The Village of Ben Suc - comment

[I kept thinking, 'what is driving this thing?' Someone powerful somewhere was working the problem, working it and reworking it. This whole episode, though it destroyed the lives of thousands of people, was just another attempt, a serious one, to solve the problem.

What was the problem?

Strategic Hamlets, Resettlement, Nation Building, Free-fire zones, Napalm, Helicopter Gunships, B52 Drops, Hogjaw Bulldozers, Compensation.

These were the solutions. Tried again and again. I've heard it complained that if the doves back home would have just shut up and let the military do what it needed to do, this war would have been over and done. I get the feeling that the 'hostile civilians' were the problem. If only they could have done away with them. The war would have been over.

'They just aren't friendly to us here,' the man said. Just like the psychopath who quite rationally sees what he needs and sees no reason not to get it. Unfortunately, what the stalker needs is in the other person; so it is with US foreign policy. When 'we' need a country, it is quite rational for us to destroy it to get it.

Did we lose the Vietnam war? There is no 'we.' Many many companies made billions of dollars. Much new technology was developed. Policy planners made a point: A country moving out of colonial rule was sent into horror and depravity for its trouble. Other countries were 'bombed into the stone age.' Millions of people were killed. Chemical poison and unexploded bombs littered the country. Did the world learn its lesson?

As some US pundit put it shortly after the war: 'but the devastation was on both sides.' Hardly an equitable distribution: Fifty-some thousand Americans were killed. Our country moved towards... chaos or open democracy?

But the 'crisis of democracy' in the US has apparently been solved. Has it?]

The Village of Ben Suc - The end

"The demolition teams arrived in Ben Suc on a clear, warm day after the last boatload of animals had departed down the river for Phu Cuong. G.I.'s moved down the narrow lanes and into the sunny, quiet yards of the empty village, pouring gasoline on the grass roofs of the houses and setting them afire with torches. Columns of black smoke boiled up briefly into the blue sky as the dry roofs and walls burned to the ground, exposing little indoor tableaux of charred table and chairs, broken cups and bowls, an occasional bed, and the ubiquitous bomb shelters. Before the flames had died out in the spindly black frames of the houses, bulldozers came rolling through the copses of palms, uprooting trees as they proceeded and lowering their scoops to scrape the packed-mud foundations bare. … When the demolition teams withdrew, they had flattened the village, but the original plan for the demolition had not yet run its course. Faithful to the initial design, Air Force jets sent their bombs down on the deserted ruins, scorching again the burned foundations of the houses and pulverizing for a second time the heaps of rubble, in the hope of collapsing tunnels too deep and well hidden for the bulldozers to crush." (p131)

The Village of Ben Suc - Nation Building

"Throughout the first week, work teams from South Vietnam's profusion of patriotic groups for 'nation building' arrived at the camp, wearing a wide variety of uniforms. The first to come were five locally recruited girls in their late teens and early twenties, at least three of them strikingly beautiful, who wore conical straw hats and long, flowing, spotlessly white ao dai--the traditional women's dress in Vietnam, which consists of wide, ballooning trousers under a long dresslike garment split up the sides to the waist. The girls' job was to help the medical teams by searching through the camp for those in need of medical attention. They were doing this kind of work for the first time and were afraid to approach the villagers directly. For the most part, these young girls--shy, beautiful, and useless--simply clung tightly to their clipboards and kept their eyes trained properly in the air in front of them as they bravely sailed down the dusty aisles between the rows of squatting villagers." (p116)

"Next to arrive was … a troop of ARVN women, who were clad in tight-fitting Army-green trousers, jackets covered with pockets, and small, high-heeled black leather boots. … Wholly preoccupied with chattering to each other in low, nervous voices as they made their first appearance, they seemed ready, as a group, to giggle at the entire universe. When I asked a little knot of four of them, through an interpreter, what their job at the camp would be, they all broke into giggles and looked desperately at each other for someone to answer me. Finally, one girl replied, 'We don't know yet. We're here to help the refugees.' The giggling that followed precluded and further conversations." (p116)

"Later, reading a report put out by the American Advisors in the 32nd Division Tactical Area, which described 'the relocation of civilians' as 'an outstanding success,' I read that the ARVN women who were referred to as 'social workers,' were 'assisting in the necessary administration required in processing the refugees and giving adult hygiene and sanitation classes,' and also 'taking care of children and looking after anyone requiring medical care.'" (p116)

