Vietnam? Where and the hell is that?

I was just finishing my first year at Oregon State College and living as a fledgling pledge at Delta Chi Fraternity. Pledges such as myself had to follow strict dress code for different days of the week: suits - ties, slacks - sports coats - ties, slacks - dress shirts - ties, and casual, while serving dinner to the members four days a week (members had the same dress code rules). However, on Friday night (aka hell night), everyone (members and pledges) was allowed to dress super casual (some took it to the extreme such as jockstraps and “wife-beater” under-shirts; or not), and dinner was no holds barred. The presence of upperclassmen was usually low, for a great share of them were out and about doing their thing. It was an unusually hot that night for that time of the year, and the very informal dinner erupted into a water fight launched by four of us pledges; and after we had expended our supply of our water balloons, we took it outside to the lawn. There, we had set up an ambush for the few members that remained with some buckets of water, and I had commandeered a water hose to ward off an attack by the upperclassmen. By that time, both sides were soaked and covered with mud from what used to be a lawn which had turned into a swamp when someone shouted “Time out!” All at once, for some strange reason, everyone stopped in place, remaining stark-still, and there was a pause of deadly silence. Then we could hear a short-wave radio broadcast blaring from an open window on the second floor. Someone turned the radio up, and we could hear some kind of an on-site news report with a real-time battle in the background with the thunder of bombs, artillery explosions, and other dins of war.

Điện Biên Phủ

The broadcast highlighted the heroic actions of Geneviève de Galardc, a nurse and officer in the French medical service, one of 15 French female nurses who had been tending the wounded on the multiple med-evac flights out of Điện Biên Phủ but became stranded when her assigned plane was being repaired on the runway. The runway, the plane, and the airport had been all destroyed by intense anti-aircraft and artillery fire. Geneviève had been dubbed l'ange de ofĐiện Biên Phủ (the Angel of Dien Bien Phu)1 by the press and other media in Hanoi, although in the camp, she was known simply as Geneviève. At the time she was the sole “French” woman there² and continued tending the wounded in the field hospital until the last. After a two-month siege, the garrison was overrun on May 7, 1954. The coup de grâce came when an all-out human-wave attack was launched against the remaining 3,000 French units by over 25,000 communist Việt Minh. The last words of the radio broadcaster were, "The enemy has overrun us. We are blowing up everything. Vive la France!" ³  “This is ‘…’ reporting from Điện Biên Phủ, in Northwestern Vietnam; it’s May 7, 1954!” It was a broadcast of the fall of Điện Biên Phủ -- the last bastion of the colonial French forces in Indochina, lost to the communist Vietminh and Chinese. 

The four of us who had been listening to the broadcast, almost in unison, cried out, Vietnam! Where in the hell is that? I then said I know whose radio we were listening to; it was my friend Serge’s. Let’s go, so we can find out from him where Vietnam is and took off for the second floor. Serge was sitting at his desk with a geography book in his hand when we showed up dripping wet with muddy shoes. Much to his chagrin, he invited us in, and after ensuring my hands were clean and dry, he handed it to me, already bookmarked to the section on Vietnam. Serge was a STRACK-brevet-captain in the army’s ROTC program.4 I thanked him, and we read the section on Vietnam and its location, and we got educated – it was the first time any of us had heard of it or that it was one of three countries of the French Colony of Indochina. The next day, I went to the school library to see if they had any books on Vietnam. They had none on hand; however, the librarian said if I came back in a couple of days, she might be able to find one or two that she could obtain on-loan from another library. Unfortunately, the one she had for me was written by a guy who had been on an official three-week whirl-wind tour of Indochina with five days with boots on the ground in each country in French Indochina – Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.⁵

Two weeks after the fall of Saigon, on May 12, 1975, Khmer Rouge in an American-made PCF Swift gunboat seized the U.S. merchant ship SS Mayaguez and its crew in Cambodian waters. After the U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam and the abandonment of the three countries of former Indochina, a number of conservative politicians and intellectuals in the United States had begun to question America’s “credibility” in the international field, suggesting that this would encourage enemies around the world to challenge America with seeming impunity. The Cambodian seizure of the Mayaguez appeared to be just such a challenge. President Gerald Ford denounced the seizure as an "act of piracy" and demanded immediate release of the ship.

