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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?
For 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.
This article has been printed in
VIETNAM Magazine issued August, 1993.
• By Harry F. Noyes III
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