"After a week in the camp, the children began to show signs of a universally lamented transformation that seems to occur inevitably whenever Vietnamese children are brought into frequent contact with Americans. At first, the G.I.s, charmed by the shyness and reserve of the Vietnamese children and wanting to be friendly, offer pieces of candy or gum. Perhaps the children accept and polity offer thanks, but the next time there is less hesitation, and after several times the children, for from hesitating, demand the handouts. (p 117)

[Outside the camp, the children of the ARVN soldiers already storm Americans in groups, yelling 'Ok! Ok! Ok!, demanding candy, and shouting 'Cheap Charlie!' if they don't get it. Inside the camp, the villager's children are just learning to say 'Ok' and hold out their hands. As in America when we watch our children inundated with cheap thrills and purposeless lives, I suppose it is the parents' fault for not bringing their children up correctly]

"Another more or less inevitable development was the hasty construction just outside the camp, by local Vietnamese, of a whole row of little stands selling beer and soft drinks to Vietnamese at high prices and to Americans at exorbitant prices. When an American objected to paying seventy-five piastres (about fifty-five cents) for a soft drink, the venders, like the prostitutes, the beggars, and the children when they met resistance, would call out, 'Cheap Charlie!' and 'You Number Ten!'" (p118)

The Village of Ben Suc - Hearts and Minds

"'The soldier in Vietnam has to have diverse talents, for dealing with any situation. The military side is only one part. Our men have to fight a war and carry on reconstruction at the same time. This isn't a war for territory, it's a war for the hearts and the minds of the people.' [Colonel John K. Walker, Jr., Senior Advisor to the ARVN 5th Division]" (p96)

"A reporter asked [Colonel Ba] how the present program of 'resettlement' differed from the earlier 'strategic hamlet' program, which both Americans and Vietnamese regard as a failure.

"'In the strategic hamlet, we could not stay with the people,' he answered. We would leave and the Vietcong would come again. Now we have the Revolutionary Development workers to win their hearts and minds, and teach them about the government. THis time we will stay with the people. We can educate them.'" (p92)

[Notice the obfuscation: 'we could not stay with them… this time we will stay with the people.' By this he means, they have completely uprooted the people, made them utterly dependent, and surrounded them with barbed wire and security. They have isolated them from the NLF, their local government, and will impose a new government on them. That is, they 'will stay with them.' Sounds like the twisted language of a stalker in some horror show. 'I love you. I won't let you go. No one will ever bother you again.']

"In the camp itself, the educational program was represented by the sound truck and the public-address system, the two of which often broadcast propaganda simultaneously. Along with patriotic songs and speeches, announcements were repeatedly played on tape. The following announcement played for about an hour one afternon: 'The 32nd Tactical Area Division and Binh Duong Province welcome you and promise to help youin every way. We know that in the areas under Vietcong control you are terrorized and force to pay enormous taxes. They promise you everything but never actually do anything good for you. So now the government operation has brought you all here so you can escape from the Vietcong. We are doing our best, but know that food and space are a little short at the moment. In a few days, conditions will improve. The government will soon find a new job for everyone.'" (p93).

[No longer 'hostile civilians,' the 'refugees' are free to enjoy the good will of the government of 'South Vietnam' and the Americans. It must have been galling, on top of everything else, to have the 'terror' of their former lives recounted for them, as they wonder how many of their family have been killed, brutalized in interrogations, or lost, during this 'resettlement.']

The Village of Ben Suc - Permanent Resettlement

"Presently, a reporter from Life asked Colonel Ba where the villagers would be moved for permanent resettlement.

"'We are not sure where they will go yet. They will go to another province in about two months, I think,' he answered." (p94)

"The reporter pursued the matter of a permanent resettlement area with Colonel White. 'Tell me, Colonel, in the new area, will these people be working at the same occupations as they did before?'

"Yes, they will. They will be able to farm just as before. We are giving each family a compensation of five thousand piastres [about thirty-eight dollars].

"'Most of these people are rice farmers. Could you tell me about some of the problems of getting a paddy going? I understand that there are a lot of difficulties at the beginning.'

