Tom Glenn's Blog, page 157

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (7)

Two aspects of the battle of Huế and its aftermath reflect on the character of Americans in ways that deserve attention beyond the history of Vietnam.

One is the American can-do attitude. In most circumstances, that way of looking at life is a virtue. It both explains and is a result of our historic push to the west in the early days of our country and our pioneering spirit. But it carries with it an unexpressed superiority complex. We Americans see ourselves as better than those of other cultures. And we see no need to study or understand other nations—to say nothing of learning their languages—because they will never live up to our standards.

Our can-do attitude served us badly in Vietnam. We made no attempt to grasp the subtleties of Vietnamese thinking. We never understood the North Vietnamese dedication to independence from all foreign interference and their willingness to fight to the last man if that’s what it took. We had no such commitment and measured the progress of the war on the basis of body counts—the number dead on both sides—never realizing that the North Vietnamese as a people were willing to die rather than be the victims of what they saw as foreign domination.

The other American behavioral characteristic is our willingness to withdraw from a war and leave behind defenseless those who have fought by our side. We did that in Vietnam. When Saigon fell in 1975, we simply pulled out and abandoned thousands upon thousands of South Vietnamese who had stood beside us in the fight against the North Vietnamese. To me, that was personal. Some 2700 South Vietnamese soldiers had worked hand-in-glove with my organization. We deserted those men. They were all either killed or captured by the North Vietnamese.

We did the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even today, those who worked as our interpreters in those country are refused admission to the U.S., even though those we warred against will eventually capture and kill those we left behind. That, too, reflects our can-do attitude and superiority complex.

So Bowden’s Huế 1968 has real lessons for us to learn. My fervent hope is that we will learn them. But President Trump’s assertion that we’ll pull all U.S. troops out of Syria means that we’ll abandon our faithful allies, the Kurds.

We have learned nothing from our past mistakes.

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (6)

One of the remarkable aspects of the battle at Huế was that the North Vietnamese stood and fought instead of fading away when U.S. military forces approached. The North Vietnamese modus operandi had always been to follow Mao Tse Tung’s formula: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.” Whenever the American military was able to engage the North Vietnamese, it won the battle. But most of the time, communist forces vanished when the U.S. tried to engage them. The communist strategy was to wear down the enemy until he finally gave up and quit. In the long term, the strategy worked—the U.S. withdrew and the North Vietnamese finally conquered all of Vietnam in 1975.

Little noticed at the time was that at all three major battles in late 1967 and early 1968—and even in some of the attacks during the Tet Offensive through South Vietnam—the North Vietnamese stood their ground. At Dak To, Khe Sanh, and Huế, the North Vietnamese met U.S. forces head on. That was new.

In fact, the Tet Offensive and those three battles were the turning point in the war in South Vietnam. The irony is that the North Vietnamese were militarily defeated in each of those events, and their losses were huge. The Tet Offensive in particular was a North Vietnamese military failure. It did not spark an uprising, as the North Vietnamese expected, nor did their forces defeat the U.S. and the South Vietnamese military. But the offensive was a political success. It ignited popular opposition to the war in the U.S., in part because it gave lie to the administration’s assurances that we were winning the war and the North Vietnamese were close to giving up.

More tomorrow.

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (5)

I was operating in the Bien Hoa area, just north of Saigon, during the Tet Offensive in January 1968. I heard about the battle at Huế but had no idea that it lasted as long as it did (24 days with a long aftermath). Nor did I know of the high number of casualties. It was only in reading Bowden’s book that I understood that it was the bloodiest battle of the Vietnam war.

Bowden scatters the number of casualties during the battle of Huế throughout his text, but according to Wikipedia, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam losses were 452 killed and 2,123 wounded, while U.S. losses were 216 killed and 1,584 wounded. North Vietnamese losses are less clear. The North Vietnamese Department of Warfare gives figures of 2,400 killed and 3,000 wounded during the battle between 30 January and 28 March 1968. A North Vietnamese document captured by the South Vietnamese stated that 1,042 troops had been killed in the city proper and that several times that number had been wounded. The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) gave figures of 5,133 North Vietnamese killed at Huế.

The number of civilian casualties is open to question. At least 844 civilians were killed and 1,900 wounded during the battle, and 4,856 civilians and captured South Vietnamese Army personnel were executed by the North Vietnamese or went missing during the battle according to the South Vietnamese government. Eighty percent of the city was destroyed and 116,000 civilians out of the pre-battle population of 140,000 were made homeless.

The attack on Huế came as a complete surprise in part because the U.S. was focused on Khe Sanh, close to the western end of the DMZ. The battle there began on 21 January 1968 and lasted for 77 days. Westmoreland and other top military commanders believed that the North Vietnamese were trying to recreate the battle of Điện Biên Phủ during which the French were finally defeated in 1954. The attacks at Huế and other locations during the Tet Offensive were seen as attempts by the North Vietnamese to force the U.S. to divert its forces. Khe Sanh, like the battle of Dak To in the western highlands during the fall of 1967, was a major battle. But neither approached the size and ferocity of Huế.

