Posted on 05/29/2016 6:32:21 PM PDT by Pelham
I would give anything to meet and shake Hal Moore’s hand before he passes. The epitome of LEADERSHIP
Vietnamese Communist Leader Says US Anti-War Activists Helped Their Victory
http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/29/vietnamese-communist-leader-says-us-anti-war-activists-helped-their-victory/#ixzz4A7HVV32f
I’ve you tubed quite a bit on this and read one short book I think plus saw the Mel movie
It was a very rough battle
“
Commenting later on the battle battalion commander Harold G. Moore said, The “peasant soldiers [of North Vietnam] had withstood the terrible high-tech fire storm delivered against them by a superpower and had at least fought the Americans to a draw. By their yardstick, a draw against such a powerful opponent would equate a victory”
Madame Binh was a bourgeois Communist, and a good propagandist except that she has a big mouth, to our advantage. She confirms what many of us said about the so-called “peace movement” or “Anti-Vietnam movement” or VN protest movement.
It was run by American and North Vietnamese communists literally from the start of the first “Mobilization Committee to end the War in Vietnam” (1996 through other Mobes to the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice (Communist Party controlled) and its split faction run by the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party, the National Peace Action Coalition.
Then there was the Indochina Peace Campaign of Tom Hayden, aided by his hairbrained wife Jane Fonda . Took there orders directly from Hanoi, as Tom told us at the Germantown, Ohio anti-war meeting in October 1973. Just back from meeting the No. Vietnamese in Paris, he told us what Hanoi wanted the IPC/peace movement to do, namely to focus all efforts to lobby for the cutting off of all aid to So. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
They were successful and millions died because of it.
If it is any consolation, I had to walk out of a briefing by Gen. Cushing in Ben Tre City because of a very bad stomach. Took a dump right next to Madame Binh’s “Little Red Schoolhouse” (they had a cesspool there for the locals and was used by one of our MAG teams who slept in the house).
Oh, by the way, this was the city that we supportedly had to destroy in order to save it. Well, from 500 ft down to 10 feet, it looked pretty intact to me when I went there as a journalist in November, 1970. No signs of massive or even major destruction. The elementary school had once been a helicopter landing pad (still had the landing site outline paint).
If there is any reason to hate Democrats, it is their betrayal of freedom and millions of people in SVN, Cambodia, and Laos. That has earned them my eternal damnation for their cowardice and treason.
When Kerry ran for POTUS I read all 12,000 pages of the FBI report on the VVAW and posted many reports on it here on FR. Some remain on my FR about me page.
VVAW was a communist run terrorist group who plotted to murder Nixon and 20 US Senetors, feed valuable intell to the NV Communists.
bttt
I lost one of my friends there — a hero in military school, a hero there. RIP.
Ia Drang was the first and one of the few collisions between PAVN regulars and an American field army. Too light on our part due to a lack of reconnaissance and not preparing in case we hit something big. Despite inflicting heavy casualties PAVN decided that taking on American regular army in set piece battles was something that they should avoid. So they weren’t looking to give us a shot.
Vietnam war battles don’t get much attention because few of them were large unit actions like WWII. Our political leaders weren’t willing to pursue and destroy the PAVN army, to take the fight into North Vietnam, to make taking Hanoi and destroying the Communist government the goal. Read HR Mcaster’s ‘Dereliction of Duty’ and you will see the near criminal political crassness of Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and the Whiz Kid lawyers who ruled what passed for strategy in the Vietnam War.
“Vietnamese Communist Leader Says US Anti-War Activists Helped Their Victory”
There is no doubt about it. The interlock between Communist North Vietnam and the American “Anti-War Activists” was a strong one. Michael Medved having been one of those traitors.
A selection from your link:
“In the weeks leading up to Memorial Day and President Barack Obama’s scheduled trip to Vietnam, a prominent Vietcong communist leader privately thanked American anti-war activists for helping defeat the U.S.-allied government in Vietnam in the 1970s, saying protest demonstrations throughout the United States were “extremely important in contributing to Vietnam’s victory.”