President Ford, goaded by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believed that the ship’s seizure provided an opportunity for the United States “to prove that others will be worse off if they tackle us, and not that they can return to the status quo. It is not enough to get the ship’s release.” One Pentagon official told Newsweek at the time, “Henry Kissinger was determined to give the Khmer Rouge a bloody nose.” This in a way would be comparable to baseball’s traditional contemptuous gesture of kicking dirt on the umpire’s shoes after he had said, “You’re out of here!” They also wanted to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing Pueblo incident of 1968, where failure to promptly use military force to halt the capture of the U.S. intelligence ship by North Korea led to an eleven-month hostage situation.

On instructions from the President, Kissinger tried to send a message to the Chinese Liaison Office in Washington demanding the immediate release of Mayaguez and her crew; however, it was refused. Kissinger then instructed George H. W. Bush, head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, to deliver the note to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and to pass on an oral message that “The Government of the United States demands the immediate release of the vessel and of the full crew. If that release does not immediately take place, the authorities in Phnom Penh will be responsible for the consequences.”

The SS Mayaguez

The SS Mayaguez, owned by Sea-Land Service Inc., was the first all-container U.S. flag ship in foreign trade. Beginning in 1965, the SS Mayaguez sailed a regular route for Sea-Land Services in support of American forces in Southeast Asia: Hong Kong -- Sattahip, Thailand -- Singapore. On May 7, 1975, about a week after the fall of Saigon, the Mayaguez left Hong Kong on a routine voyage carrying 107 containers of routine cargo, 77 containers of government and military cargo, and 90 empty containers -- all insured for $5 million. The exact contents of the 77 containers have never been disclosed, but the Mayaguez had loaded containers from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon just nine days before the fall of Saigon. There was speculation that some may have contained arms and ammunition. Nevertheless, during the entire incident the Khmer Rouge did not search the containers.

The crisis began on the afternoon of May 12, 1975, as the Mayaguez en route to Sattahip, Thailand, was allegedly sailing in a regular shipping lane in the Gulf of Siam about 60 miles from the coast of Cambodia, and about 8 miles from the Poulo Wai Islands.

The ancient symbolic four-faced sandstone Bayon is thought by some Cambodians to represent simplicity, compassion, equanimity and wisdom, virtues lacking in those involved in the factional struggles of the communists in Cambodia. A symbolic Bayon for the Khmer Rouge would have only two faces, that of the barbaric and amoral genocidal “year zero” Pol Pot Khmer  Rouge (PP-KR), and that of the murderous Viet-Minh Khmer Rouge (VM-KR). Equanimity may have been relevant to the

Cambodian culture and society during the Ankor Wat era centuries ago, but not during the past hundred years.

The VM-KR was a mixed bag of Vietnamese NVA and VC, Khmer Krom, and other Cambodian Khmer conscripts, as well as Vietminh holdovers from the French Indochina War. All were under the command of Hanoi. Before French colonization of Indochina, the Mekong Delta was part of the greater Cambodia Empire – Kampuchea Krom (comprising a great portion of the fertile Mekong Delta) - and (what today) is Northeast Thailand. On June 4, 1949, the French formerly annexed Kampuchea Krom and made it a separate protectorate called Cochin China. After the 1954 Geneva Conference dismantled French Indochina, Kampuchea Krom (the Mekong Delta) formally became part of the Republic of Viet Nam. By that time, Kampuchea Krom was populated by large numbers of Vietnamese.