More tomorrow

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (4)

As a demonstration of Bowden’s unvarnished narration, here is a quote of his text describing Huế during the third week of the battle:

“Hue had become a city of the dead. It was still damp and cold and gray and was choking on its incinerated remains. The wet air absorbed the smoke and the foul odors of close combat until you not only breathed it; you wore it and tasted it-—ash and cordite and the stench of rotting flesh. There were corpses everywhere, twisted and in pieces, in every stage of decay. On the littered city streets they rotted where they had fallen or where, in some places, they had been hastily tossed or bulldozed into heaps. Dead dogs, dead cats, dead pigs, dead people. In addition to those in the open, there were the dead in bunkers and enemy spider holes, and under rubble. The cool gray mist turned to a downpour from time to time, but mostly it just smothered everything and drained the city of color. The look of the place differed only slightly from the black-and-white photos on the front pages of American newspapers, a gloomy palette that ranged from the chalky white of pulverized plaster to the rich, oily black of dried blood. At American field hospitals, the dead were zipped into bags, numbered, and stacked, so that as the days passed they formed black walls of mortal remains.”

I can vouch for Bowden’s description. I wasn’t in Huế during the battle, but I was on many different battlefields during the monsoon season, and Bowden’s words ring true. The stink of rotting dead bodies is unique and unforgettable. It told its own story.

More tomorrow.

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (3)

By now, the readers of this blog will have determined that I found Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 richly rewarding. So before I speak further of its virtues, I’ll dispense with my criticisms.

Mark Bowden does not appear to be a man with years of experience in Vietnam. He occasionally gets details wrong—e.g., he expands RVNAF to “Republic of Vietnam Air Force” rather than the correct “Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces” and once in a while misspells Vietnamese place names.

But these issues are nit noy—to use a term common with GIs in Vietnam. Two other matters are of greater importance.

One is Bowden’s use of the term “Front” to designate the Vietnamese Communists. The word refers to the “National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam” (in Vietnamese Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam). The front was a fictional organization created by the North Vietnamese. Its manifesto was written in Hanoi and sent in 1961 to units controlled by North Vietnam operating clandestinely in the south. In its manifesto and radio propaganda broadcasts, the Front represented itself as an independent South Vietnamese association opposed to the South Vietnamese government. In fact, it was paper organization that never existed. The proper term to refer to the enemy at Huế is “the North Vietnamese.”

The second is Bowden’s claim that that the 1968 Tet Offensive was an intelligence failure. In fact, my organization, the National Security Agency (NSA), forecast a country-wide offensive in a series of reports beginning on 25 January 1968, almost a week before the offensive got underway. I know. I was a contributor to those reports. The failure was that General Westmoreland, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam commander, and other senior military officers didn’t believe the reports and didn’t act on them. That was one of many times in Vietnam when intelligence I and others were producing was ignored (see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/opinion/vietnam-tet-offensive.html).

These complaints now out of the way, I can get on with my discussion of the overall excellence of Bowden’s book.

More tomorrow.

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (2)

Here’s Bowden’s summary of events at the beginning of Huế 1968:

“Hours before daylight on January 31, 1968, the first day of Tet, the Lunar New Year, nearly ten thousand North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) troops descended from hidden camps in the Central Highlands and overran the city of Hue, the historical capital of Vietnam. It was an extraordinarily bold and shocking move, taking the third-largest city in South Vietnam several years after America’s military intervention was supposed to have shifted the war decisively in Saigon’s favor. The National Liberation Front, as the coalition of Communist forces called itself, had achieved complete surprise, taking all of Hue save for two embattled compounds, one an Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) base in the city’s north, and the other a small post for American military advisers in its south. Both had no more than a few hundred men, and were surrounded and in danger of being overrun.

“It would require twenty-four days of terrible fighting to take the city back. The Battle of Hue would be the bloodiest of the Vietnam War, and a turning point not just in that conflict, but in American history. When it was over, debate concerning the war in the United States was never again about winning, only about how to leave. And never again would Americans fully trust their leaders.”

Bowden’s specious identification of the communist forces as “North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC)” ignores that fact the so-called Viet Cong were really irregular communist personnel under the control of Hanoi. They, too, were North Vietnamese Army. As I’ve noted before in this blog, we Americans used the term Viet Cong (VC), which means “Vietnamese Communist (an abbreviation of Việt Nam Cộng sản) to designate independent southern Vietnamese Communist forces. No such forces existed. Hence I avoid the term “Viet Cong” throughout this blog.

The National Liberation Front was a fictitious organization. More about that next time.

Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968

On Christmas afternoon, I finished reading Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (Grove Atlantic, 2017). There is much to be said about the book and my reaction to it.

