Posted on 06/02/2004 9:01:26 AM PDT by Bob J
The years and the war drifted by as I attempted to grow up. Over those years I met General Vann numerous times. I was always over there it seemed. He always greeted me warmly with a handshake and a ‘how are you doing, Rick?’ He already knew how I was doing. My parents liked Pete quite a bit but as they said, the two of us were great kids as long as we weren’t together. When the two of us got together it was usually a bad thing. I’m pretty certain that was what he thought. I didn’t get to know General Vann all that well until much later in life. One thing I discovered was that he was quite aware that the real problem in Vietnam was the government in Saigon. He, unlike the media elites and liberal politicians even of today, understood why we were in Vietnam. Here is one of his comments that I shamefully lifted from the page honoring him at the Arlington Cemetery web page. Here is a section out of a 1965 letter to one of his friends: “If it were not for the fact that Vietnam is but a pawn in the larger East-West confrontation, and that our presence here is essential to deny the resources of the area to communist China, then it would be damned hard to justify our support of the existing government. I am convinced that even though the National Liberation Front is Communist-dominated, that the great majority of the people supporting it are doing so because it is their only hope to change and improve their living conditions and opportunities. If I were a lad of eighteen faced with the same choice-whether to support GVN- Government of Vietnam- or the NLF- and a member of a rural community, I would surely choose the NLF.”
On June 9 1972 Major General John Paul Vann’s helicopter crashed. I remember quite well how upset Pete’s mother was about the loss of the pilot. He had been with General Vann for a very long time. They were pretty tight and it upset her quite a bit that both of them went at the same time. She seemed to be thinking of those the pilot was leaving behind. That is one of the interesting aspects of military families I have noticed. They usually aren’t the type to be thinking of only their needs, but that’s why they join in the first place. Believe me the whole family is part of the military experience.
Pete went to the funeral with the family and when he came back he seemed to be okay. One day we were sitting there listening to the radio and he looked over at me. ‘Conquistador’ by Procol Harem was playing. “If I had to pick a song that summed up this whole thing for me. I mean the funeral, my father’s death and all of it. It would be that one song right there. When I went away for the funeral I didn’t really understand what my dad was all about. Because of that I didn’t have as much respect for him as I should have. And like that song’s words, “although I came to jeer at you… I leave now with respect” I came away with respect.”
To this day I get a little wet in the eyes when I even think of that song. Hearing it is even worse. The feelings are more for Pete, though. At that moment he had understood what his father was. But there is something else. Something I was charged with and the real reason I’m writing all of this.
Pete and I both worked at a gas station together the following year. I got there on the afternoon of June 9 and Pete was gone. There next to the window was the sandwich he had been eating. I looked out the window and I could see a thick plume of black smoke rising up from Daniels Park. I asked the owner of the station where Pete was. He shrugged his shoulders “Pete went home. He’s a little upset right now. He was watching a helicopter flying out there over the park and suddenly it went down and exploded.” The owner went back to being the sensitive and caring guy he usually was. To Pete the coincidence was too much and it rattled him. I could write for days on some of the other coincidences I was aware of.
To be continued…
R.A. Hawkins is the author of "Through Eyes of Shiva", available through http://www.amazon.com/. Visit http://www.entropical-paradise.com/ -- Entropical Paradise - The Home Of R.A. Hawkins for more commentaries and editorials by R.A. Hawkins.
Comments are always welcome. Please send them to ra_hawkins@earthlink.net
© 2004 R.A. Hawkins
Recently I was reading a Vietnam-era book---can't remember the source now---but it was saying that the Vann/Sheehan myth of the Vietnam War was total crap. For ex., it said that Vann's claim that the ARVNs were "cowards" and would "tip off the enemy" so they wouldn't have to spring an ambush was BS---that Vann routinely disregarded ARVN intelligence that showed him exactly where the VC were. The author didn't like Vann at all.
I wish I could recall where I read this stuff about Vann, but the gist of it wasn't very flattering---that he ignored warnings from the ARVNs on one occasion and had them drop right into a very hot zone that killed a lot of them. He denigrated them at the very moment that several ARVN chopper pilots were making runs to hold off the commies and get their guys out. It was a totally different portrait of Vann.
