Tag: Vietnam War

Hill 397

Hill 397?…..maybe if I give a movie reference (movies that I will not watch….. I was there I do not need to remember the insanity) Hamburger Hill……..an exercise in futility.

Sorry children time for your history lesson so that maybe you will not make the same mistakes as your elders….

The battle was the result of a renewed effort in early 1969 to neutralize the North Vietnamese forces in the A Shau, a 45-kilometer-long valley in southwestern Thua Thien Province along the border with Laos. The A Shau sheltered enemy Base Area 611 and had long provided a major infiltration corridor for Communist forces from the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos to the coastal cities of northern I Corps Tactical Zone.

The valley’s formidable terrain was dominated at its northern end by what local Montagnard tribesmen called the “mountain of the crouching beast,” Dong Ap Bia. On military maps it was simply Hill 937, so labeled for its height in meters. Several large ridges and fingers ran out from its summit, one of the largest extending southeast to a height of 900 meters and another reaching south to a 916-meter peak. The steep slopes of Dong Ap Bia were cloaked by a heavy undergrowth of sawtooth elephant grass, thick stands of bamboo, and double-and-triple canopy jungle. It was an area long occupied by the NVA and it was fortified with bunkers, spider holes, deep tunnels and trenches.

http://www.historynet.com/hell-on-hamburger-hill.htm

Made for a good movie for Hollywood but war is anything but a source for entertainment.

I want my readers to remember the men and women that fought and died in Vietnam do not let them be removed to the dust bins of history.

A Bit Of Vietnam History

Saturday and I have decided to try and post a bit of American history of the Vietnam War…..as the years go back  fewer and fewer of us veterans remain…and since not many people want to recall our disastrous war someone has got to step up and see that we are NOT forgotten.

Ever heard of the USS Mayaguez?

It was a battle fought in Cambodia in 1975…..

The battle on Koh Tang occurred on May 15, 1975, three days into what would later be called the “Mayaguez Incident,” after communist guerrillas from the Khmer Rouge seized the American merchant vessel, the SS Mayaguez. Marines from 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines were sent from Okinawa, Japan, for a rescue mission.

Four U.S. helicopters were shot down and five more were damaged, with more than a dozen killed in the initial assault. In all, 230 Marines and airmen were involved in the operation on the east and west beaches during the 14-hour battle against a much larger and more disciplined force than poor intelligence told them to anticipate.

https://www.stripes.com/fate-of-marines-left-behind-in-cambodia-in-1975-haunts-comrades-1.214568

This incident happen 38 years ago on the 15th of May 1975……many Americans have NO idea of this incident and now I want all to know of the fallen comrades that have been forgotten for so many years.

Remember….Never forget…….chuq

A Viet Vet–About Time

Closing Thought–26Apr18

A Viet vet has finally been awarded the medal that he richly deserves……

With a Marine down and several dozen heavily-armed enemy fighters approaching his location, 1st Lt. Philip H. Sauer grabbed his .45-cal pistol and ordered his other three men off the hill outside Khe Sanh.

Just a few hours earlier, the five-man artillery observer team had organized and set out to recon Hill 861 and potentially set up an observation post. But enemy bunkers and trenches teeming with North Vietnamese troops dotted the key, high terrain northwest of the Khe Sanh combat base.

When his point man was cut down by enemy fire, Sauer, used his own .45 pistol to provide covering fire as the Marines dove for cover and scrambled out of the kill zone.

Only one Marine survived that April 24, 1967, ambush, the first major fight with NVA in the area. It would mark the start of what became known as the “Hill Fights” during the siege of Khe Sanh the following year.

https://news.usni.org/2018/04/24/51-years-later-fallen-vietnam-marine-honored-silver-star

About time!

The Loss Of Saigon

As a Viet Vet I am always having to have the conversation about that war….mostly with people that are too young to know what it was like or from older people that did not go and serve in the country.

Usually I shut down the conversation when I ask if they were in country……if they say no then I point out that how can they have any idea of what happened if they were not there?  That normally makes some upset and they storm off.

