They were
small, talked in sing-song squeaks, put a smelly fish sauce on their food, and
often held hands with each other.
It is not surprising that American troops sent to Southeast Asia -- mostly
young, indifferently educated, and molded by a society with too much
self-esteem and too little understanding of other cultures -- found it hard to
empathize with South Vietnam's soldiers.
Still, it is a pity that many veterans of the Vietnam War have joined radical
agitators, draft dodgers and smoke-screen politicians to besmirch the honor of
an army that can no longer defend itself. To slander an army that died in
battle because America abandoned it is a contemptible deed, unworthy of
American soldiers.
Perhaps some find my assertion incredible. How can I possibly defend the armed
forces of South Vietnam? Everybody "knows" they were incompetent, treacherous
and cowardly, isn't that so?
No, it is not. This article will outline some of the more compelling evidence
against this scurrilous mythology and also examine why such a mythology arose
to begin with.
Of course, the South Vietnamese forces were imperfect. They had their share of
bad leaders, cowardly troops, and incidents of panic, blundering and brutality.
So did the American forces in Southeast Asia.
In some respects -- organization, logistics, staff work and leadership -- South
Vietnam's armed forces did lag behind U.S. forces. But how could one expect
otherwise in a developing nation that had just emerged from colonialism and was
suddenly plunged into a war to the death against a powerful enemy supplied by
the Communist bloc?
In fact, many of the weaknesses exhibited by the South Vietnamese forces were
identical to the ones displayed by the U.S. armed forces during the American
War of Independence, even though late 18th-century America had several
advantages: the whole scale of the Revolutionary War was smaller and easier to
manage; America's colonial experience, unlike Vietnam's, had fostered local
self-government and permitted the country to develop some truly outstanding
leaders; the British were less persistent than the North Vietnamese; and the
French allies did not abandon young America the way the U.S. government
abandoned South Vietnam.
But in any case, organization, logistics, staff work and even leadership are
not the qualities at issue in the slandering of the South Vietnamese forces.
Two questions touch on the real issue. Were South Vietnamese fighting men so
lacking in character, courage, toughness and patriotism that Americans are
justified in slandering them and assigning them all blame for the defeat of
freedom in Southeast Asia? Were U.S. soldiers so much better than their allies
that Americans can afford to treat the South Vietnamese with contempt? The
answer to both questions, I submit, is a resounding "No!"
The objective "big-picture" evidence is clear. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was
supposed to crack South Vietnam's will to resist. Instead, South Vietnamese
forces fought ferociously and effectively: no unit collapsed or ran. Even the
police fought, turning their pistols against heavily armed enemy regulars.
Afterward the number of South Vietnamese enlistments rose so high, according to
reports at the time, that the country's government suspended the draft call for
a while.
In the 1972 Easter tide Offensive, isolated South Vietnamese troops at An Loc
held out against overwhelming enemy forces and artillery/rocket fire for days,
defeating repeated tank assaults. I later met a U.S. adviser who described how
a South Vietnamese infantry squad in his area was sent to destroy three enemy
tanks. The members of the squad dutifully destroyed one tank, then decided to
capture the other two. As I remember, they got one, but the other made its
escape, with the South Vietnamese chasing it down a road on foot. The soldiers
got chewed out upon returning...for letting one tank get away. The squad's
performance may not be the best demonstration of military discipline, but the
incident demonstrates the high morale and initiative that many South Vietnamese
soldiers possessed. Certainly it does not support charges of cowardice.
As further evidence, consider South Vietnam's final moments as an independent
nation in 1975, when justifiable despair gripped the country because it became
clear that the United States would provide no help (not even fuel and
ammunition). Yet one division-sized South Vietnamese unit held off four North
Vietnamese divisions for some two weeks in fierce fighting at Xuan Loc. By all
accounts, that battle was as heroic as anything in the annals of U.S. military
history. The South Vietnamese finally had to withdraw when their air force ran
out of cluster bombs for supporting the ground troops.
Once I saw a television documentary about an Australian cameraman who had
covered the war. Unlike U.S. reporters, he spent much of his time with the
South Vietnamese forces. He attested to their fighting spirit and showed film
footage to prove it. He also recalled visiting an enemy-controlled village and
being told that the Communists feared South Vietnamese troops more than
Americans. The principal reason was that Americans were noisy, so the enemy
always heard them coming. But that would have been immaterial if the South
Vietnamese had not also been dangerous fighters.