This was about the famous Battle of Ap Bia in 1962 which was built up to show how bad the ARVN were. Vann wanted the tale told to boost the requirement for more US advisors and equipment (and to prove his assessment of the situation was right and the MACV staff appreciation wasn't. The press loved the story becuase it had all the right parts-dogged brave ground soldier, lying staff officers and generals, corrupt worthless US supported anti-communist forces. Sheehan realized later that Vannhad played him as he was trying to play Vann. Hence his censorious tone throughout his mega-epic. Van was shifty and frquently a snake but he could get things done in the snakepit of Viet-Nam. His unprincipled and unconventional methods is what the military establishment disliked. He wasn't any honor, duty, country boy scout but there are times when to defeat evil its not virtue that prevails but a fox against the stoats.
What is interesting, though, is how the journalists would latch on to ONE source (good or bad) and ONLY report what that guy said.
This was the famous David Halberstam/Marguerite Higgins battle, where she actually went into the "bush" and talked to villagers about Diem, and found out he was pretty popular, or, at least, not unpopular. Halberstam, writing almost exclusively from Saigon, only reported what the anti-Diem sources told him.
Bump
Lew Sorley correctly states that Thieu was arguably a better president in his context than LBJ was. In the latter part of the war, after Abrams was put in charge, there were many successes with the ARVN and a number of skillfull eliminations of the corrupt and incompetent leaders and elevations of the more talented and less corrupt. Other than Sorley very few have really examined this. Read "A Better War."
I've seen Sorely extensively in a video series called "The Long Way Home Project." He's very good.
bump
Your second sentence went to the lie that is the premise of this and other pieces by this author. John Paul Vann is buried in Arlinton National Cemetery with our other heroes as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was no Major General in equivalent rank, brevet rank or using monopoly rank. I knew Vann and he was a truthful man when dealing with me. He would be appalled that some tinhorn is trying to make a name and reputation by elevating his rank to one he despised.
Vann died as a civialian while in the pay of an American civilian agency. In no way did any Americans ever command anything Vietnamese in Vietnam.
Even on our Special Forces camp we flew the flag of South Vietnam. Their Special Forces, the Luc Long Dat Biet, were our counterparts and we were their advisors. That would have been the case if they ever left their compound. In their absence, we took care of things. But we did not run up the Stars and Stripes and call the camp an American installation or ourselves commanders of Vietnamese citizens. That entire notion belies why we were in Vietnam.
Given that Vietnam history is such a political minefield, can you gentlemen recommend any works to me? I grew up during the war, and turned 17 three or four months after the last American chopper lifted off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, which remains one of the enduring images of my life. And yet, I know almost nothing reliable about the war.
I had no idea that the military had devoted so much time and print to chronicling the war. Shoulda known, I guess. After all, it now occurs to me, the service academies are the home of so much of our military history.
I couldn't help noticing the name Keith William Nolan. Is he great, or just prolific? I think I'll probably start with Lewis Sorley. I once read a beautiful, lengthy review of his book by Orrin Judd of the brothersjudd.com.
And so, when the final push came, all of these factors came together and created the environment in which the resistance of the South utterly collapsed. Sorley writes movingly about Brigadier General Le Minh Dao, commanding the 18th Infantry Division ARVN, and the valiant resistance he mounted at Xuan Loc. Attacked by first three and then four divisions, the 18th held out for a month, destroying three North Vietnamese divisions before succumbing. The American advisor, Colonel Ray Battreall, said of this action :
"That magnificent last stand deserves to live on in military history, if we can overcome the bias, even in our own ranks, that ARVN was never capable of doing anything right."
If you're looking in textbooks you will have a hard time finding out there was a war in South Vietnam or that there was a South Virtnam. I recently got an opportunity to look at the history textbook of one of my nieces who is in the 9th Grade. The authors of the textbook managed to cover the entire American experience with Vietnam in one paragraph. If you think you're lost - what about the kids reading that paragraph?
History runs in cycles and you have to look for the last good overarching volume to put anything together for you. One of the best of this type is "AFTER TET: The bloodiest year of the war." It is written by Marine Vietnam veteran and PhD holder from Yale, Dr. Ronald Spector. He is still the pre-eminent American historian on Vietnam
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