Vietnam 67 (3 Viewers)

"War and All That Jazz," by Larry Moss, aretired advertising agency creative director and professional musician in Northern California.

Growing up in an affluent, predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago, I didn’t acquire many skills that would help prepare me to be a soldier in Vietnam. I had never once gone camping, hiking or hunting. I never even went to overnight camp. I knew nothing about guns, knives, tents, maps — anything related to survival. I did have one skill, though: I knew how to play the piano. I never would have guessed that talent would help me survive Vietnam.

After high school, I diddled around in college for a couple of years, but wasn’t really much of a student. No surprise, I was drafted in March 1968. My first stop was Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for basic training. While there, I volunteered to be a paratrooper. To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to do so, but it meant there was only one place I would be sent to next — Fort Gordon in Georgia, for airborne infantry training. This second phase of training made basic look like a two-month vacation. After enduring eight weeks of endless running, marching and infantry training, I decided to “un-volunteer” from airborne, a decision I’ve never regretted. Upon completion of the training, instead of going off to the next step, jump school, I was given a few weeks of leave and then sent right to Vietnam.

I arrived in Vietnam in September 1968. Having been trained as an infantryman, I was assigned to the 198th Light Infantry Brigade and sent to Landing Zone Gator in Chu Lai, just south of Danang. My unit spent most of the time humping the boonies of I Corps conducting search and destroy and search and seize missions. We saw action regularly; thankfully, by then, I had learned a great deal about guns, knives, tents and maps.

One day, after about six months in country, I heard an announcement on AFVN Radio about something called command military touring shows. The Army’s Special Services section was looking for G.I.s who played musical instruments. With my commander’s blessing, I went to Saigon to audition. A month later, back in the boonies, I got the news that I had been selected to join a six-man jazz band called the Six-Pack of Jazz. Blissfully, I was choppered to Saigon to meet and rehearse with my new band mates.

We put together a very tight show and hit the road for four months, doing one or two performances a day. We were sent all over the country — from the Demilitarized Zone in the north to Vung Tau in the south, from the Cambodian border to the South China Sea — to provide some much-needed musical entertainment to units at remote bases and to the wounded in hospitals. Because we were soldiers, we were able to go to places where it was far too unsafe to send a U.S.O. group. After all, you can’t write off Bob Hope or Ann-Margret, but we were just G.I.s on temporary duty. Indeed, incoming mortars or rockets cut a number of our shows short.

Being a part of that touring show was unquestionably one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It felt so good to do something to lift the spirits of my fellow soldiers. And, selfishly, it kept me out of harm’s way for a couple of months, and I was able to finish out my tour and get home safely.

Now, nearly 50 years later, I remain eternally grateful for the piano lessons my parents insisted I take as a child. I’m pretty sure they are the reason I am alive today. Thank you, Mom and Dad.​

IMG_0714.JPG
Larry Moss playing a piano in Vietnam
 
"Pragmatic Patriotism," by Spencer Grant, a retired photographer.

There are many kinds of patriotism. Mine was pragmatic. College, with its student deferment, was ending, and I knew the Selective Service would be waiting to turn me into cannon fodder in Vietnam unless I did something first. While I didn't have the commitment to burn my draft card, apply for conscience objector status or flee to Canada and maybe never come home, I was equally determined to survive a war I knew was already lost. I was resigned to serving, but not to dying.

So at 7 a.m. on Jan. 7, 1967, I showed up at the Armed Forces Induction Center at 26 Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan. Snow was falling, and early-rising antiwar pickets carried their signs on the sidewalk, asking me to join them. I shared their views, but I had a plan of my own.

It worked only for college grads: I’d been accepted for Air Force Officer Training School, and would sign a two-year enlistment. If I quit the program or was washed out, I’d serve those two years in the ranks rather than the usual four, the same time as being drafted, but with two very important differences.
First, I could take a “specialist bypass test” in any field in the Air Force. If I passed, I’d get a cushy specialist assignment. Second, with only two years to serve I couldn't be sent overseas – not Vietnam, not anywhere.

I signed my two-year enlistment that dreary morning and was shipped to Lackland Air Force Base in Medina, Tex., for my training. I waited a few days for appearance sake, then initiated a self-elimination, as I had planned from the start. In other words, I quit. A few days later I was in basic training. A week after that I scored 95 percent on the “still photographer” test – I had already worked as a professional – and a month later was at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in a barracks full of airmen who, like me, wanted to stay alive.