For Vietnamese guerrilla leader Madam Nguyen Thi Binh, who sent the private letter from Hanoi dated April 20, “victory” meant the communist takeover of South Vietnam. The letter addressed veteran American anti-war activists who gathered in Washington, D.C., at a May 3 reunion of radical “May Day” anti-war leaders.
The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a copy of the letter at the meeting.
Binh, now age 90, originally served as the highest ranking Vietnamese delegate to the Paris Peace Talks that imposed a ceasefire in the country in 1973.
The “Vietcong” was a ragtag group of communist guerrillas who were allied with the official communist government in North Vietnam. The country was cut in two in 1954, with the south seeking to build a democratic state allied to the West.
Binh’s frank admission highlights a secret side of the communist’s effective lobbying influence in the United States. Rather than live in the southern part of the country, which for decades she represented as a diplomat, it appears after the war Binh was living in Hanoi, the original capital of North Vietnam.
In her letter, she extolled the American anti-war movement, saying it was “a key component” that advanced the communist takeover of South Vietnam.
“The Vietnamese people have great appreciation for the peace and antiwar movements in the United States and view those movements’ contribution as important in shortening the war,” she wrote and which was read to an assembled group of “May Day” anti-war activists in Washington, D.C.”
A portion of Smith’s memoir:
The 1st Battalion had been fighting continuously for three or four days, and I had never seen such filthy troops. Some of them had blood on their faces from scratches and from other guys’ wounds. Some had long rips in their clothing where shrapnel and bullets had missed them. They all had that look of shock. They said little, just looked around with darting, nervous eyes.
Whenever I heard a shell coming close, I’d duck, but they’d keep standing. After three days of constant bombardment you get so you can tell from the sound how close a shell is going to land to within 50 to 75 feet. There were some wounded lying around, bandaged up with filthy shirts and bandages, Smoking cigarettes or lying in a coma with plasma bottles hanging above their stretcher.
Late that morning the Cong made a charge. About 100 of them jumped up and made for our lines, and all hell broke loose. The people in that sector opened up with everything they had. Then a couple of our Skyraiders came in. One of them dropped a lot of stuff that shimmered in the sun like green confetti. It looked like a ticker-tape parade, but when the things hit the ground, the little pieces exploded. They were antipersonnel charges Every one of the gooks was killed. Another group on the other side almost made it to the lines. There weren’t enough GI’s there, and they couldn’t shoot them down fast enough. A plane dropped some napalm bombs just in front of the line. I couldn’t see the gooks, but I could hear them scream as they burned. A hundred men dead, just like that.
My company, Charlie Company, took over its sector of the battalion perimeter and started to dig in. At three o’clock another attack came, but it never amounted to anything. 1 didn’t get any sleep that night. There was continuous firing from one until four and it was as bright as day with the flares lighting up the sky.
The next morning the order came for us to move out. I guess our commanders felt the battle was over. The three battalions of PAVN (People’s Army of Vietnam-the North Vietnamese) were destroyed. There must have been about 1,000rotting bodies out there, starting about 20 feet from us and surrounding the giant circle of foxholes. As we left the perimeter we walked by them. Some of them had been lying out there for four days.There are more ants in Vietnam than in any place I have ever seen.
We were being withdrawn to Landing Zone Albany, some six miles away, where we were to be picked up by helicopter. About noon the column stopped and everybody flopped on the ground. It turned out that our reconnaissance platoon had come upon four sleeping PAVN who had claimed they were deserters.They said that there were three or four snipers in the trees upahead-friends of theirs who did not want to surrender.