Ironically, Ho Chi Minh set conditions for future Khmer Rouge when he formed the Indochina communist party in the 1930s, and although somewhat separate, three distinct branches were structured for Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia with the Machiavellian Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese associates dominating. It wasn’t long before many of the Cambodians began to realize that they were being duped by their centuries’ old arch-enemy the Vietnamese, led by the manipulative Ho. His intent was to replace French Indochina colonial rule of three countries with Vietnamese communist party control. Cambodian communist party members therefore split into two factions: 1) Those who felt they owed their loyalty to Ho and his communist party after receiving political indoctrination in communist ideology and military training, remained in the North Viet Nam and became part of the Vietminh against the French. The Vietminh was a “tri-nation force” fighting the French, with Ho and his henchmen at the helm. Anyone

who showed independent nationalistic leadership characteristics were eliminated. Those Cambodians who survived Ho’s purges, and did not trust Ho and the Vietnamese, went south into the jungles of Cambodia, later to evolve and morph into the xenophobic, ground zero Pol Pot Khmer Rouge which gained support from China.

By Mike Benge, POW, VVFH Founding Member

The only similarity between Francis Ford Coppola’s film set-in South-East Asia and Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness” set in Africa is that both had rivers winding through them and both had major characters named Kurtz. And, oh yes, Coppola copied Conrad’s style of telling stories within a story. Coppola’s 1979 film “Apocalypse Now” makes a mockery of the geography of Vietnam and Cambodia by depicting the Mekong River as running through the jungles of Northwest Cambodia. Captain Benjamin L. Willard’s, played by Martin Sheen, odyssey portrays him powering up one river and drifting down another in his relentless quest to find the reclusive Colonel Kurtz (Marlin Brando) in the heart of Cambodia and assassinate him. (Senator John Kerry would have been a great advisor for this portion of the movie, given his claimed expertise and fantasy in navigating this area in Cambodia – A figment of his imagination. What Coppola produced was an epic messy abortion regurgitated from the hallucinatory nightmare in his mind – the Vietnam War. 

Anthropologist Dr. Gerald Cannon Hickey – Gerry to his friends – was the most knowledgeable scholar on the Montagnards of the Central Highlands in Vietnam. One day Gerry received a phone call from Francis Ford Coppola’s production manager, who wanted to hire him as a consultant on that portion of his film pertaining to Montagnards. Gerry had no patience for the likes of Coppola and wanted nothing to do with his brand of movie madness; besides that, he was in the middle of writing yet another book on the Montagnards. He knew that I was on sabbatical from USAID, which had broken its contract to fund my Master’s Degree at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, and suggested they contact me for the job, adding, “Mike knows more about the Montagnards than you’ll ever need to know.”  

They took Gerry’s suggestion and offered me the job at a salary much higher than what I was making with USAID, and sweetened the pot by providing a Crown Toyota and a chauffeur to drive me to and from the set each day. I lived near the University only a few miles away from the shooting location. I decided this would be a good break from my intense Master’s research. At first, I was intrigued by what was going on, but I soon realized it was more make-believe than any semblance of the reality of the Vietnam War, and many of the film’s so-called expert advisors were as phony as a $3 bill. 