Some stay to show their savvy of that war…they read a book or saw a movie so they have a good grasp on the policies of the time…..

Of course the conversation turns to why the war was lost….there is a wide array of reason….but the one that got my attention was the one that believes that it was Congress fault for cutting off funding to South Vietnam……

This article points out the fiscal policy of the day to include the war in Vietnam.

Since partisans have turned the April 30, 1975, Communist takeover of South Vietnam into a political weapon, I’m going to spend the anniversary doing a little myth-busting.

Mel Laird, Richard Nixon’s defense secretary, started the modern myth that “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975” in a 2005 article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

Laird repeated it two years later in a Washington Post op-ed column in which he wrote “of 1975, when Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War three years after our combat troops had left.”

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/126150

My Lai–50 Years On

Closing Thought–16Mar18

Your Daily History Lesson…….

When I was teaching class at university I asked my class to find Vietnam on a map….15 students…..14 wrong answers….the only correct was a vet of that war…..in their defense they did not know the name Arafat or Begin…..I would bet that it is not much better these days of the information revolution.

How many people remember a Lt. named Calley?  How many remember a town named My Lai?

When I ask a class of college students how many have heard of My Lai, only a few if any raise their hands, tentatively. Even they are unsure what it was, or where, or when, or who was involved. Why have we forgotten the nadir of the Vietnam War? Is our collective amnesia accidental or willful?

March 16 marks the 50th anniversary of the date that does not live in infamy. Does it for any Americans? In 1968, American soldiers slaughtered animals, raped villagers, and murdered 109 “Oriental human beings” in My Lai. That was the number cited in a court-martial 18 months later.

https://original.antiwar.com/Russell_Vandenbroucke/2018/03/15/my-lai-amnesia-fifty-years-on/

Today is the 50th year anniversary of the massacre……

Americans, including GIs, were losing their once reflexive faith that the U.S. military, with all its skill and firepower, would prevail in Vietnam as it had so often throughout history. Also shattered was the faith that America’s fighting forces were inherently more virtuous than their enemies. The unraveling of that conviction began in earnest in 1969 with the revelation that American soldiers had murdered hundreds of unarmed and unresisting women, children, babies, and old men in the village of My Lai.

For many people, the shocking news came first in the form of several horrifying photographs. One shows almost two dozen dead Vietnamese bodies on a dirt road. Many have fallen in a twisted pile; some are partially naked. Another photograph shows a woman lying in a field with her legs drawn up under her body. Her conical straw hat has flipped off her head. If you look closely you can notice that a large portion of her brain lies exposed beneath the hat.

https://original.antiwar.com/Christian_Appy/2018/03/15/our-boys-50-years-after-the-my-lai-massacre/

To be fair……we must hear from the people that were there….the survivors…..

It was the sweet potato harvest season, so Ha Thi Quy woke up early to find a good spot in the village to dry slices of the delicately flavored tuber to sell.

She noticed some American soldiers in the village, but that didn’t alarm her.

“There are no Vietnamese troops here, so why should they start shooting?” Quy recalled her self-assurance in a bitter question that she still has not found the answer to……

https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnamese-survivors-remember-my-lai-massacre-with-horror-and-confusion-3723079.html

Scars of war are the worse to bear…..

I begin my weekend…..lost in memories to times long ago…..chuq

Vietnam War’s Bloodiest Battle

Your history lesson for today is from the war that I was a participant…..Vietnam.

This is becoming another war that most Americans are trying hard to forget…..it has that in common with the Korean War.

Unfortunately all war is bloody but there are some battles that are more so than others.  So what is the bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War?

Khe San?  Tet?  Hamburger Hill?

None of the above.

1971 and the invasion of Laos will have the dishonor of the title of Vietnam’s bloodiest battle….

Invasion of Laos, 1971: Lam Son 719, author Robert Sander notes, “Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) 1st Corps, appears to have suffered more than 7,500 casualties, and the Communist forces approximately 13,000.”

American losses are harder to estimate. But at least 250 Americans died in support of the operation.