So began my military service. I started out in the base photo lab darkroom, moving on to photographer for the base newspaper, The Offutt Air Pulse. Then I scored the best deal of all: “alert photographer,” although “inert” was more accurate. I slept at the photo lab and if something happened in the dead of night – a plane with a flat tire, a car hitting a tree – I got up and took a picture of it. Then I went back to bed. This happened about twice a month. Far from the noise of the barracks, I slept soundly. I had the whole building to myself. I didn't even wear my uniform. I had it knocked.

Evenings I ran the photo hobby shop at the service club. Days I worked at a downtown color lab. Weekends I shot weddings. I had four incomes plus room and board. I had a car and money in the bank, even girlfriends.

My active service ended Dec. 18, 1968, one year, 11 months, and 14 days after that cold January morning. It was sweet victory: I'd beaten likely death in the draft and was even getting out in time for Christmas. A civilian employee at the base separation center sneered at me with undisguised contempt. That was fine with me: I'd practiced my art at government expense. I'd never left the country, never fired a shot. But I had served my time, worn the Air Force uniform and done my job.

I flew to New York on half-fare military standby, stuffed my uniform into a men's room trash can at Kennedy Airport and caught the subway home to Brooklyn Heights. My war was over – no wounds, no nightmares, no addictions, no PTSD. A week later I was on staff at The Associated Press in Rockefeller Center, in a job I'd been offered months earlier. I was a civilian again.

I don’t relay this to brag, or to claim some sort of moral authority. I know what was happening: While I photographed subjects like the Base Housing Patio of the Week for The Offutt Air Pulse, thousands of American soldiers died or were mutilated while killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. We still lost the war in spite of their sacrifices. Their losses were in vain.

But I’m also far from alone. I’m just one of a large but little-noticed group called the “Vietnam era” veterans, guys who did their best to serve safely during the war, but never went to Vietnam itself. We knew sacrificing our lives would not win the war. There are no memorials to us, and there are no My Lai atrocities to disgrace us. And there are no sad graves either.

While history describes war in violent and romantic terms, most soldiers just try to get along while dealing with a bad situation they can't escape. Some are lucky, some aren’t. We did our best to shade the odds in our favor. We hurt no one and no one hurt us. We served honorably but not foolishly and we have our own kind of pride.​

IMG_0715.JPG
Spencer Grant in 1967
 
Disputed Lands, Disputed Souls -- Many Vietnamese had to make moral bargains in a time and place when battles were fought on the unsteady terrain of people’s hearts and minds, while the actual landscape was under neither side’s firm control.
 
"The Montagnards," by Douglas Robb, who served 32 years, active duty and reserves, in the Army Corps of Engineers and retired in 1998 as a lieutenant colonel. He later worked as the chief for engineering and planning at West Point.

No matter where you were, life in Vietnam was stressful, lonely and, occasionally, terrifying. Some soldiers attempted to cope by creating a personal fantasy that their time in Vietnam did not count. It was time spent in a parallel universe. Eventually, they believed, it would end and they would get on the freedom bird and be transported back to real life in the “land of the big PX.” Unfortunately, that attitude sometimes resulted in risky behavior that had lifetime consequences: courts-martial, penicillin-resistant venereal disease, self-inflicted wounds.

As a company commander, I was provided with a better way of coping. Being responsible for 140 young soldiers forced you to put aside your own needs, fears and loneliness to focus on the welfare of your troops. The Army credo is, “Mission first, people always.” However, by 1969, on my second tour in Vietnam as a combat engineer, I had long since reversed that.

I was on the final five months of my tour, and the war was the beginning to wind down. With fewer American troops needing our help, my company had the job of supporting a Vietnamese infantry regiment in the Central Highlands. We were improving the fortifications around the regiment’s old French garrison, providing daily mine sweeps on Main Supply Route QL-19, and demolition support on the few operations the ARVN soldiers went out on.

Our mine sweeps were done by a squad of engineers with three handheld mine detectors and a five-ton dump truck containing the demolitions used to blow up in place any mines we found. The ARVN soldiers provided our security, usually an armored personnel carrier with a .50-caliber machine gun and a squad of infantrymen.

When properly adjusted and in the hands of an experienced operator, the Army’s P153 mine detector was reliable. We routinely detected 80 percent of mines. When everyone on the team was at his best and alert for clues, the percentage detected could sometimes exceed 90 percent, but the odds that we would find every single one always favored the enemy.