"'Yes, we are aware of this, and plan to do everything that's necessary for that, " Colonel White answered. As an afterthought, he added, "Maybe they'll grow vegetables.'" (p95)

[How much is 5000 piastres. The Americans hired young Vietnamese men and women to be 'Revolutionary Development Workers' in the resettlement camps. They were supposedly there to bring the villagers 'round to embrace their new position within the camps. They were paid 3250 piastres a month. (p 113) So, the people were given less then two months of a young mans wage to 'compensate' for losing their home, community, farm, possessions, and livelihood.]

The Village of Ben Suc - Sometimes it just feels right

"At the moment that the Ben Suc villagers got off the trucks at Phu Loi, the millitary plan that had started with the attack on Ben Suc and had proceeded precisely on schedule came to an end. This was the point in the plan at which the villagers came under the control of the provincial authorities." (p82)

"Since there was no central advance plan for the camp, it grew through hundreds of separate improvised decisions taken by a great number of organizations, with the Vietnamese organizations reporting to Colonel Ba and the Ameridan organizations reporting to Colonel White" (p 81)

"The reason for the total lack of shelter and facilities for the villagers at Phu Loi when they arrived was simply that the Vietnamese who were to provide these knew nothing about their assignment until twenty hours before the influx began. On the morning of the attack on Ben Suc, [Colonel Ba], the chief of Binh Duong Province, learned, to his surprise, that American troops had already set in motion a plan to destroy four villages in his province and evacuate the villagers to Phu Loi, where he was expected to provide them with what the Americans called a 'refugee camp,' and also with food, and with a form of security around the camp." (p. 78)

"At Phu Loi, truckloads of villagers from the north end of the Triangle and from Ben Suc continued to arrive in front of the little row of huts in the huge field. On the first day, over a thousand people were brought in. WHen they climbedd sowly down from the backs of the trucks, they had lost their appearance of healthy villagers and taken on the passive, dull-eyed, waiting expression of the uprooted. It was impossible to tell whether deadness and discouragement had actually replaced a spark of sullen pride in their expression and bearing or whether it was jut that any crowd of people removed from the dignifying context of their homes and places of labor, learning, and workship, and dropped tired and coated with dust, in a bare field, would appear broken-spirited to an outsider." (p76)

[He describes the next few days: Rolls of barbed wire stretched around squatting people, huge, open, communal tents with 10 sq ft per family, water trucks creating great mud areas, disorganized food distribution leaving many without food for days, a ditch latrine without cover in view of the main entrance]

"The designers of this mass toilet apparently intended its users to balance themselves of the brink of the ditch in order to relieve themselves into it. This latrine got very little use. Instead, most of the villagers restrained themselves until dark and then slipped out beyond the lighted part of the amp to a place where the bulldozed earth had been left in rough hills and mounds. But there was no grass or brush cover within the bounds of the barbed wire, and on the first day under the canopies a few of the old people, who could not stand to relieve themselves semi-publically, sneaked through the barbed wire in search of brush, protected areas outside the coils. This became considerably more difficult on the second day, when two coils of barbed wire were added to the first to form a barbed-wire pyramid--two coils on the bottom and one on the top. The children slipped in and out with no trouble, but the old people required help. (p88)

[Several giant tents were constructed, not enough for everyone, but they provided shade. The villagers improvised screens and hammocks from whatever they could find. Food distribution was rationalized, but the villagers thought the American rice was of the quality they fed to their pigs. American and ARVN soldiers and officers worked consistently to get things organized. They seemed mostly driven by a sense of professional accomplishment.]

"After the two AID officers left, Colonel White paused, again looked out over the coils of barbed wire toward the bright [tent] canopies, and, turning to Philip Carolin, said with warm satisfaction, 'You know Phil, sometimes it just feels right.'" (p91).

The Village of Ben Suc - The other half

[At Ben Suc, the day it was invaded.] "With most of the populace assembled in one place, the Americans launched two projects that were a source of intense pride to the men in the field--a mess tent and a field hospital, both for the villagers. It is a cliché among the American military in Vietnam that 'there are two wars in Vietnam': the military war, to provide security against the enemy, and what is usually called 'the other war'--the war to win the 'hearts and minds of the people.' On the one hand, resolutely destroy the enemy; on the other hand, rebuild and reform. To the soldiers at Ben Suc, the hospital and the mess tent represented an essential counterweight to the killing and destruction. They saw the two installations as 'the other half' of what they had done that morning." (p46).