The head of the column formed by our battalion was already in the landing zone, which was actually only 30 yards to our left. But our company was still in the woods and elephant grass. I dropped my gear and my ax, which was standard equipment for supply clerks like me. We used them to cutdown trees to help make landing zones for our helicopters. The day had grown very hot. I was about one quarter through a smoke when a few shots cracked at the front of the column.
I flipped my cigarette butt, lay down and grabbed my M-16. The fire in front was still growing. Then a few shots were fired right behind me. They seemed to come from the trees. There was firing all over the place now, and I was getting scared. A bullet hit the dirt a foot to my side, and some started whistling over my head.
This wasn’t the three or four snipers we had been warned about. There were over 100 North Vietnamese snipers tied in the trees above us-so we learned later-way above us, in the top branches. The firing kept increasing.
Our executive officer (XO) jumped up and said, “Follow me, and let’s get the hell out of here.” I followed him, along with the rest of the headquarters section and the 1st Platoon. We crouched and ran to the right toward what we thought was the landing zone. But it was only a small clearing - the L.Z. was to our left. We were running deeper into the bush.
The fire was still increasing. We were all crouched as low as possible, but still keeping up a steady trot, looking from to side. I glanced back at Richards, one of the company’s radio operators. Just as I looked back, he moaned softly and fell to the ground. I knelt down and looked at him, and he shuddered and started to gurgle deep in his stomach. His eyes and tongue popped out, and he died. He had a hole straight through his heart.
I had been screaming for a medic. I stopped. I looked up. Everyone had stopped. All of a sudden all the snipers opened up with automatic weapons. There were PAVN with machine guns hidden behind every anthill. The noise was deafening Then the men started dropping. It was unbelievable. I knelt there staring as at least 20 men dropped within a few seconds. I still had not recovered from the shock of seeing Richards killed, but the jolt of seeing men die so quickly brought me back to life. I hit the dirt fast. The XO was to my left, and Wallace was to my right, with Burroughs to his right. We were touching each other lying therein the tall elephant grass. Men all around me were screaming. The fire was now a continuous roar. We were even being fired at by our own guys. No one knew where the fire was coming from, and so the men were shooting everywhere. Some were in shock and were blazing away at everything they saw or imagined they saw.
The XO let out a low moan, and his head sank. I felt a flash of panic. I had been assuming that he would get us out of this. Enlisted men may scoff at officers back in the billets but when the fighting begins, the men automatically become dependent upon them. Now I felt terribly alone.
The XO had been hit in the small of the back. I ripped off his shirt and there it was: a groove to the right of his spine. The bullet was still in there. He was in a great deal of pain, so a rifleman named Wilson and I removed his gear as best we could, and I bandaged his wound. It was not bleeding much on the outside, but he was very close to passing out.
Just then Wallace let out a “Huh!” A bullet had creased his upper arm and entered his side. He was bleeding in spurts. I ripped away his shirt with my knife and did him up. Then the XO screamed: A bullet had gone through his boot, taking all his toes with it. He was in agony and crying. Wallace was swearing and in shock. I was crying and holding on to the XO’s hand to keep from going crazy.
The grass in front of Wallace’s head began to fall as if a lawnmower were passing. It was a machine gun, and I could see the vague outline of the Cong’s head behind the foot or so of elephant grass. The noise of firing from all directions was so great that I couldn’t even hear a machine gun being fired three feet in front of me and one foot above my head.
As if in a dream I picked up my rifle put it on automatic, pushed the barrel into the Cong’s face and pulled the trigger. I saw his face disappear. I guess I blew his head off, but I never saw his body and did not look for it.
Wallace screamed. I had fired the burst pretty close to his ear, but I didn’t hit him. Bullets by the thousands were coming from the trees, from the L.Z., from the very ground, it seemed. There was a huge thump nearby. Burroughs rolled over and started a scream, though it sounded more like a growl. He had been lying on his side when a grenade went off about three or four feet from him. He looked as though someone had poured red paint over him from head to toe.
After that everything began getting hazy. I lay there for several minutes, and I think I was beginning to go into shock. I don’t remember much.