Usually, the mines were planted at night, when the security was withdrawn. Even during daylight the only sections of the road under continuous observation were the ones near bridges and checkpoints. During the day between convoys, it was possible for the Vietcong to sneak out and place mines. Rarely, they would even attempt to ambush our mine sweep teams.

The reaction of the security teams was unpredictable, affected by the intensity of the Vietcong effort. If the “ambush” consisted of a few rifle or machine-gun rounds fired from a thousand yards or more, the ARVN security usually could be depended on to respond. But if the Vietcong chucked a couple of mortar rounds at us, it was even odds the ARVN soldiers would hustle back to base. The level of trust and respect between us was not high.

I had repeatedly complained to my superiors that my troops were at risk, and requested an American mechanized infantry squad be assigned to us. Periodically, I accompanied the mine sweep teams to provide them moral support and a better radio. I also hoped I could personally observe and report the Vietnamese deserting us.

It was one of those times that we came upon a group of Montagnards – members of a minority ethnic group that lived in the Highlands and often worked with America forces – at the side of the road frantically waving us down. They were carrying a half-dozen improvised litters. When we got closer I could see the litters each held a small child. We had no medic, but it was apparent that only three of the children were still alive. The remaining three were in deep shock and would not last much longer. I immediately called for a medevac.

It appeared that all of them had been wounded by shrapnel, probably from American or South Vietnamese artillery fire the previous night. I set up a security cordon to await the chopper. When it arrived we rushed the three children on board. Two of the Montagnards tried to accompany the children to the hospital, but the crew threw them off. Then the chopper lifted off and quickly disappeared.

Later, while returning to the ARVN base after completing our mine sweep, I attempted to deal with my conflicted feelings. I couldn’t get the get the image of the silent, accusing Montagnards out of my mind. I had no answers for them or myself. Was the hospital able to save the children? Were they reunited with their families? I never found out.

Until then I had been able to divorce myself from any questions about the war. I was a regular Army officer on his second tour. After completing my first tour in Vietnam and my three-year initial obligation I had attempted to resign my commission. But the Engineer branch had quickly told me that the president was not accepting resignations at this time, thank you.

When I took my oath and accepted my commission I had done so without fully understanding that regular officers served at the pleasure of the president. I had to accept the consequences of my stupidity, and try to serve as honorably as I could until the war ended or something else released me. In the meantime, it was a game – us against the godless Commies, I told myself.

My first duty was to try to keep my troops safe and motivated, accomplish the mission, and get home myself. The problem was that my encounter with the Montagnards had suddenly made the war personal. I had been forced to deal with the reality that the game we were playing was killing children. Nothing I knew about the war could justify that.

Not that it was my fault. I hadn’t called in those artillery rounds. Some Vietnamese provincial chief had probably drawn some lines on a map and declared an area a free-fire zone, and it was probably an ARVN artillery unit that had fired the shells. I told myself the Montagnards weren’t blameless. They shouldn’t have been where they were. They should have resettled into an area controlled by the ARVNs.

Normally, my driver and I carried on a little banter when we were moving. He was a kid from Tennessee. He’d never been out of his county until he was drafted and shipped to Vietnam a couple of months before. Normally, I couldn’t shut him up. He told me more than I wanted to know about his family, his girlfriend, his dog and his plans when he got back home.

Now, we drove in silence. Periodically, he looked over at me with the same accusing expression I had seen on the faces of the Montagnards. He expected me to explain what had happened. I have never been able to.​

IMG_0722.JPG
Operating a metal detector in Vietnam in 1967
 
"I'm Vietnamese and I Love America," by Huyen Tran, a graduate student at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

In 1955 my grandparents left Danang for Haiphong, a port city in the north of Vietnam, to prepare for the Resistance War Against America, known in the United States as the Vietnam War.

Neither of them could have imagined that one day the two countries would become partners. Neither would have dreamed that the presidents of both countries would stand together on the same stage, as they recently did at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Danang.

As a graduate student in the United States, I have had opportunities to interact with many Americans. Some took part in the Vietnam War or have relatives who did. Some born after the war know just the very basics about the conflict. A fellow student here told me: “I know this war is important to the Vietnamese, but it’s not important to me. It happened so long ago.”

The war happened more than four decades ago, but there are many reasons Americans should still reflect on it. It is a reminder to Americans that their decisions affect not only the United States, but the world. Without protesters, the Vietnam War could have dragged on even longer, with even heavier consequences.