However, the most important evidence of South Vietnamese soldiers' willingness
to fight comes from two simple, undeniable, "big-picture" facts -- facts that
are often ignored or disguised to cover up American failure in Vietnam.
Fact One: The war began some seven years before major American combat forces
arrived and continued for some five years after the U.S. began withdrawing.
Somebody was doing the fighting, and that somebody was the South Vietnamese.
Fact Two: The South Vietnamese armed forces lost about a quarter-million dead.
In proportion to population, that was equivalent to some 2 million American
dead (double the actual U.S. losses in all wars combined). You don't suffer
that way if you're not fighting.
How, then, did the South Vietnamese get their bad reputation?
Certainly there were occasional displays of incompetence and panic by South
Vietnamese forces. The same can be said of U.S. forces. I knew an American
artillery commander whose gunners once had to defend their firebase by firing
canister point-bank into enemy ranks because the U.S. infantry company
"protecting" them had broken in the face of the enemy assault and was huddling,
panic-stricken, in the midst of the guns.
That incident does not mean the whole U.S. Army was cowardly, and occasional
breakdowns among America's allies did not mean all South Vietnamese soldiers
were cowards. Yet one would think so, the way the story gets told by some
veterans -- and by the political apologists for a U.S. government that left
South Vietnam in the lurch.
The truth of the matter was best stated nearly two centuries ago when a British
woman asked the Duke of Wellington if British soldiers were ever known to run
in battle. "Madam," replied the Iron Duke, "All soldiers run in battle."
Even a cursory study of military history confirms this. Civil War battles
reveal a continuous ebb and flow of bravery and fear, as Confederate and Union
units alike first attacked bravely, then crumbled and fled under horrendous
fire, before regrouping and charging again. No armies ever laid more justified
claim to sheer self-sacrificing heroism than those two, yet they were subject
to panic as a routine price for doing bloody business on the battlefield.
Author S.L.A. Marshall describes how one American rifle company in World War II
fled in panic from a screaming Japanese banzai charge: a second unit fought on,
quickly killing every Japanese soldier involved (about 10), and discovered that
most of them were not even armed.
If the same thing had happened to a South Vietnamese unit, it undoubtedly would
have been cited repeatedly by self-appointed pundits as incontrovertible proof
of the cowardice of all South Vietnamese troops.
Why? We've already hinted at the answer. It all depends on the color and native
tongue of the troops involved. The ugly truth is that the South Vietnamese
forces' false reputation is rooted in American racism and cultural chauvinism.
I can personally attest to the pervading, massive and truth-distorting reality
of the phenomenon. When I arrived in Vietnam in June 1969, I immediately began
to witness continuous displays of ignorance and contempt by some Americans
toward the Vietnamese people and their armed forces.
White troops, black troops, and civilian Americans such as journalists -- all
were equally afflicted. This passionate hatred of Vietnam and its people had an
astonishing power to become contagious.
I knew an American captain with a graduate degree from a prestigious university
in cinematography (presumably a specialty that improves visual perceptiveness).
He once returned from temporary duty in Thailand singing the praises of the
Thai.
"They send their kids to school," he said, contrasting them with the South
Vietnamese. He was surprised, but not repentant, when I pointed out that there
was a Vietnamese school right next door to our compound! Hundreds of little
kids in bright blue-and-white school uniforms could be seen there daily -- by
anyone whose eyes were open. But this filmmaker apparently could not see them.
It is ironic that the Vietnamese -- who by reputation honor learning more than
Americans do and who raised South Vietnam's literacy rate from about 20 percent
to 80 percent even as war raged around them (and despite the enemy's habit of
murdering teachers) -- were accused by the filmmaker of having no schools.
Because he was fighting in a foreign country and was separated from his family,
this American had built up a hatred for Vietnam, and he wanted to believe the
Vietnamese people were contemptible. Therefore, it was important to him to
believe that they had no schools; and his emotions literally interdicted his
optic nerves.
Imagine the feelings of the undereducated masses of American troops faced with
a strange culture in a high-stress environment! Perhaps one cannot blame the
troops for their ignorance. Heaven knows the U.S. command made only the most
perfunctory effort to educate them about Vietnam and the nature of the war.
However, that is no excuse for veterans to pretend that they understand what
they saw in Vietnam. America's Vietnam veterans must be honored for their
courage, sacrifice and loyalty to their country. But courage and sacrifice are
not the same as knowledge. Fighting in Vietnam didn't make soldiers into
experts on the country or the war, any more than having a baby makes a woman an
expert on embryology.