[Given the identity of the local government and the NLF, given the inability of the soldiers to distinguish 'VC's amongst the population, given that the whole village was considered 'hostile', who was the enemy? US high-level planners created a fiction 'South Vietnam invaded by the North' to justify their presence. When this is pushed to the bottom level, the absurdities become gruesome and mind-numbing.]

"As one soldier put it, with astonishment, 'Our hospitals are full of V.C. at forty dollars a day. Just this morning, there was a woman who got shot up real bad. Both her legs were broken. A real mess. And they dusted her off in a chopper to the military hospital. We dusted off another little V.C. this morning." (p46).

"Treatment was available not only to those wounded during the attack but to anyone, whatever his ailment. A team of Vietnamese doctors was to be airlifted in later in the day to treat the patients--again in order to give the villagers the impression that this was a Vietnamese project, not an American one. A young American medic …said that between ten and twenty villagers had been brought in for treatment--most of them children with minor skin diseases. He remarked on the exceptional good health of the Ben Suc villagers, but when on to say that earlier a distraught woman had brought a sick baby to a Vietnamese Army Doctor, who had diagnosed the disease as malaria and had immediately administered an anti-malaria shot. They baby's condition had declined rapidly, and within two hours it had died. The American medic speculated that the baby had been allergic to the shot." (p47)

"The mess tent was operated entirely by Americans. At noon, the villagers were offered a lunch of hot dogs, Spam, and crackers, served with a fruit-flavored beverage called Keen. Again, however, the turn-out was less than a hundred." (p47)

[Later he mentions that the rice given to the Vietnamese from America was fed to the pigs by the villagers, who are very discerning about rice. Schell likened it to giving Americans dogfood: recognized as having nutrition, but disgusting to eat]

The Village of Ben Suc--Truth and fiction, can you tell the difference

"I asked what would happen to the men of Rach Bap?[a smaller village nearby, one of three razed to the ground that day]

"'We're considering all the males in this district V.C., and the people as hostile civilians,' he replied.

"The term 'hostile civilians' was a new one, invented during Operation Cedar Falls for the people in the villages that had been marked for destruction. The question of what to call these villagers was one of many semantic problems that the Army had to solve. At the scene of an evacuation, they usually used the phrase 'hostile civilians,' which hinted that all the villagers at least supported the enemy and thus all deserved to be 'relocated.' But later, at Phu Loi [the relocation camp], the officials in charge reverted to the more familiar term, 'refugees,' which suggested that the villagers were not themselves the enemy, but were 'the people,' fleeing the enemy." (p70).

[To me, this is the kind of obfuscation that good reporting should clear up. Otherwise, no one, no one, not even the actors in the operation, has to face what is going on. This saves the soldiers from facing their humanity at the time, but mostly it keeps the higher-ups who design and push the programs from ever accounting for what they have done.]

The Village of Ben Suc--Anyone killed by this outfit...

"At one-o'clock, the official count of 'V.C.'s killed' stood at twenty-four, with no friendly casualties reported. Soldiers told me of three shootings. I learned that three men had crawled out of a tunnel when they were told that the tunnel was about to be blown up. 'One of them make a break for it, and they got him on the run.' the soldier said. An officer told me that a man and a woman were machine-gunned from a helicopter while they were 'having a picnic.' I asked him what he meant by a picnic, and he answered, 'You know, a picnic. They had a cloth on the ground, and food--rice and stuff--set out for it. When they saw the chopper, they ran for t. They were both V.C.s. She was a nurse--she had medical supplies with her, and had on a kind of V.C. uniform--and he was, you know, sitting right there with her and he ran for it, too, when the chopper came overhead.' A soldier told me that down near the river three men with packs had been shot from a sistance. Inspection of their packs revealed a large quantity of medical supplies… [Stars and Stripes later listed 7 additional shootings from helicopter: 'three V.C. on a raft crossing the Saigon River, another as he tried to sneak across camouflaged by lily-pads, and three more hiding in a creek nearby.'" (p60-61)

"When I told one soldier that I was interested in finding out what weapons, if any, the Vietnamese dead had been carrying, he stiffened with pride, stared me right in the eye, and announced, 'What do you mean, 'Were they carrying any weapons?' Of course they were carrying weapons! Look. I want to tell you one thing. Anyone killed by this outfit was carrying a weapon. In this outfit, no one shoots unless the guy is carrying a weapon. You've got to honor the civilian, that's all.' With that, he terminated our conversation." (p62)

"The captured weapons count stood at forty-nine: forty bobby traps, six rifle grenades, two Russian-made rifles, and one American submachine gun. All were captured in caches in tunnels." (p62).