My first encounter with this was at a humongous evening outdoor picnic-style buffet with lighted lanterns given in honor of Martin Sheen, who decided not to come to the party. I was following Coppola through the line as he described one scene involving the Montagnards. As Captain Willard is floating down a river in a boat, as, he drifts around a bend and looking through field glasses a scene evolves with a group of Montagnard men dancing around a woman giving birth. As they circle around, each, in turn, pushes on her abdomen in a ritualistic aid to help force the baby out. I asked Coppola, “Where in the hell did you get this idea? The birth of a Montagnard child is a private affair attended only by women.” He replied that his personal pilot had seen this when he was a helicopter pilot stationed in the Central Highlands. “Bullshit!” I retorted. He then told me to turn around and ask the pilot, who was standing right behind me. He was pretty impressive, a big guy, standing at least 6 foot 3 or 4, buff, and didn’t seem all that pleased with my comment. I thought to myself,” Holy shit!” Not backing down one iota, I quickly asked, “Where were you stationed?” He replied, “Pleiku.” I then asked, “What were you doing?” He replied, “I was an Army helicopter pilot.” By then Coppola was standing beside me, when I said, “I’ve three questions for you.” Coppola was listening intensely, either to what I was asking, or perhaps just waiting for a clue to what would provoke his pilot to take a poke at me. I then asked, “What was the name of the base you flew out of and what aviation company was stationed there? He hemmed and hawed, and finally said, “I can’t, a don’t, remember.” To which I emphatically said, “Strike one!” I then turned to Coppola and said, “Everyone who was there knew the name, Camp Holloway – about 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) west of Pleiku – for it was named after Chief Warrant Officer Charles E. Holloway, who in December 1962 became the first helicopter pilot killed in action. Camp Holloway was the home of the U.S. Army’s 52nd Combat Aviation Battalion.” I turned back to the pilot and asked, “If you flew out of Pleiku, what was the most distinctive visual landmark from the air?” He couldn’t seem to remember that either. I then forcefully said, “Strike two!” Again, I turned back to Coppola and told him, “The landmark was Pussy Peak. Every pilot who ever flew in Vietnam knew that. The Vietnamese called it “Dragon Mountain” (a contraction of Dragon's Mouth Mountain - Núi Hàm Rồng in Vietnamese) and the Montagnards called it Chu H’Drung. The American name came from the fact that it was shaped like a woman’s torso, with two ridges coming down taking the shape of legs cut off at the knees, with a triangle patch of trees nestled in the crotch of the mountain. It was the major landmark for the dogleg flight pattern from Saigon to Hue. I then addressed the pilot once more, “I have one last question, remember it’s ‘three strikes and you’re out.” “What was the name of the Montagnard tribe in Pleiku that was supposedly conducting this ritual?” Again, he seemed not to remember, so I prompted him with, “Was it the Cao Đài, the Hòa Hảo, or the Nung?” (None of which were Montagnard tribes in South Viet Nam, the later was a tribe for North Vietnam.)  He thought for a while and then with a stammer he emphatically replied, “The Hoa Hao, that’s it, they were called the Hoa Hao.” I ardently told the pilot, “Strike three, you’re out of here!”  Turning my back on him, I said to Coppola, “Your pilot is a liar. The Hoa Hao is a religious sect, not a Montagnard tribe, and I doubt if he was ever in Vietnam. If so, he was a REMF and got his story out of a gin bottle in some bar in Saigon.” The crowd at the buffet had grown quiet, listening to our conversation and waiting for Coppola to explode; but for some reason, he didn’t. Surprisingly, giving the devil his due, Coppola dropped the scene from the movie, nor did the pilot deck me and he kept flying for Coppola. This was my introduction to Coppola’s delusional world.  

By Michael Benge

The communist Hukbong Laban sa Hapon (Anti-Japanese Army) or simply Huks, comprised mainly of disenfranchised peasant tenant-farmers of Central Luzon, was only one of several guerrilla groups resisting the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Philippines. The Huks were well received by the villagers and were seen as their protector from the abuses of the Japanese. There were many motivations for people to join: nationalism, empathy, survival, and revenge. Those who could not join the guerrilla army joined the underground government via its “secretly converted neighborhood associations”, called Barrio United Defense Corps. The Huks also tried to recruit beyond Central Luzon but were not as successful.