The amazing thing about all this was that from the time Richards was killed to the time Burroughs was hit, only a minute or two had elapsed. Hundreds of men had been hit all around us, and the sound of men screaming was almost as loud as the firing.
The XO was going fast. He told me his wife’s name was Carol. He told me that if he didn’t make it, I was to write her and tell her that he loved her. Then he somehow managed to crawl away, saying that he was going to organize the troops. It was his positive decision to do something, that reinforced my own will to go on.
Then our artillery and air strikes started to come in. They saved our lives. Just before they started, I could hear North Vietnamese voices on our right. ThePAVN battalion was moving in on us, into the woods. The Skyraiders were dropping napalm bombs a hundred feet in front of me on a PAVN machine-gun complex. I felt the hot blast and saw the elephant grass curling ahead of me. The victims were screaming - some of them were our own men who were trapped outside the wood line.
At an altitude of 200 feet it’s difficult to distinguish one soldier from another. It’s unfortunate and horrible, but most of the battalion’s casualties in the first hour or so were from our own men, firing at everything insight.
No matter what you did, you got hit. The snipers in the trees just waited for someone to move, then shot him. I could hear the North Vietnamese entering the woods from out right. They were creeping along, babbling and arguing among themselves, calling to each other when they found a live GI. Then they shot him.
I decided that it was time to move. I crawled off to my left a few feet, to where Sgt. Moore and Thompson were lying. Sgt. Moore had been hit in the chest three times. He was in pain and sinking fast. Thompson was hit only lightly in the leg. I asked the sergeant to hold my hand. He must have known then that he was dying, but he managed to assure me that everything would be all right.
I knew there wasn’t much chance of that. This was a massacre, and I was one of a handful not yet wounded. All around me, those who were not already dead were dying or severely wounded, most of them hit several times. I must have been talking a lot, but I have no idea what I was saying. I think it was, “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,” over and over. Then I would cry. To get closer to the ground, I had dumped my gear, including the ax I had been carrying, and I had lost my rifle, but that was no problem. There were weapons of every kind lying everywhere.
Sgt. Moore asked me if I thought he would make it. I squeezed his hand and told him sure. He said that he was in a lot of pain, and every now and then he would scream. He was obviously bleeding internally quite a bit. I was sure that he would die before the night. I had seen his wife and four kids at Fort Benning. He had made it through World War II and Korea, but this little war had got him.
I found a hand grenade and put it next to me. Then I pulled out my first-aid pack and opened it. I still was not wounded, but I knew I would be soon.
At that instant I heard a babble of Vietnamese voices close by. They sounded like little children, cruel children. The sound of those voices, of the enemy that close, was the most frightening thing I have ever experienced. Combat creates a mindless fear, but this was worse, naked panic.
A small group of PAVN was rapidly approaching. There was a heavy rustling of elephant grass and a constant babbling of high-pitched voices. I told Sgt. Moore to shut up and play dead. I was thinking of using my grenade, but I was scared that it wouldn’t get them all, and that they were so close that I would blow myself up too.
My mind was made up for me, because all of a sudden they were there. I stuck the grenade under my belly so that even if I was hit the grenade would not go off too easily, and if it did go off I would not feet pain. I willed myself to stop shaking, and I stopped breathing. There were about 10or 12 of them, I figure. They took me for dead, thank God. They lay down all around me, still babbling.
One of them lay down on top of me and started to set up his machine gun. He dropped his canister next to my side. His feet were by my head, and his head was between my feet. He was about six feet tall and pretty bony. He probably couldn’t feel me shaking because he was shaking so much himself. I thought I was gone. I was trying like hell to act dead, however the hell one does that.