[No one bragged to each other about what the attack. They were mostly quiet or laconic. These were mostly young men, brought to this situation by their superiors, then faced with life-or-death decisions when attacking a civilian population.]

The Village of Ben Suc - Hard to understand their mentality

[Talking with an American Intelligence officer acting as advisor to the ARVN interrogators of captured civilians: ] "They're not telling us much. Sometimes they'll just tell you, 'Hey, I'm a V.C.' You know--proud. Today, we had one old man who told us his son was in the V.C. He was proud of it." Then, shaking his head again, he said with emphasis, as though he were finally puttiing his finger on the real cause of the difficulty, "You know, they're not friendly to us at this place, that's the problem. If you build up some kind of trust, then, once some of them come over to your side, they'll tell you anything. Their brother will be standing near them and they'll tell you, 'Him? He's my brother. He's a V.C.' It's hard to understand their mentality." (p57)

"Half of the V.C.s are just deluded kids. They don't know what they're doing or why. But the V.C. operates through terror. Take this village. Maybe everybody doesn't want to be a V.C., but they get forced into it with terror. …' At that moment, a helicopter came in sight five hundred yards away, cruising low over the woods and emitting a steady chattering sound that was too loud to be the engine alone. Breaking off his explanation to look up, Captain Shipman said, 'Now, there's a new technique they've developed. That sound you hear is a 7.62-calibre automatic weapon on the side. They have a hell of a time finding the V.C. from the air, so now when they hear that there's a V.C. in the area, they'll come in and spray a whole field with fire. Then you see, any V.C.s hiding below will get up and run, and you can go after them." (p58)

[What would V.C. 'terror' look like if strafing people at random from the air is just a new 'American technique?']

The Village of Ben Suc - soldiers reactions

"Suddenly a Vietnamese man on a bicycle appeared, pedaling rapidly along the road from the direction of the village. He was wearing the collarless pajamalike black garment that is both the customary dress of the Vietnamese peasant and the uniform of the National Liberation Front. … he had, it appeared, already run a long gantlet of American soldiers without being stopped. But when he had ridden about twenty yards past the point where he first came into sight, there was a bust of machine-gun fire from a copse thirty yards in front of him, joined immediately by a bust from a vegetable field to one side, and he was hurled off his bicycle into a ditch a yard from the road." [Two soldiers the author flew in with approached him] "The two men stood still for a while, with folded arms, and stared down at the dead man's face, as though they were giving him a chance to say something.. Then the engineer said, with a tone of finality, 'That's a V.C. for you. He's a V.C. all right. That's what they wear. He was leaving town. He had to have some reason." (p36)

"Over near the copse, the man who had fired first, also a young soldier, had turned his back to the road. Clenching a cigar in his teeth,he stared with determination over his gun barrel across the wide field … Upon being asked what had happened, he said, 'Yeah, he's dead. Ah shot him. He was a fuckin' V.C." (p37)

"The American soldiers showed only a technical interest in identifying the planes that passedd overhead and guessing the kind of explosive used from the sound of the explosion and color of the smoke. The American arsenal is so varied that this game requires a subtle ear and considerable experience. 'There goes a B-52 raid,' a soldier would say. Or 'That's outgoing artillery.' Or 'That's napalm.' (p45)

"The men listened with quiet faces, looking at the ground. 'No, there's very little fanatic stuff here,' [Major Charles A. Malloy] went on. At that moment a middle-aged Vietnamese wearing the customary black floppy clothing was led by, his arms bound behind his back. Major Malloy looked over his shoulder at the prisoner and remarked, 'There's a V.C. Look at those black clothes. They're no good for working in the fields. Black absorbs heat. This is a hot country. It doesn't make any sense. And look at his feet.' The prisoner had bare feet, like many of the villagers. 'They're all muddy from being down in those holes." In a bust of candor,he added, "What're you going to do? We've got people in the kitchen at the base wearing those black pajamas.'" (p64)

[Repeatedly, the soldiers refer to the 'black pajamas' as evidence that someone is 'VC'. A thin rationalization for the utter confusion of soldiers attacking a civil society which is defending itself.]