Particularly hard-hit were US Army helicopter crews who suffered more losses than at any similar period during the war.

Despite all this the battle remains understudied.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uncovering-the-story-of-one-of-the-vietnam-wars-bloodiest-battles-2015-1

TET: Who Won?

I’m back!

Did I miss something…..I thought their was a SOTU but watching the news I saw nothing about it other than a comment by the prez on the way out……so what did I miss?

I survived the hospital and surgery….I be home now…..I regret that I was not able to post my article on the 50th anniversary of the TET offensive….31Jan68….I am a day late but according to my father that is where I have always been and a dollar short….

Here we go….was the operation (TET not mine) a dismal failure?

Shortly before 3 a.m. on January 31, 1968, a squad of Vietcong guerrillas blasted a hole in the outer wall of the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, gunned down two American military policemen who tried to stop them, and laid siege to the lightly defended headquarters building where the flag of the United States was officially planted in South Vietnam.

As part of a nationwide wave of surprise attacks by the Communists during the Lunar New Year—the Tet holiday—the resulting six-hour battle was militarily inconsequential. In fact, in strictly military terms, the two-month struggle known as the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the attackers. It ended with the expulsion of the North Vietnamese Army and the southern-based insurgent troops, known in the West as Vietcong, from each place they invaded.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/tet-who-won-99179501/

Personal opinion…..it was a failure but it did show that the US was not ready for forward thinking opponents….it took Giap another five years to win a victory but TET was a rallying call to his troops and in the end he got his desire….Vietnam as one country.
I apologize for being late with this post…..I was  bit pre-occupied.

An Old Killer Arises

Most everyone knows of the problems Viet vets had upon their return from the war zone….PTSD and those damn symptoms of Agent Orange….well a new killer has been discovered after all these years….

A half a century after serving in Vietnam, hundreds of veterans have a new reason to believe they may be dying from a silent bullet—test results show some men may have been infected by a slow-killing parasite while fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The Department of Veterans Affairs this spring commissioned a small pilot study to look into the link between liver flukes ingested through raw or undercooked fish and a rare bile duct cancer, per the AP. It can take decades for symptoms to appear. By then, patients are often in tremendous pain, with just a few months to live. Of the 50 blood samples submitted, more than 20% came back positive or bordering positive for liver fluke antibodies, said Sung-Tae Hong, the tropical medicine specialist who carried out the tests at Seoul National University in South Korea.

“It was surprising,” he said, stressing the preliminary results could include false positives and that the research is ongoing. Though rarely found in Americans, the parasites infect an estimated 25 million people worldwide. Endemic in the rivers of Vietnam, the worms can easily be wiped out with a handful of pills early on, but left untreated they can live for decades without making their hosts sick. Over time, swelling and inflammation of the bile duct can lead to cancer. Jaundice, itchy skin, weight loss, and other symptoms appear only when the disease is in its final stages. The VA study, along with a call by Sen. Chuck Schumer for broader research into liver flukes and vets stricken with the cancer known as cholangiocarcinoma, began after the AP raised the issue last year. About 700 veterans with cholangiocarcinoma have been seen by the VA in the past 15 years.

Just great!  As if these vets did not have enough on their shoulders…..now this….

May you all have a good Sunday…..be well, be safe…..chuq

Vietnam: The Series

I have been reading the reviews of Ken Burns new documentary of the Vietnam War….I will admit as a participant in that action I cannot watch it much without having to turn away.

I think that it is good that the war is being documented and discussed….there is much about that war that need to see the light of day.

All aspects of that war needs to be part of the discussion….not just the perceived “victories”…there are lessons to be learned from the many small defeats that we suffered.

The veterans of that war are starting to disappear and will go the way of the Korean War…..mostly forgotten or ignored for the various reasons….but their stories need to be told and need to be heard.

So far there has been many articles and opinions written about the documentary both pro and con…as there should be….the problem is that too many are watching this series through a prism of “God Bless America”….some sort of misplaced patriotism, if you will.

Not everything that the US attempted in Vietnam was legal and definitely not moral.