Índex per April 2021 a Vietnam

ONE FREQUENTLY DEBATED QUESTION of the Vietnam War concerns North Vietnam’s motive for laying siege to the U.S. Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh in northwestern Quang Tri province just south of the Demilitarized Zone and about 10 miles from Laos. Actually, North Vietnam had several motives, some rarely discussed in the literature of the war. Hanoi had short-ng Tet attacksterm, medium-term and long-term reasons for besieging Khe Sanh, a conclusion drawn from both American sources and postwar Vietnamese histories. The short-term goal for the siege, which began Jan. 21, 1968, was to provide a diversion for the communists’ Tet Offensive, which would strike all across South Vietnam the night of Jan. 30-31. The North Vietnamese Army’s 304th and 325th divisions closed in around the Khe Sanh base in early…

ARSENAL On Jan. 21, 1968, the Marines of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, successfully defended Hill 861 protecting Khe Sanh against an assault by two battalions of the North Vietnamese Army. As the shock of combat wore off, some Marines used their “John Wayne” can openers on Cration cans to grab a quick meal. The P-38 can opener was one of the troops’ most important pieces of field gear in Vietnam. The can opener was included with every case of C rations. The P-38, first used on a large scale with the widespread distribution of C-ration cans during World War II, consisted of a short, notched sheet-metal handle with a small hinged blade that rotated to pierce the can lid. The C ration’s World War II colleague, the…

In April 1968, after arriving in Vietnam as a 22-year-old private first class from Dover, Delaware, and being processed through the 90th Replacement Battalion, I reported to my permanent unit, the 199th Infantry Brigade, nicknamed “The Redcatchers” because it was activated in 1966 to destroy the communists in South Vietnam. The new arrivals went through a week called “Redcatcher Training,” conducted at the 199th Infantry Brigade main base at Long Binh, about 20 miles northeast of Saigon. During that week we fired the M16 rifle, M79 grenade launcher, M60 machine gun and M72 light anti-tank weapon, or LAW, a rocket launcher. We had to become proficient with every weapon our platoon would carry. We had done all these things during advanced infantry training in the States, but some of us…

In a sense, the court-martial of 1st Lt. William Laws Calley Jr. started in front of my desk at Infantry Hall, the headquarters and academic center of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was late Wednesday morning on Sept. 5, 1969. Col. Earl C. Acuff, deputy assistant commandant of the school and the man charged with running its day-to-day operations, was breathless after his swift descent down the stairs from the office of the school’s commandant, Maj. Gen. Orwin C. Talbott, one floor above. It wasn’t like Acuff to be huffing and out of breath. A master parachutist, he wore the Combat Infantryman Badge with two stars, denoting service as an infantryman in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. During the Korean War, the ROTC graduate…

Taking Fire!: Memoir of an Aerial Scout in Vietnam By David L. Porter McFarland, 2020 MEDIA DIGEST Undoubtedly, most Vietnam War helicopter pilots would consider any mission they flew without drawing enemy fire to be a resounding success. But not David L. Porter and his fellow U.S. Army aerial scout pilots flying daring “hunter-killer” combat missions. They would deem missions with “no enemy fire” to be dismal failures. The scout pilots’ raison d’etre was to tempt enemy ground troops and anti-aircraft gunners to fire at the vulnerable scout “hunter” light observation helicopters, or LOH, thereby exposing enemy positions to attack by the scout’s “killer” partners—typically heavily armed AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships. In effect, aerial scout helicopters were the hunter-killer missions’ “juicy bait” dangled tantalizingly in front of enemy ground troops…

FEEDBACK I very much enjoyed your Shake ‘n Bake article in the December 2020 issue [about a fast-paced Army program to train sergeants for Vietnam]. I was in Company B, 1st Battalion. 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. You covered our unit in an April 2018 article about Operation Pegasus [in April 1968]. Prior to that battle we had received a large group of badly needed replacements, including two Shake ‘n Bake sergeant E-5s. [lowest sergeant level]. Our three rifle platoons were being led by draftee sergeant E-5s, no lifers, no officers at the platoon level. I was platoon leader for 2nd Platoon and was assigned one of the new sergeants. Until I read your article I had no idea of the training they went through. I believed then and do…

North and South Vietnam, although dramatically different in their governments and economy, were almost identical in their physical size and population. In square miles, South Vietnam was slightly larger than Florida, the 22nd largest state. North Vietnam was slightly larger than Georgia, the 24th largest state. In a 1960 census, North and South both had populations roughly the same as California, the second-most populous state at the time. Today, the unified Vietnam is 1 27,881 square miles, slightly larger than New Mexico, the 5th largest state. Vietnam’s population in July 2020 was 97.3 million, according to a United Nations estimate, roughly 2½ times the estimated July 2020 population of California, now the most populous state. SOURCES: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK; VIETNAM STUDIES, U.S. ARMY ENGINEERS 1965-1970, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, 1973;…