What most U.S. soldiers did there taught them little or nothing about South
Vietnam's culture, society, politics, etc. Few Americans spoke more than a
half-dozen words of Vietnamese; even fewer read Vietnamese books and
newspapers; and not many more read books about Vietnam in English.
Except for advisers, few Americans worked with any Vietnamese other than
(perhaps) the clerks, laundresses and waitresses employed by U.S. forces.
Most important for our purpose, few U.S. troops ever observed South Vietnamese
forces in combat. Even the ones who did rarely considered the attitude
differences that must have existed between soldiers like the Americans, who
only had to get through one year and knew their families were safe at home, and
troops like the South Vietnamese, who had to worry about their families' safety
every day and who knew that only death or grievous wounds would release them
from the army. The Vietnamese naturally used a different measuring stick to
determine what was important in fighting the war.
Journalists were no better. Consider a biased TV report I heard in which a
reporter denounced South Vietnam's air force because -- despite Vietnamization
-- it "let the Americans" fly the tough missions against North Vietnam.
In fact, it was the United States that would not let the South Vietnamese fly
into North Vietnam (except for a few missions in the early days of the
bombing). The American leaders wanted to control the bombing so that the United
States could use it as a negotiating tool.
Not wanting the South Vietnamese to have any control over bombing policy, the
U.S. forces deliberately gave them equipment unsuited for missions up North.
South Vietnam did not get the fighter-bombers, weapons, refueling aircraft or
electronic-warfare equipment necessary for such missions. It was an American
decision.
The TV reporter in question either was ignorant of that fact or chose to ignore
it in order to do a hatchet job on the American allies. Considering his
blatantly biased words and tone of voice, I concluded that any ignorance he
suffered from was deliberate.
Another example of media bias came during the Khe Sanh siege. If you asked a
thousand Americans which units fought at Khe Sanh, most of those who had heard
of the battle would probably know that U.S. Marines did. But it would be
surprising if more than one out of the thousand knew that a South Vietnamese
Ranger battalion had shared the rigors of the siege with American Marines.
Other South Vietnamese units took part in supporting operations outside the
besieged area. The U.S. media just did not consider the American allies worthy
of coverage unless they were doing something shameful, so these hard-fighting
soldiers became quite literally the invisible heroes of Khe Sanh.
All this -- soldier and media bias -- came together clearly during news reports
of the 1972 incursion into Laos.
Consider a TV documentary a decade ago. It included film of some American GIs
being interviewed during the Laotian fighting. These guys, themselves safely
inside South Vietnam, were "explaining" the South Vietnamese army's struggle in
contemptuous, racist remarks. The reporter then suggested that these American
GIs understood the situation better than the American generals.
The incursion, of course, is the source of the infamous photo of a South
Vietnamese soldier escaping from Laos by clinging to a helicopter skid. This
image was and is held up to Americans again and again as "proof" of South
Vietnamese unworthiness.
In fact, it is a classic example of photography's power to lie. What happened
was this: The South Vietnamese were struck by overwhelming Communist forces.
The U.S.military failed to provide the support that had been promised because
enemy anti-aircraft fire was too strong. There were reports of U.S. helicopter
crews kicking boxes of howitzer ammunition out the doors from 5,000 feet up,
hoping the stuff would land inside South Vietnamese perimeters. The helicopters
simply couldn't get any closer.
Given that context, consider the way Colonel Robert Molinelli, an American
officer who witnessed the action, described it in the Armed Forces Journal of
April 19, 1971: "A South Vietnamese battalion of 420 men was surrounded by an
enemy regiment of 2,500-3,300 men for three days. The U.S. could not get
supplies to the unit. It fought till it ran low on ammunition, then battled its
way out of the encirclement using captured enemy weapons and ammunition. It
carried all of its wounded and some of its dead with it. Reconnaissance photos
showed 637 visible enemy dead around its position.
The unit was down to 253 effectives when it reached another South Vietnamese
perimeter. Some 17 of those men did panic and rode helicopter skids to escape.
The rest did not.
Now, some might consider dangling from a high-flying, fast-moving helicopter
for many miles, subject to anti-aircraft fire, to be a pretty gutsy move. But,
aside from that, how can such an isolated incident -- during a hard-fought
withdrawal-while-in-contact (universally acknowledged to be just about the
toughest maneuver in the military inventory) -- be inflated into condemnation
of an entire army, nation and population?
