At the Bloody Dawn of the Vietnam War

New York Times ^ | November 13, 2015 | By NEIL SHEEHAN

[Brad from Tennessee]

A FEW weeks ago, an archivist at The New York Times discovered a small trove of photographs I’d taken 50 years ago while covering the first major clash of the Vietnam War between the American and North Vietnamese Armies. Though I had written about the battle for The Times, and later in my book “A Bright Shining Lie,” I’d completely forgotten about the photographs. Seeing them brought back a cascade of memories of one of my most extraordinary days as a young war correspondent. From Our Advertisers

It was Nov. 15, 1965, in the valley of the Ia Drang in the wild mountains of the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. That spring, the Saigon government had begun collapsing under the combined blows of the Vietcong guerrillas and the regular North Vietnamese Army units infiltrating down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos. To save his Vietnamese protégés, President Lyndon B. Johnson had launched what became the big American War in Vietnam. The combined military might of the United States — the infantry of the Army and the Marines, the warplanes of the Air Force and the Navy’s carrier fleets — was arriving as fast as it could be assembled.

That evening, I telephoned The Times’s Saigon bureau to let them know what I would be writing. Charlie Mohr, the other reporter in the bureau and my boss, told me to head back up to Pleiku, the principal town and major air base in the Highlands, right away. The “Air Cav,” as the Army’s newest division was called, was apparently in a hell of a fight with N.V.A. units near there. . .

[Darteaus94025]

Inside the NYT building late Saturday:

“Oh NO!! ISIS is killing a bunch of frogs. That’s going to dominate the headlines for the next week! We’re going to need to run somthing on Vietnam, Nixon or Bush. What have we got with pictures that’s ready to go.”

[PROCON]

We Vietnam vets went to Vietnam because our country called us there, because we believed in the greater cause of Americas need to alleviate that continent of the Communist scum.

We didn't fail, American politicians failed us.

They, and so many others who fought in Vietnam, were as great as any generation that preceded them. Their misfortune was to draw a bad war, an unnecessary war, a mistake by American politicians and statesmen, for which they paid.

It wasn't an unnecessary war, asshole, it was a war we were never allowed to win.

FU LBJ, FU Robert McNamara.

45+ years and I'm still pissed.

Welcome Home to my Brothers who returned.

To the OTHERS who didn't make it home.....My Country still hasn't given you a proper apology.

[PROCON]

Ping.

[Pelham]

“It wasn’t an unnecessary war, asshole, it was a war we were never allowed to win.”

Worth repeating. The only politician who took winning it seriously was Barry Goldwater, whom LBJ and the mainstream press characterized as a lunatic.

[Alberta's Child]

I’m always amazed at how easily Americans have allowed themselves to be duped into supporting these stupid military campaigns after Vietnam. I would have thought we’d never forget that our lives should be based on an utter distrust of our political leadership who would send someone else’s family members to fight a half-assed war that the politicians had no interest in winning ... halfway around the world in some Third World sh!t-hole.

[meatloaf]

Very well said. Many today have accepted the lie about Vietnam. We were not allowed to win.

[Larry Lucido]

Amen.

[HippyLoggerBiker]

Rave On, Brother, Rave On...

(Words from a song I Used to hear when I was in the USMC)

Semper Fi !!!

[Intolerant in NJ]

mistake by American politicians and statesmen...American politicians like Nixon stuck with the war and all but had it won until other politicians - specifically the Democrats in the Senate - threw it away by refusing to provide the military funding and equipment which had been promised to the south, and the deluge was on....

[spintreebob]

Sorry. The Vietnam War did not start in 1965. The anti-communist Vietnamese were fighting it constantly since they lost N Vietnam. Eisenhower had a few “advisors” there who fought but were sworn to never admit it. Kennedy sent 50,000 in 1961. By 1964 election there were double that number of Americans in Vietnam.