The Village of Ben Suc - Operation Cedar Falls

"According to the Cedar Falls plan, the Triangle [triangular region near Saigon] was to be bombed and shelled heavily for several days both by B-52s and by fighter-bombers, and then blocked off around its entire thirty-two-mile perimeter. … Together, these troops would man a hundred and sixty pieces of artillery. After the jungle had been heavily shelled and bombed, the 1st Division troops were to flatten the jungle in fifty-yard swaths on both sides of the road, using sixty bulldozers airlifted in by huge, two-rotor Chinook helicopters. Then they were simultaneously to destroy the villages of Rach Bap, Bung Cong, and Rach Kien, evacuate the villagers, and start cutting broad avenues in the jungle with special sixty-ton bulldozers nicknamed hogjaws. These drives would be supported by air strikes and artillery barrages against the jungle. American troops would enter the Triangle behind the bulldozers, in an attempt to engage the enemy division that was rumored to be there and destroy the enemy headquarters." (p 20)

Ben Suc, the largest village in the area, was to be evacuated and leveled. According to Major Allen C. Dixon "Now, we realize that you can't go in and then just abandon the people to the V.C. This time we're going to do a thorough job of it: we're going to clean out the place completely. The people are all going to be resettled in a temporary camp… then we're going to move everything out--livestock, furniture, and all their possessions." (p21)

The plan was to fly sixty helicopters into the village to ferry in US troops while other helicopters broadcast messages telling the villagers to assemble in the city center or be considered V.C. Within a few minutes, the woods around the village would be hit with artillery and air strikes while helicopter gunships patrolled the area "help keep people inside there from getting out." (p22-23). Afterwards, ARVN troops would be lifted into the village to work with the assembled villagers.

[The attack unfolded largely as planned. The villagers had to leave most of their possessions and livestock. The men were taken off for questioning and many families were separated. Some livestock was moved out, but their houses with their possessions were destroyed by bulldozer and bombing. Some villagers were shot by nervous soldiers; others were gunned down by helicopter. All were claimed to be "VC" based on their hiding, running, or being in a field or at the river.]

[The US soldiers spoke almost no Vietnamese. Communication was almost impossible. There were no 'cowboys' looking for people to kill, mostly anxious and uncertain young men.]

The Village of Ben Suc - Lead up to the attack

"For the Americans, the entire Saigon River area around Ben Suc… had been a source of nagging setbacks. Small operations were defeated; large operations conducted turned up nothing. The big guns shelled and bombed around the clock but produced no tangible results. The enemy 'body count' was very low, and the count of 'pacified' villages stood at zero. In fact a number of villages that had been converted to 'strategic hamlets' in Operation Sunrise, launched three years earlier, had run their government protectors out of town and reverted to Front control." (p17)

[Elsewhere, he describes 'strategic hamlets' as villages in which the NLF government had been run out and an ARVN one installed. A military man complained that if the ARVN troops leave, the locals revert to 'hostile civilians.' Therefore, operation Cedar Falls is going to set up internment camps for relocated villagers and their home villages would be destroyed. Earlier, Schell noted that Ben Suc had been attacked by the ARVN but had been defeated.]

About the bombing: "Between 1965 and 1967, American bombing of every kind increased tremendously throughout the Saigon River area. There were strikes with napalm and phosphorus, and strikes by B-52s, whose bombs usually leave a mile-long path of evenly spaced craters." (p11) [See "Responsibility of Intellectuals" (chomsky) and "Pity the Nation" ( fisk) for some description of napalm and white phosphorus.]

"The triangle had a reputation as an enemy stronghold impenetrable to government troops, and had been said to shelter a full division of enemy troops and also a vast system of bunkers and tunnels used by the Front as headquarters for its Military Region IV, which surrounds the city of Saigon." (p18) [Recall, this was just miles from Saigon, the titular 'capital' of the South, of occupied Viet Nam.]