March 8 Undefeated heavyweight champ Joe Frazier and undefeated Muhammad Ali, stripped of his title in 1967 for refusing the draft, meet in New York’s Madison Square Garden after Ali’s boxing license is reinstated. In the “fight of the century,” viewed by 300 million worldwide, Frazier defeats Ali in a unanimous 15-round decision. March 12 Theaters begin showing The Andromeda Strain, based on Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel about scientists trying to contain a deadly extraterrestrial organism. The book and movie are credited with launching the techno-thriller—a suspenseful plot with a big role for technology. April 1 The first Starbucks opens in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. That Starbucks was just a store where people could buy roasted and whole-bean coffee to brew at home. In 1984 Starbucks introduced an espresso bar…

On the night of April 28, 2009, two former adversaries from the Vietnam War gave a double presentation at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Thirty-seven years earlier, they had engaged in a life-and-death struggle over North Vietnam. But on that night in 2009, former enemies Dan Cherry and Nguyen Hong My stood together as friends to recount the remarkable events that led to this unlikely moment. Edward Daniel Cherry, born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1939, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in July 1959. After completing flight training in 1965, he was assigned to the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing in Spangdahlem, West Germany, flying the Republic F-105D Thunderchief fighter-bomber. From January through August 1967, Cherry flew 100 combat missions over North Vietnam in F-105Ds with the…

Two decades after North Vietnamese troops forced Saigon to surrender and unified North and South under communist rule, the United States and Vietnam gingerly took first steps toward reconciliation. In early 1995, before full diplomatic relations were established, the U.S. State Department set up a liaison office in Hanoi to search for joint projects to foster dialog that might be the foundation for broader cooperation. The two former enemies settled on an international drug control program as a pathway toward normalizing relations. In essence, they decided to join forces in the war on drugs. Like the U.S., Vietnam had a serious problem with illegal drugs—a plague in both their houses. U.S. officials designated Bob Gelbard, the State Department’s top executive for international drug and law enforcement matters, and Steve Greene,…

Agent Orange benefits will now be available to Vietnam veterans suffering from three illnesses not previously eligible for the benefits. The National Defense Authorization Act, passed Jan. 1, 2021, gives “presumptive” benefits status to bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinson’s-like symptoms. Presumptive status means that veterans who served on the ground or in the waters of Vietnam do not have to provide documentation to prove they were exposed to Agent Orange. The Department of Veterans Affairs presumes that specified diseases among Vietnam vets are linked to Agent Orange because the poisonous herbicide was sprayed widely across South Vietnam to kill jungle vegetation that offered food and cover for communist forces. An estimated 83,000 Vietnam veterans suffer from the three conditions now eligible for Agent Orange benefits, according to Military Times. Most…

REFLECTIONS A company of the 3rd Marine Division was patrolling in South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley on Feb. 22, 1969, when it was ambushed. A mortar round struck the command group, seriously wounding the platoon leader and others. A young first lieutenant, Lee Roy Herron, found himself in charge. Pfc. Terry Presgrove, hurt in the mortar blast, explained what happened next. “Lee came up to me shortly after the mortar had hit in our midst. I was lying on my back on top of another wounded Marine.” Screaming above the roar of the firefight, “Lee knelt down and asked me where my battle dressing was, seeing that I was bleeding.” The two men exchanged a few words. Then, Presgrove recounted, Herron “used the only four-letter word I ever heard him…

”Not before in my lifetime—and I was born into the Army in the nineteenth century—has the Army’s public image suffered so many grievous blows and fallen to such low esteem in such wide areas of our society,” began an op-ed piece in The New York Times on April 2, 1971, by retired four-star Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway. Ridgway—born March 3, 1895, at Fort Monroe, Virginia, as the son of an artillery colonel—continued: “This is of national relevance, though it portrays but one of many manifestations of the spiritual malaise presently pervading all levels of our people, and for the first time, to my knowledge, all armed forces ranks.” The essay, titled “The Ordeal of the Army,” was published just days after the longest court-martial in U.S. military history (more than…

When he humped the boonies as an infantryman in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, James Allen Logue carried a rifle, a rucksack and a Nikonnos 35 mm camera. He dropped his camera as firefights erupted, but in camps, in villages, in sunshine and rain he snapped images of the countryside, civilians and fellow citizen-soldiers of Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). In the field and on a mountaintop base, Landing Zone West in northern South Vietnam’s Quang Tin province, Jim shot more than 2,500 black-and-white and color images that decades later would help save his life when he and I embarked on a long journey together. After Jim’s four-decade photography career, his Vietnam photographs, long filed away, helped drive back the…

HALL OF VALOR Donald Sidney Skidgel craved excitement and adventure. Born in Caribou, Maine, on Oct. 13, 1948, and raised in a rural area of Plymouth, he loved the outdoors and became an avid hunter. Bored with school, he dropped out at 16 and worked in Connecticut but returned to rural Maine in his free time to speed over rough, dirt-covered roads on his motorcycle. At age 18, Skidgel married and started a family. Still seeking adventure, he tried to join the military in 1967. However, at that point in the war neither the Army nor the Marine Corps wanted a married man with one child and another on the way. That changed with the communist Tet Offensive in January 1968 and the consequent buildup of U.S. forces in Vietnam.…