The Cong opened up on our mortar platoon, which was setup around a big tree nearby. The platoon returned the fire, killing about half of the Cong, and miraculously not hitting me. All of a sudden a dozen loud “crumph”sounds went off all around me. Assuming that all the GI’s in front of them were dead, our mortar platoon had opened up with M-79 grenade launchers. The Cong jumped up off me, moaning with fear, and the other PAVN began to move around. They apparently knew the M-79. Then a second series of explosions went off, killing all the Cong as they got up to run. One grenade landed between Thompson’s head and Sgt. Moore’s chest. Sgt. Moore saved my life; he took most of the shrapnel in his side. A piece got me in the head.
It felt as if a white-hot sledge hammer had hit the right side of my face. Then something hot and stinging hit my left leg. I lost consciousness for a few seconds. I came out of it feeling intense pain in my leg and a numbness in my head. I didn’t dare feel my face: I thought the whole side of it had gone. Blood was pouring down my forehead and filling the hollow of my eyeglasses. It was also pouring out of my mouth. I slapped a bandage on the side of my face and tied it around my head. I was numbed, but I suddenly felt better. It had happened, and I was still alive.
I decided it was time to get out. None of my buddies appeared able to move. The Cong obviously had the mortar platoon pegged, and they would try to overrun it again. I was going to be right in their path. I crawled over Sgt. Moore, who had half his chest gone, and Thompson, who had no head left. Wilson, who had helped me with the XO, had been hit badly, but I couldn’t tell where. All that moved was his eyes. He asked me for some water. I gave him one of the two canteens I had scrounged. I still had the hand grenade.
I crawled over many bodies, all still. The 1st Platoon just didn’t exist anymore. One guy had his arm blown off. There was only some shredded skin and a piece of bone sticking out of his sleeve. The sight didn’t bother me anymore. The artillery was still keeping up a steady barrage, as were the planes, and the noise was as loud as ever, but I didn’t hear it anymore. It was a miracle I didn’t get shot by the snipers in the trees while I was moving.
As I was crawling around looking for someone alive, I came across Sgt. Barker, who stuck a .45in my face. He thought I was a Cong and almost shot me. Apparently I was now close to the mortar platoon. Many other wounded men had crawled over there, including the medic Novak, who had run out of supplies after five minutes. Barker was hit in the legs. Caine was hurt badly too. There were many others, all in bad shape.
I lay there with the hand grenade under me, praying. The Cong made several more attacks, which the mortar platoon fought off with 79’s.
The Cong figured out that the mortar platoon was right by that tree, and three of their machine-gun crews crawled up and started to blaze away. It had taken them only a minute or so to find exactly where the platoon was; it took them half a minute to wipe it out. When they opened up, I heard a guy close by scream, then another, and another. Every few seconds someone would scream. Some got hit several times. In 30 seconds the platoon was virtually nonexistent. I heard Lt. Sheldon scream three times, but he lived. I think only five or six guys from the platoon were alive the next day....
http://www.mishalov.com/death_ia_drang_valley.html
I cried for a couple of days when I read the accounts the first time. Could not bear to read them again.
“That’s a nice day, Sergeant Savage.”
BTT
ping
You were there at the same time that my father was. His tour was summer ‘62 to summer ‘63. He was a Lt Col at the time, but he once told me that he wasn’t paid by the Army while he was over there. Not sure how that worked. I think he was with ARPA at the time. I do know that did work some with Lt Col Patton, the General’s son, which I found interesting.
Dad had been living at the Brinks in Saigon. Shortly after he returned stateside the VC parked a car bomb in the garage, which I believe was beneath the building, and blew it up.
One factor that contributed to everything falling apart shortly after you all left is that Kennedy okayed a coup d’ete against President Diem and managed to get Diem killed in the first week of November. South Vietnam spun out of control for years afterwards. That contributed to LBJ’s decision to send in American combat troops.
I turned 18 in 1969 and wondered if I was going to be the 2nd generation to end up in Vietnam. Watching how the war had been prosecuted didn’t exactly leave me enthusiastic about that prospect.
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