"[Operation Cedar Falls] was the first move in a newly devised long-term war strategy in which large American forces would aim primarily at engaging the main forces of the enemy and destroying their jungle bases one by one, while ARVN troops would aim primarily at providing security for the villages thus freed from Front control." (p19)

[Quoting General Earle G. Wheeler, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] "We must continue to seek out the enemy in South Vietnam--in particular, destroy his base areas where the enemy can rest, retrain, recuperate, resupply..."

[The irony that this lead them to destroy all the villages and much of the forest in a large area just near the capital escaped him.]

The Village of Ben Suc - Description

"Most of the inhabitants… were engaged in tilling the exceptionally fertile paddies bordering the river and in tending the extensive orchards of mangoes, jackfruit, and an unusual strain of grapefruit that is a famous product of the Saigon River region. The village also supported a small group of merchants…" (p3) also a bicycle shop, hairdresser, pharmacy, restaurants. No electricity, a few second-hand cars.

"Most families kept pigs, chickens, ducks, one or two cows for milk, and a team of water buffaloes for labor, and harvested enough rice and vegetables to sell some… "(p4)

"Troops of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (usually written 'ARVN' and pronounced 'Arvin' by the Americans) maintained an outpost in Ben Suc from 1955 until late 1964 when it was routed in an attack by the National Liberation Front (or N.L.F, or Vietcong or V.C.), which kidnapped and later executed the government-appointed chief and set up a full governing apparatus of its own.

"The Front demanded--and got--not just the passive support of the Ben Suc villagers but their active participation both in the governing of their own village and in the war effort." (p6)

[The NLF called the village 'liberated' from the Americans and their 'puppet troops.' They actively propagandized against the Americans. They organized associations for the support of the war effort. Schell mentions organizations for youth, farmers, and women. The youth helped to dig bomb shelters and tunnels; the famers gave taxes up to ten percent (on a graded scale); the woman did different things, including making close and nursing. They also agitated to raise women to an equal position with men. There was a 'Village Committee' for administration. They organized and build schools.]

"In short, to the villagers of Ben Suc the National Liberation Front was not a band of roving guerrillas but the full government of their village." (p10)

"The houses were small and trim, most of them with one side open to the weather but protected from the rain by the deep eaves of a thatch-grass roof. The houses were usually set apart by hedges and low trees, so that one house was only half visible from another and difficult to see from the road. … An orderly small yard, containing low-walled coops for chickens and a shed with stalls for cows, adjoined each house. Here and there, between the fields and in the copses, stood the whitewashed waist-high columns and brick walls of Vietnamese tombs, which look like small models of the ruins of once-splendid palaces. It was a tidy, delicately wrought small-scale landscape with short views--not overcrowded but with every square foot of land carefully attended to." (p32)

[The village was a well-run, clean, and social place for the residents. It was integrated into the local government of the NLF for the region. There were no signs of rebellion or contempt for the government. Civil defense (tunnels, bomb shelters) were well made and ubiquitous. Wealthier farmers paid more taxes, older people were not badgered into the new democratic order, but left to their old ways.]

The Vietnam War, 1967- The Village of Ben Suc

I've pulled out my books on the US attack on Indochina. I want to read through them, all two shelves worth. I'm starting with the more eyewitness accounts.

First is "The Village of Ben Suc", by Jonathon Schell, 1968. It first appeared in the New Yorker in 1967. Jonathon Schell was about 24 at the time. He was one of many journalists reporting on Operation Cedar Falls, an attempt by the US Military to disrupt the base of support for the National Liberation Front (called the "Vietcong" by Americans) in a portion of Binh Duong Provence. From the book, it seems he was able to travel freely and talk with whom he wanted, accompanied only by an interpreter. The account focuses on the systematic evacuation and destruction of a prosperous village in the region, Ben Suc, aboout 30 miles from the city of Saigon. Its population had swollen to 3500 the previous year due to the bombing of smaller neighboring villages.

Links: Map from wikipedia commons showing location of Operation Cedar falls.

Vietnam War Collection

I've pulled my collection of books on the US attack on Indochina. I am to read through it, but it will be a big job, as I have several shelves of books. I'm going to begin with the more direct eyewitness accounts.

First off: "The Village of Ben Suc" by Jonathon Shell.