposed to people, our own and
others, dying for a lie, thereby corrupting they very
word democracy.
There are those who will
believe that I only started to feel these things after I returned from Vietnam.
In my final weeks in that country, I was putting out a very small information
paper for Special Forces. The masthead of the paper was a flaming torch. I tried
in my own way to bring a little light to the men with whom I worked. On the last
page of the first issue were the names of the four men—all friends of
mine—reported killed in action on the same day. Among them was Sgt. Horner, one
of the men I “procured” for Special Forces when he was stationed at the Army
Presidio in San Francisco.
To those friends I wrote
this dedication:
“We can best immortalize our fallen members
by striving for an enlightened future where Man has found another solution to
his problems rather than resorting to the futility and stupidity of
war.
