Posted on 07/09/2019 12:20:21 PM PDT by fugazi
55 years ago, Capt. Roger H.C. Donlon’s Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 726 manned a camp at Nam Dong, situated just east of the Laotian border and 30 miles west of Da Nang. Accompanying them was a few dozen Nung mercenaries, a team of South Vietnamese Special Forces, an Australian advisor, and a civilian anthropologist who was an expert on Vietnamese mountain tribes. For the last month, the team used the post to protect the locals and train fighters. The base was also a thorn in the Viet Cong’s sandals, as it was situated on Ho Chi Minh Trail, the communist infiltration route that ran from North Vietnam through Laos.
By the evening of 5 July 1964 all signs pointed to a battle at Nam Dong. Patrols discovered that the VC had assassinated two local chieftains friendly to the Green Berets. Locals were clearly on edge and wouldn’t say why. The trainees began fighting with the Nung (it was suspected — and later confirmed — that a large percentage of the locals were VC sympathizers). Staff Sgt. Merwin “Woody” Woods wrote his wife that “All hell is going to break loose here before the night is over.”
Woods was right; by nightfall, a reinforced VC battalion — nearly 900 guerrillas — massed around the American outpost for their pre-dawn assault. The attackers had already cut the fence and overrun the perimeter security teams. Armed with intelligence on building locations from sympathizers inside the camp, the enemy kicked off their surprise attack at 2:26 a.m. with devastatingly accurate mortar fire. Within seconds, several buildings were on fire as Green Berets rolled out of their racks to arm themselves and fight back. Grenades, machinegun, and automatic small-arms fire suddenly enveloped the
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
You mean they didn’t want to pay the price to win. And what would we have won? Would the Vietnamese suddenly stop being corrupt and allowed a truly free election to take place and a new constitution with a representative republic? Would we ever have been able to extricate ourselves from there? How long would we have to prop up the Vietnamese government? Vietnam didn’t spread communism to the rest of SE Asia as we feared. HCM himself wrote letters to Eisenhower asking simply to let the people decide for themselves what type of government they wanted. They were withheld from him and he never saw them.
Every place communists took over by force started as a civil war. sometimes they won: Russia —> Soviet Union, Republic of China —> Red China; sometimes they lost: Spanish Communists.
AFTER the “civil war”, when communists won, comes murder, repression and blatant tyranny.
We should have and could have won this.
When Saigon fell, and I watched the democrats in Congress refuse South Vietnam fall, I joined the military, and spent 22 years in it.
Refusing to come to their aid was a violation of our treaty obligations to them. Thousands in re-education camps and murders, Cambodia virtually wiped out, and Soviet AND Cuban meddling in Africa, Iran and Nicaragua was the result.
We’re still paying for it.
Thank God for USAF Colonel Jack Broughton!
At least one man who had the guts to do something about it.
Of course the court martialed him for it.
Fascinating guy, Jacksel Broughton. I’m currently researching old WWII/Vietnam primary source documents about his career.
You’re welcome, sir.
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