On March 29, 1942, the communist Hukbong Laban sa Hapon (Huks) was incorporated into a broad-based united front of guerrillas named the -- Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon (Hukbalahap) -- "The Nation's Army Against the Japanese"). Soon after, its representatives met with USAFFE (United States Army Forces in the Far East) representative Colonel Thorpe at Camp Sanchez in the spring of 1942, and under this umbrella, the conferees agreed to cooperate, share equipment and supplies, with the Americans providing trainers under USAFFE’s overall command.Although the communist Huks fought the Japanese, at times, they also fought other guerrilla units under USAFFE as well as killed, pillaged and plundered other Filipino nationalists. Their methods were often portrayed by other guerrilla leaders as terrorists; for example, “Ray C. Hunt, an American who led his own band of 3000 guerrillas, said his experiences with the communist Huks were always unpleasant, they were much better assassins than soldiers.” Tightly disciplined and led by fanatics, they murdered Filipino landlords and drove others off to the comparative safety of Manila. They were not above plundering and torturing ordinary Filipinos, and they were treacherous enemies of all other guerrillas on Luzon. The initial force of 500 armed Huks was organized into five squadrons and “by late summer 1943, Huk leadership claimed to have a fully armed guerrilla force of 5,000 to 20,000 active men and women military fighters and 50,000 more in reserve. By August 1948, the Huks became a trained and experienced force, well-equipped and well-prepared for its guerrilla warfare. Their weaponry was obtained primarily by stealing it from battlefields and downed planes left behind by the Japanese, Filipinos, and Americans. The Huks also created a training school where they taught political theory and military tactics based on Marxist ideas. In areas that the group controlled, they set up local governments and instituted land reforms, dividing up the largest estates equally among the peasants and often killing the landlords.” Among the group's leaders were figurehead Luis Taruc, communist party Secretary General Jesus Lava, and Commander Hizon (Benjamin Cunanan) who aimed to lead the Philippines toward Marxist ideals and communist revolution.

After the surrender of Japan in WWII and the withdrawal of its forces from the Philippines, most of the guerrilla groups disbanded and went home, or were absorbed into the Philippine Constabulary (civilian police) or the Army. The aftermath of the liberation from Japan was characterized by chaos. The paternal relationship of the large landowners toward the tenant farmers had been virtually destroyed during the war, and life was economically unsustainable for the peasants who had joined the Huks. Moreover, the poor harvest between late 1945 to early 1946 period not only exacerbated the plight of the Huks, it also further intensified the gap between the tenants and the landlords. Added to this, the Huks being a communist-led group were considered to be disloyal and were not accorded U.S. recognition or benefits at the end of the war. Their hardships were aggravated by the hostility they experienced when the Philippine Government, following orders from the United States of America, disarmed and arrested the communist Huks. Harassment and abuses against peasant activists became common. Largely consisting of peasant farmers, the Huks feared for their lives as the USAFFE and the Philippine Constabulary (civilian police) hunted them down. In September 1946, the Huks retreated to the Sierra Madre Mountains and their guerrilla lifestyle as a response to supposed maltreatment by the government and renamed themselves Hukbong Magpapalaya ng Bayan (HMB) or People's Liberation Army.

Although the communist Huks were only one of a plethora of guerrilla groups in the umbrella organization Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon (Hukbalahap) -- "The Nation's Army Against the Japanese"), originally formed to fight the Japanese. However, in 1946 in what became known as the Hukbalahap Rebellion, the communist Huks extended their fight into a rebellion against the Philippine Government and usurped the Hukbalahap name in an attempt to play off on its patriotic reputation and create a charade of legitimacy among the peasants. Adding to this deception, the Huks claimed that it had extended its guerrilla warfare campaign merely in search of recognition as World War II freedom fighters and former American and Filipino allies who deserved a share of war reparations. In reality, the communist Huks insurrection was but an attempt to take over the entire Philippines. The rebellion lasted for years, with huge civilian casualties.

In 1949, the Huks ambushed and murdered Aurora Quezon, Chairman of the Philippine Red Cross and widow of the Philippines' second president Manuel L. Quezon, as she was in route to her hometown for the dedication of the Quezon Memorial Hospital.  Several others were also killed, including her eldest daughter and son-in-law. This attack brought worldwide condemnation of the Hukbalahap, who claimed that the attack was done by "renegade" members.

The continuing condemnation and new post-war causes of the movement forced the Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP) in 1950 to reconstitute the organization as the armed wing of a revolutionary party and change the official name to Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB) or "Peoples' Liberation Army"; likely changing it in emulation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Notwithstanding this name change, the HMB continued to be popularly known as the Hukbalahap, and the English-speaking press and the U.S. Army command continued to refer to it and its members, interchangeably, as "The Huks" during the whole period between 1945 and 1952, and commentators have continued to do so since then.