If you want to see early photos of the war, see the photos of people like Griebenow and Rexcillius and other like them. I mention those two because I saw their photos in the 50s and early 60s.

[RicocheT]

I read Sheehan’s book, Bright Shining Lie, years ago and it had many truths in it on Pres. Kennedy’s & Johnson’s mistakes in getting our US into the Vietnam mess. I was of draft age then but gamed the deferments to keep my coward a$$ out of the military. I’m not proud of that.

[libertylover]

Why did we sent troops to fight in Vietnam?
To try to prevent from happening what happened, i.e., people living without freedoms.

The left are racists with respect to that war. They were willing to fight in WWII so that the French have freedoms, but not Vietnamese “gooks”.

Mainly they were( are) just selfish and wanted to smoke dope and screw without consequences; unwilling to help others.

[Prospero]

FU ..Robert McNamara

Dead on!

fast forward to 1975..quoting Gerald Ford:

"Congress lost its guts."

[Retain Mike]

We won that war three times. I use “we” to define those of my generation like me who fought there. Well, actually we won it the first time and the ARVN won it in Tet and March of 1972 when crushed they the NVA mechanized army that came down highway one. In each case Democrat politicians snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The first time was when his Joint Chiefs of Staff told Johnson what was required and he impolitely told them to go to hell as follows. A link to the entire article follows, which I first saw published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.

“Seemingly deep in thought, President Johnson turned his back on them for a minute or so, then suddenly discarding the calm, patient demeanor he had maintained throughout the meeting, whirled to face them and exploded.I almost dropped the map.

He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their “military advice.” Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders, he called them filthy names-shitheads, dumb shits, pompous assholes-and used “the F-word” as an adjective more freely than a Marine in boot camp would use it. He then accused them of trying to pass the buck for World War III to him.

It was unnerving, degrading.”

Vietnam 1965: The Day It Became the Longest War
http://extendedremarks.blogspot.com/2006/12/vietnam-1965-day-it-became-longest-war.html

[Darteaus94025]

We all have things we’re not proud of.

[Retain Mike]

We won that war three times. I use “we” to define those of my generation like me who fought there. Well, actually we won it the first time and the ARVN won it in Tet when they beat the Viet Cong main force units, and March of 1972 when crushed they the NVA mechanized army that came down highway one.

In each case Democrat politicians snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The first time was when Johnson’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told him what was required and he impolitely told them to go to hell as follows. A link to the entire article follows, which I first saw published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.

“Seemingly deep in thought, President Johnson turned his back on them for a minute or so, then suddenly discarding the calm, patient demeanor he had maintained throughout the meeting, whirled to face them and exploded.I almost dropped the map.

He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their “military advice.” Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders, he called them filthy names-shitheads, dumb shits, pompous assholes-and used “the F-word” as an adjective more freely than a Marine in boot camp would use it. He then accused them of trying to pass the buck for World War III to him.

It was unnerving, degrading.”

Vietnam 1965: The Day It Became the Longest War
http://extendedremarks.blogspot.com/2006/12/vietnam-1965-day-it-became-longest-war.html

[stylin19a]

Actually,Truman had us there. OSS officer Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey KIA, 9/26/45

[SamuraiScot]

It wasn't an unnecessary war

It tied up Soviet arms and money and brought their string of Astro-turf "popular" revolutions in Asia and South America to an end. And started the process of bankrupting the USSR for their inevitable fall. That's why puppets on a string all over the Left—the agents of influence used by the KGB—were so incensed. They had Martin Luther King come out against the Vietnam War in 1967. On national TV, he called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." America has no gulags, Rev. King. Even the Washington Post denounced him for it. You know that line was written in the Kremlin.

Vietnam was a righteous war, won by righteous men, and given away by slippery traitors in Congress.

[HippyLoggerBiker]

Thanks for the link, it took me a while to read it.

I have a coupe of friends I’d like to share it with, with your permission of course.

Regards,
HLB