Another Vietnam combat veteran recommended it to me. He served as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman-Field Medical Service Technician (HM-8404/0000) with Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division in combat in the Chu Lai area of South Vietnam in 1967. Wounded twice, he received a Purple Heart, a Gold Star (for the second wounding), and a Bronze Star with “V” for valor.

I include here so much detail about this man’s background because it’s important to understand that only a man who has been through the rigors of combat can thoroughly appreciate the validity and value of Bowden’s book.

Why? Because the book is overloaded with the details of the bloody combat that lasted 24 days in the pitched battle for Huế. Too often I’ve read accounts of battles that lacked credible descriptions of combat because the author himself had never experienced it. I wanted the recommendation of a man who knew combat well before I delved into this book.

Huế 1968 has all the grisly facts and has them right. Bowden’s bio doesn’t mention any military service, but as the “Source Notes” at the end of the book make clear, Bowden spent four years interviewing combatants from both sides in the battle. Those who survived provided Bowden with minute and precise details of men being wounded and killed on the battlefield. To his credit, Bowden does not back away from narrating the ghastly events as they occurred.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I want writers to tell their audiences the gruesome facts because I want people to know how unspeakably grim combat is. If we Americans understand what combat is like, maybe we’ll be better prepared to make decisions about going to war.

More tomorrow.

There It Is

I’ve finished reading Mark Bowden’s Huế 1968 (Grove Atlantic, 2017). I’ll be blogging about the book in more detail later, but today I want to talk about one passage that brought back memories. It’s about the phrase, “There it is.”

I heard soldiers and Marines say that so often. I came to understand that it meant, “That’s the situation” or “That’s how it is.”  The online Urban Dictionary defines it this way: “I cannot put into words what I mean, but this situation/scene/event/dead body/etc. contains all the truth necessary to understand precisely what I mean, if you can only see it through the right eyes.”

I felt both fatalism and courage in that sentence. The GIs I worked with were only eighteen or nineteen years old. Yet they knew firsthand how brutal combat was. They knew that they might die at any moment. But they didn’t hide or run away. Instead they accepted where they were and what they had to do.

My memory of soldiers and Marines saying “There it is” revives my admiration for them. They risked everything, including their lives, without complaint: There it is.

Christmases Past (2)

My reminiscing brings me to Christmas this year. My children are all busy with their own celebrations, so I won’t be seeing any of them today, though I’ll be visiting two of them later in the week. Then, if I can find an open restaurant, I’ll wear my brilliant red Marine sports jacket with a matching red tie while I take myself out to dinner. When I wear that jacket, I’m the center of attention. And I don’t need to be with others to enjoy the magic of Christmas. It surrounds me.

One of the reasons I avoid group gatherings, even on Christmas, is that I can’t hear what people are saying, especially if there is background noise, inevitable in groups of four or five or more people. My hearing was damaged due to the artillery shelling during the fall of Saigon, and while hearing aids help, they’re a partial solution at best. Repeatedly asking people to repeat what they have said make me tense. I don’t enjoy groups for that reason.

I’m grateful that I learned long ago that I don’t need the presence of others to find joy. My greatest fulfillment comes from what I can do for others. I take care of a number of people in one way or another. My peace and joy come from knowing that I have made life a little better for someone else. And the magic of Christmas is with me.

I’m with Tiny Tim: God bless us every one.

Christmases Past

With Christmas at hand, I’m reminded of all the past Christmases I’ve celebrated—or endured—during my long life.

I especially remember the holidays during my grim childhood and teenage years. Much of the time, my mother and I were alone because my father was in prison for long periods. But she was an alcoholic. I learned early on that I had to depend on myself to get by. In those days—and especially during the holiday season when it was easier to find temporary work such as delivering packages or running errands—I always had a job to assure that we wouldn’t be completely broke. So the holidays were bleak for me. There was always heavy drinking. I found reasons not to be at home whenever possible.

Many years later, I spent multiple Christmases in Vietnam with the troops I was there to support with signals intelligence. I was under cover, usually as an enlisted man with the unit I was assigned to. I lived with the troops, slept on the ground next to them, ate C-rations sitting in the dirt by their side, used their latrines, and—to the degree possible—celebrated the holidays with them.

Christmas of 1974, after the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Vietnam, I was living in Saigon with my wife and four children. Like Chuck, the protagonist of my novel Last of the Annamese, I went to the office on both Christmas and New Years to keep track of what the North Vietnamese were doing. I remember my unease as I watched the enemy tighten its hold on conquered territory and prepare for the final sweep that came the following April. I didn’t have much time to be joyful.

In later years, I often spent Christmas day at a charitable organization, doing what I could to bring cheer to the sick or poor. I had long since learned that I got greater joy from helping others than I did from run-of-the-mill celebrations with friends and families.

Through it all, I continued to find the holidays magical, filled with generosity and kindness not evident at other times. And so it is today. I’m grateful for a season when people show unearned love for one another. God bless us every one.

More tomorrow.