The answer is racism. The guys hanging from the helicopter skids were
funny-looking foreigners. If they had been Americans, or even British, the
reaction undoubtedly would have been one of compassion for the ordeal they had
been through..
Evidence for this is found in how Americans responded to the British retreats
early in World War II.
There were some disgraceful displays among British forces at Dunkirk and
elsewhere. At Dunkirk a sergeant in one evacuation boat had to aim a submachine
gun at his panicky charges to keep order on board. On another boat soldiers had
to pummel an officer with their weapons to keep him from climbing over the
gunwale and swamping the boat. In Crete, a New Zealand brigade had to ring its
assigned embarkation beach with a cordon of bayonets to keep fear-stricken
English troops from swarming over the boats.
Yet the image of Britain's lonely stand against Hitler in 1940 is one of
heroism. That's perfectly justified by the facts, and isolated incidents like
the ones described above should not detract from the overall picture of courage
and devotion.
It is certainly true that South Vietnamese forces gave an undistinguished
performance in the final days, with the exception of the incredibly heroic
defense of Xuan Loc.
Yet there are reasons for that. And there are reasons to believe that, with
more loyal support from the Americans, the South Vietnamese could have turned
in more Xuan Loc-style performances and perhaps even have saved their country.
The real issue again is not just how the South Vietnamese performed, however;
it is how their performance compared with the way Americans might have
performed under similar circumstances..
And the truth is that American troops -- if they were abandoned by the U.S. the
way South Vietnamese were -- probably would perform no better than the South
Vietnamese did.
Remember: the United States had cut aid to South Vietnam drastically in 1974,
months before the final enemy offensive. As a result, only a little fuel and
ammunition were being sent to South Vietnam. South Vietnamese air and ground
vehicles were immobilized by lack of spare parts. Troops went into battle
without batteries for their radios, and their medics lacked basic supplies.
South Vietnamese rifles and artillery pieces were rationed to three rounds of
ammunition per day in the last months of the war.
The situation was so bad that even the North Vietnamese commander who conquered
South Vietnam, General Van Tien Dung, admitted his enemy's mobility and
firepower had been cut in half.. Aside from the direct physical effect, we must
take into account the impact this impoverishment had on South Vietnamese
soldiers' morale.
Into this miserable state of affairs the North Vietnamese slashed, with a
well-equipped, well-supplied tank-and-motorized-infantry blitzkrieg..
Yes, the South Vietnamese folded. Yes, they abandoned some equipment (much of
which would not work anyway for lack of spare parts) and some ammunition (which
they had hoarded until it was too late to shoot it or move it, because they
knew they would never get any more). So whose fault was that? Theirs... or
America's?
Yes, South Vietnam's withdrawal from the vulnerable northern provinces was
belated and clumsy, leading to panic and collapse. But how could the South
Vietnamese government have abandoned its people any earlier, before the enemy
literally forced it to?
or a while the South Vietnamese hoped the American B-52s would return and help
stem the Communist tide. When it became clear they would not, understandable
demoralization set in.
The fighting spirit of the forces was sapped, and many South Vietnamese
soldiers deserted -- not because they were cowards or were not willing to fight
for their country, but because they were unwilling to die for a lost cause when
their families desperately needed them.
Would Americans do any better under the conditions that faced the South
Vietnamese in 1975? Would U.S. units fight well with broken vehicles and
communications, a crippled medical system, inadequate fuel and ammunition, and
little or no air support -- against a powerful, well-supplied and confident
foe? I doubt it.
Would the South Vietnamese have won in 1975 if the U.S. government had kept up
its side of the bargain and continued matching the aid poured into North
Vietnamese by the Communists?
The answer is unknowable. Certainly they would have had a fighting chance,
something the U.S. betrayal denied them. Certainly they could have fought more
effectively. Even if defeated, they might have gone down heroically in a fight
that could have formed the basis for a nation-building legend and for continued
resistance against Communism on the Afghan model.
Even if the South Vietnamese had been totally defeated, wholehearted U.S.
support would have enabled Americans to shrug and say they had done their best.
However, the U.S. did not do its best, and for Americans to try to disguise
that fact by slandering the memory of South Vietnam and its army is wrong.
It is too late now for Americans to make good the terrible crime committed in
abandoning the South Vietnamese people to Communism. But it is not too late to
acknowledge the error of American insults to their memory. It is not too late
to begin paying proper honor to their achievements and their heroic attempt to
defend their liberty.
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