The Vietnam War is also a reminder to Americans and all of us that, after each war, there are untold stories. More than three million Vietnamese endure diseases and disabilities caused by exposure to Agent Orange -- cancer, blindness, dermatitis, birth defects. They live in the shadow of the war. On the other side of the globe, many American veterans still suffer trauma from the terrors of combat. They also live in the shadow of the war.

And the war is a reminder to Americans that their hospitality to refugees benefits them too. Two million Vietnamese came to the United States as refugees after the war, and they have made their mark. That sriracha chili paste in the red rooster bottle on restaurant tables across the country is the creation of David Tran, a Vietnamese refugee. Uber’s chief of technology, Thuan Pham, is a Vietnamese refugee. A YouTube beauty tutorial pioneer with more than eight million subscribers, Michelle Phan, grew up in a Vietnamese refugee family. According to the Migration Policy Institute, Vietnamese immigrant households in 2014 had a median income of nearly $60,000, almost 10 percent higher than native households. Forty years ago, who would have thought that refugees from a war zone could achieve such success in America?

Many people I’ve talked to here consider the Vietnam War a dark chapter in American history. However, I see what happened after the war as a beautiful symbol of friendship and cooperation. Collective and individual efforts by Americans made reconciliation possible. A month ago, President Trump landed at Danang International Airport. It was once considered a toxic hot spot because of high dioxin concentrations that remained in its soil decades after Agent Orange and other herbicides were handled there during the Vietnam War. The United States Agency for International Development and Vietnamese agencies have worked together since 2008 to remediate the land around the airport.

Senator John McCain, once a prisoner of war, has returned to Vietnam several times. He and John Kerry, the senator and secretary of state who once best known as a veteran and war critic, worked together to restore diplomatic relations and build cooperation. Former enemies are now partners working toward a better future.

The most common question I hear from my American friends is, “Do Vietnamese people like the U.S.?” I like the United States. I adore its diverse culture. I enjoy American music, and I am experiencing a great education system. My friends in Vietnam are no different. When President Barack Obama visited Vietnam, most of my colleagues left work early to see his motorcade. According to the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of Vietnamese view the United States favorably. Vietnam also ranks among the top six countries sending students to study there.

Americans should talk more about the Vietnam War and what happened afterward, because the story matters for the United States, and the world. The Vietnam War represents heartbreaking loss. But it also shows that an open heart can save many lives. It shows that no enemies are forever. It shows that reconciliation is not only possible, but that our collective and individual efforts can move us toward a more peaceful world.​

IMG_0723.JPG
A wall at Tam’s Pub in Danang, Vietnam, home to many American Vietnam War veterans who have settled in the country
 
The Tet Offensive

Yesterday, January, 30, was the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Tet Offensive and the Vietnam 67 section has been posting articles about it.

The American who Predicted Tet — Edward Lansdale understood the Vietnam War better than anyone else and tried to point out the mistakes. Unfortunately, the powers that be did not heed his advice.

The author of the article is Max Boot, whose book on Edward Lansdale, “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam,” has recently been published.

Here are two reviews, one from the New York Times and one from National Review.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/...ot-taken.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018-01-22-0000/max-boot-the-road-not-taken
 
Last edited:
“The Morning of Tet,” by George Peter Angus, who served in the Marines in Vietnam, is a government employee and part-time college professor.

The moment every combat soldier prepares for has just arrived for me. Four unsuspecting enemy soldiers have just entered the killing zone of our ambush. They are now about 40 feet to my right front, almost within hand-grenade range. I can get a grenade off and then deliver an 18-round, fully automatic burst from my M-16, probably more than enough to cut them all down before they can respond, especially since they are at this moment wading knee-deep across a submerged sand spit in the South China Sea.

Reaching into the right kangaroo pocket of my jungle pants I find an “egg,” bring it up silently alongside my body to my chest, roll the spoon into the web of my right hand and, grasping the ring of the pin with the middle finger of my left hand, extract the pin. I know that I have to make the most of the element of surprise and allow them to get closer to ensure that the grenade has its maximum effect. It is 2 a.m., Jan. 30, 1968, the beginning of the Vietnamese New Year, known as Tet.

Celebrated with reunions, feasting and firecrackers, Tet begins with the new moon in January. In most locales the moonless night would make the four approaching figures nearly invisible, but here the low, rainless clouds reflect lights from the Chu Lai airstrip, some six miles to the south, onto the calm sea and the cream-colored sand.