The start of the 1950s saw the beginning of the rebellion's decline. There was general weariness among the people from years of fighting.  Many prominent Huk leaders either had died or were too old to fight, and those that remained were few. To make things worse, the villagers of Central Luzon showed signs of becoming weary of supporting them or just saw them as irrelevant. Public sympathies for the movement began waning due to their postwar attacks. The Huks carried out a campaign of raids, holdups, robbery, ambushes, murder, rape, massacre of small villages, kidnapping, and intimidation. The Huks confiscated funds and property to sustain their movement and relied on small village organizers for political and material support. Nevertheless, from Central Luzon, the Huk movement had spread to the central provinces of Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, Bulacan, and in Nueva Vizcaya, Pangasinan, Laguna, Bataan, and Quezon.

Readers note: The following was written in 2007 in response to a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times discussing American atrocities in Vietnam.  The author is a founding member of VVFH and a Vietnam Veteran and has given his permission to reproduce the article here.

By Bill Laurie

The recent Los Angeles Times article on U.S. Military atrocities in Viet Nam should only be the beginning of a comprehensive investigation of war crimes and unwarranted brutality in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. This has never been done and is long over due.  Culmination of such a study would produce results not expected by the American public, misinformed as they have been about Viet Nam.

That said, let's consider the report the L.A. Times examined. It reports 7 massacres resulting in 137 civilians killed, along with 78 other attacks killing 57 civilians, and 141 instances of torture. A total of 320 incidents are in the Army report, and another 500 alleged atrocities that were either unproven or were otherwise discounted. Altogether, there are 820 cited instances, and at least 194 civilians killed. These exclude My Lai so the total civilian atrocity death toll is presumably about 694. This is far less than the 36,000 Viet Namese assassinated by the communists, and that is an absolute minimum, exclusive of combat fatalities.

During the American involvement there were approximately 900 infantry platoons in Viet Nam at the high point, excluding Naval riverine, combat engineers, artillery, armor, and other units exposed to combat. These infantry platoons, excluding other unit types cited above, spent in the order of 729,000 platoon-days in the field, involving about 22 million man days in the field. In other words, 729,000 daily opportunities for platoons to commit war crimes, and a total of 22 daily million opportunities for an individual to commit an atrocity. The Army report cited by the L.A. Times suggests 820 atrocities occurred and even if these extended over a two-day period, meaning 1,640 "atrocity days," it would represent 0.22% of total platoon days, or 2 out of 1000. Most vile atrocities, even My Lai, took place in one day, so the ratio is somewhere between 1: 1,000 and 2:1,000. For individuals the incidence is similarly low. Presuming 15 people were involved with each of the 820 atrocities, and these occurred on one day, the individual atrocity-day equals 12,300, or .0006, 6 out of 10,000. If riverine, engineer, artillery and other were included, the "atrocity rate" would plunge even further. No apologies made for what might appear to be obscene McNamarian number-juggling; it is simply a means to show that barbaric behavior, as measured by the report's own data, was not a common occurrence and these disgusting examples do not come close to representing the whole. It's also called "analysis," something reporters are supposed to do, and most often do not. In the interest of honesty and historical integrity, it must be added that atrocities, per se, were not the full extent of the problem. There were simply too many, however much a minority, Americans who behaved with crass rudeness and sometimes drunken-or stoned-grotesque idiocy. The US government is culpable, as is the military, for not properly training troops on Viet Nam's intricacies(it is doubtful if many in government knew enough to teach anything) and the utmost importance of dignified and civilized behavior in dealings with the people of Viet Nam.

This was and is not a mere rhetorical statement. The Viet Namese people were and are my friends. In two instances of inexcusably rude and disgusting American behavior I physically threatened the American perpetrators with instant violent retribution; they stopped their rancid and utterly intolerable obnoxiousness. I, along with several others, also initiated an investigation of wrong-doing which we knew would destroy the career, deservedly so, of a U.S. Army "lifer" NCO whose actions were a disgrace to the uniform he wore, and to his country.