My weekend begins with the news of someone that I knew….not personally but rather through the radio while I was serving in Vietnam….anyone that was there will recognize the name of “Hanoi Hanna”…..
She passed away this week……at the age of 85…….
Thinh Thi Ngo, the Vietnamese radio host better known as “Hanoi Hannah,” passed away on Friday at age 85, reports the New York Times. Ngo was a propaganda broadcaster for North Vietnam during the war; her English-language program was designed to convince American soldiers that their presence in Vietnam was wrong. Despite the serious nature of her mission, many who heard her remember her fondly, including Sen. John McCain, who was forced to listen to Ngo’s broadcasts daily during his captivity in the “Hanoi Hilton” POW camp. “She’s a marvelous entertainer,” McCain recalled in 2000. “I’m surprised she didn’t get to Hollywood.”
Ngo’s 30-minute broadcasts ran for a decade, from 1965 to the end of the war in 1975. AFP says Ngo’s programs were an eclectic mix: in soft-spoken English, Ngo would read out names of American soldiers killed that day, interspersed with lessons on Vietnamese history, and music by modern American singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In a 1994 interview with the New York Times, Ngo said “My work was to make the G.I.s understand that it was not right for them to take part in this war.” Of her moniker, she said: “The Americans like nicknames.”
She was not well loved by US troops would be an understatement….but she was a fixture on our radios…..and yes…an ICON.
Ironically 3 years ago the General of the North Vietnamese Army, Gen. Giap dies at the age of 103…..he also is an icon of the day…..his book, People’s Army, People’s War, was required reading …….
I recently read an interview that he gave about the war in Vietnam…..
The death of Vo Nguyen Giap on October 4, 2013, in his 103rd year, was noted with respect everywhere in the world. General Giap commanded the military forces that freed Vietnam from French colonialism in the 1946–1954 war that ended with the victory at Dien Bien Phu (1954), and that then defeated U.S. imperialist aggression in the 1962–1975 war that ended with liberation of Saigon. The heroic and victorious struggle of Communist Vietnam was a major factor in the growth of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements that shook the previously colonized world, Western Europe, and even the United States.
Source: The United States Has Lost the War: An Interview by General Vo Nguyen Giap |
Yes he was the enemy…but I cannot argue against his tactics……they were effective……
Slowly, all of us vets that served in Vietnam are dying out and soon we will be the forgotten generation along with those of the Korean War…..we already the ignored generation….soon we will be the forgotten.