I am in a tennis-court-sized grove of scrub brush and pine trees with two South Vietnamese Popular Force militiamen and another Marine. We set up here on the beach just after dark as a tripwire outpost, about one mile north of our small Combined Action Platoon compound situated in An Wa, a fishing village of some 500 people. Since anyone entering the area around our village from the north must come through this isthmus, we patrol it frequently. Tides here run from three to five feet, and the estuaries extend for miles, so we often go out on a patrol dry-footed and return hours later waist-deep in brine.

On our outpost tonight we are standing 50 percent watches, with one militiaman and one of us Marines taking turns staying awake together. We are spread about 15 feet apart in the brush. Since on patrol we both sleep and watch in the prone position cradling our rifle, I cannot tell if my P.F. militia counterpart, Vann, has dozed off or is intently observing the approaching figures as I am and is preparing to fire. In these situations, the first one to see something takes his best shot; the others wake up soon enough and join in.

My mind is racing. Before I take four lives (perhaps more; perhaps lose mine – what if these four soldiers are the point of a 200-man company following a few footsteps behind?) I’d like to be sure. What makes me so cautious is that these four are visible. I’m reminded of the lines from “Fort Apache”:
Lt. Col. Owen Thursday: (Henry Fonda): I suggest the Apache has deteriorated since then, judging by a few of the specimens I’ve seen on my way out here.
Capt. Kirby Yorke (John Wayne): Well, if you saw them, sir, they weren’t Apaches.

I’m early in my second tour in the Nam, having just come back from a month’s leave a couple of weeks ago. In my first year as a grunt, I fleetingly saw enemy Vietcong soldiers maybe three or four times, and that was when we were operating in the jungle many miles from any compound. The way of the VC is to remain virtually invisible through stealth and the use of warrens of tunnels and hiding places. As a grunt I’ve been in firefights lasting for hours on bright, sunny afternoons in which five or more Marines in my platoon were killed, and never seen the enemy.

My heart is pounding in my ears. My breath is short, my mouth is dry and I am trying to steady my hands. What to do? There are many shades of friend and foe about, even at night.

It was less than two months ago that I was on the receiving end of a “friendly” ambush. On a night patrol, six of us split up into two groups of three. I went with two P.F.s to set up an outpost half a mile from the compound, while Smitty, a quiet, red-haired corporal from Alabama, stayed at another location several hundred yards closer. We planned to rejoin about 4 a.m. to return to the compound. Unknown to us, Smitty’s group “broke noise discipline” (made an unintended noise, like coughing or sneezing, possibly alerting the enemy), and this necessitated their silent relocation.

At about 4 a.m., the two P.F.s and I began our return through the dark to Smitty’s group. The night stillness was broken by the crack/bang of a M-16 on full automatic (“crack” like a whip above your head as the bullet passes you at supersonic speed, “bang” as you immediately thereafter hear the retort from the firearm; identification of the weapon aimed at you begins with your first firefight and lasts your whole life). The three of us went diving into the sand and rolling down an embankment.

Not caring if every VC in Quang Ngai Province heard me, I shouted, “Cease fire,” at the top of my lungs. I don’t know who was more shaken by the miscue: Smitty, who at first thought he had hit one of us (he didn’t), or myself, being shot at by a fellow Marine with an M-16 (a description of an M-16 round hitting a body had become required reading for us: “The football-shaped rounds begin a tumbling, tearing action upon first contact – they can enter an arm and come out the chest”).​

George Peter Angus.jpg
George Peter Angus with three soldiers from the South Vietnamese Popular Force

(continued in next post)
 
Last edited:
(continued from prior post)


That’s why I’m not sure now. These four men in front of me could be P.F.s returning from a visit with relatives. So many people are on the move because of the Tet holiday. No matter that they might be at fault for being in a “free-fire zone” (an area off limits to anyone except military on operations), am I really ready to start shooting? A month ago a 14-year-old boy from our village had entered a free-fire zone in these sand reefs and been shot by Elliott, a lance corporal from New York City. The boy had been trying to catch up with a runaway calf from his grandfather’s herd, and had not noticed that he was getting so far away from the village. The shot at almost 600 yards with an M-1 rifle had gone through the boy’s thigh.

Sergeant Watson, the senior member of our 10-Marine squad stationed here, had been stopped by Sergeant Tran, the ranking P.F., from going to the village to try to explain. “People An Wa beaucoup talk,” Tran reported with understatement.

All we had endeavored in providing security, some basic medical care and help with some agricultural and civic projects in the village had been placed in jeopardy by a miscalculation of who was friend or foe. Eventually, ranking Marine and P.F. officers had been brought in to calm and reassure the people of our good intentions.

On the other hand, if these four are VC and they enter the village and cause harm, what will be the response to our failure to act? Ten seconds have elapsed; the four soldiers are now about 25 feet away, getting close to shore.

Beyond the tactical analysis of the situation, my recent leave back in the States has added to the complexity of the choices. I realized during my leave, as I hadn’t during my first tour here, that, except for people who have an immediate family member involved, this war is of little concern. One of the guys from my high school, Barry, seeing me on the street in uniform, let out a good-natured whoop of “Hey, man, they got you!”

For a year after high school, before I enlisted, Barry and I had been college classmates and cross-country teammates. We spent 20 minutes catching up on. As Barry recounted the last cross-country season and changes at the college, I found myself thinking about what I had been doing then – going through a two-week training in Vietnamese culture and small-unit tactics, then being assigned to my first Combined Action Platoon. Even though it had been only a couple of years, college and sports seemed in the distant past to me, practically another life. Then he asked, “What’s your job over there?”

I began to explain that I had been in the grunts but last fall transferred to the CAP program, which is where a 10-man squad of Marines lives in a village and works with a 40-man platoon of P.F.s. I wanted to tell him that, despite everything, the country and the people there are beautiful. In the sea just out from the village you can look down 40 feet through crystal-clear water and see schools of yellow, red and gray fish gyrating above the sand. In the village the people make rope from dried coconut husks; their fishing boats are home-made round baskets four feet in diameter; they invite you to eat fish and rice with them in their 10-square-foot thatched houses and serve you the best they have even though they may go to bed hungry.

I wanted to tell him that, having seen other Marines give so much to get to this point, I wanted to stay the course, at least in part for their sake. More than anything, I wanted my presence there to say to the people of An Wa, “Whatever may come of all this, please know that we meant well.”

But before I could really get started, Barry’s eyes had shifted nervously to the street. He studied each passing car as though he wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to jump the curb and careen down the sidewalk at us. I really liked Barry and didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, so I cut it short with, “Well, it’s not great but it’s better than having to cram for finals.” Laughing, we shook hands again, wished each other good luck and promised to keep in touch.

Now they are about 20 feet away, within five feet of shore. For the past 15 seconds my thoughts have been whirling. Now I have to act. With the grenade in my right hand and my M-16 in my left, I crawl over alongside Vann. “VC there?” I whisper in my broken Vietnamese, hoping that my rising emotions don’t show in my voice.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Vann replies in his passable English. I can tell from his tone that he has been going through the same anguishing analysis that I have. We are mystified by VC revealing themselves this way.

“Stop! Stop right there!” I shout in English. I’ve made my decision. A shiver overtakes my whole body. If they are P.F.s, they will know enough English to understand, and they will reply. Instead, they dive for the shrubs 10 feet in from the shore, about 20 feet to our right flank.

“VC on our right flank!” I yell, waking up our two sleeping P.F.s as I toss the grenade. Gunfire erupts on both sides, but in 30 seconds all is still. None of us are hit. We pop an illumination flare. As it sways down on its three-foot-wide parachute, we see the immediate area is clear. Masters of the night, the VC have melted into the brush along the coast. The four of us form a line and slowly sweep through, but they have disappeared.​
 
A good Daily Mail take.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5380089/Only-AP-Iconic-photo-showed-America-Vietnam-Wars-toll.html

4928545D00000578-5380089-image-a-25_1518498773568.jpgThis April 1968 photo shows the first sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division, guiding a medevac helicopter through the jungle foliage to pick up casualties suffered during a five-day patrol near Hue. Two soldiers in the photo, Dallas Brown, bottom, and Tim Wintenburg, far right, recently reunited to talk to The Associated Press about the iconic photo and the war
 
The Mystery of Hanoi Hannah -- The person behind North Vietnam's most successful propagandist.

The last sentence of the article is telling: "Her only son escaped Vietnam in 1973 and now lives in San Francisco."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 3 (members: 0, guests: 3)
Community platform by XenForo® © 2010-2024 XenForo Ltd.
Back
Top