Vietnam. Inside story of the guerilla war.

by Wilfred G. Burchett

International Publishers, New York, 1965

Burchett was in his early 50's when he traveled with the guerilla army of the NLF, the National Liberation Front, in South Vietnam. He spent 8 months being what we now call, 'embedded' with the enemy of the United States Army in the Vietnam war.

I looked around the Internet for background. Seems Burchett was a controversial journalist for decades. He took a train, alone, into Hiroshima after the US attacked it with a nuclear weapon, and reported evidence of radiation sickness. The US denied any such problems. Burchett was condemned as passing on Japanese Propaganda. Other controversies involved reporting claims that the US used biological weapons in Korea, an issue that it seems has not been substantiated to date. He was accused by a Russian defector of being an agent for the Chinese and the North Vietnamese governments; however this was later shown to be speculation. Typically, Burchett reported from places few others did and just as typically was in some way accused of passing on propaganda by those whose positions his reporting challenged.

A controversial book - no surprise

It's clear from the book and from his past, that Burchett had sympathies with socialist and communist programs. His admiration for the NLF shows through. Does this 'taint' his reporting? It does make me suspicious that some details that don't reinforce his sympathies are left out. It does make me suspicious that facts are threaded together to make a overly glowing impression of his hosts. However, I have the same suspicions about reporters who are sympathetic to American GI's and to 'capitalist' programs. I am grateful that his point of view is honestly portrayed. It is up to the reader to decide what looks credible.

The details he gives from his travels and conversations with NLF officials jibe with views given by more standard, typical reporting: the honest work of the NLF cadre amongst the people of South Vietnam; the fact that they were of the local people, not insidious outsiders brought in from the North; their intense loyalty, determination and almost unbelievable hard work in defending their country from oppression and attack. He gives detailed information of the timeline of the war and the origins of the NLF. He gives detailed information about the terror of the Diemist regime, almost universally recognized as brutal, despotic, and murderous.

John Wayne's Green Berets, from the other side.

Anyone who fought for the US in this war might find this a hard read. Burchett shows no sympathy for the US soldier or the ARVN soldiers, the victims of the ambushes and mantraps of the NLF cadre and the mountain folk who fought along side of them. He doesn't demonize these enemies of the NLF, not at all. His reporting is rather matter-of-fact. However, I must remind myself what all this guerrilla defense of rural Vietnam did to the young men who were thrust into it by the policymakers back home. At times it turns my stomach.

Here are a few links I found checking this author out:

• Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Public Enemy Number One, A documentary by Australian filmmaker, David Bradbury

Viet Nam. The Unheard Voices. - Untenable position

In the first chapter, Luce and Sommer give background on why they wrote this book. The war at first made their work more difficult by restricting some movement, making resources more difficult, and via the corrupt Saigon government, making their projects unpredictable. However, their difficulties changed form as the Vietnamese began to see all Americans as suspicious or tied with unpopular wielding of US power. Finally, the volunteers themselves began to see their work as assisting the American war effort, unable, in the end, to be seen as true aid to the people they were there to serve. Finally, many came to the conclusion that the best way to serve the local people was to work in the US to find an end to the war. Below are quotes from the chapter, outlining these developments.

The accelerating tempo of the war and the increasing hostility of many Vietnamese people toward Americans began to affect the work of IVS seriously after mid-1965. In the early years … Americans at home, or even in Saigon, were often amazed at the extent to which volunteers could carry on work even when newspaper headlines were dwelling on the battle that seemed to rage everywhere.… (p11)

With escalation by both sides and the introduction of large American troop units in 1965, the role of the volunteer became gravely compromised. … In 1958, villagers had invited us in for tea and asked about life in the United States … Upon seeing us in 1967, these same villagers got up from their front steps, walked into their homes, and closed the door. (p12)

At the same time that the Vietnamese turned away from us, the U.S. Mission wanted us to cooperate more closely with American officials. But such associations made our work more difficult. The massive and increasingly resented American presence made it nearly impossible for volunteers to preserve a separate identity in the eye of the Vietnamese. (p12)

Since we could speak Vietnamese and had friends at almost every level of the society, our participation on "the American team," as it came to be known, was widely solicited. … Our associations with American power made us less appealing to Vietnamese who had learned to mistrust it and to fear it. In a 1966 efficiency move, the Office of Civilian Operation (OCO) was formed by the American Mission to incorporate all branches of the provincial civilian effort: JUSPAO (information and psychological warfare), USAID (economic assistance), and the CIA (intelligence). This marriage of the information service, the economic aid program, and secret intelligence activities made many Vietnamese suspect even more any American who associated with "official" Americans. (p13) When OCO was later combined with the military into MACCORDS, primarily for the purposes of the pacification program, the move alienated the Vietnamese still further from the Americans. (p14)

It was an accumulation of all these problems and dilemmas that served as the backdrop to a critical meeting of IVS members held in Saigon over the Fourth of July weekend, 1967. The question in everybody's mind was whether we should continue our work in Viet Nam. (p14)

"The Vietnamese make no distinction between your organization and the U.S. government, " [A Vietnamese member of the board of advisors] went on. "This is too complicated, and, as a result, U.S. policy casts a direct shadow on whatever you do or say. … I advise you to tell the American people what your government is doing in Viet Nam, with the hope that a change will bring a better plan that the present one." (p17). [Another board member advised,] "if you really want to help the Vietnamese people, then you must help us find peace." "Go back to America and explain what the war had done to our people. Peace can only be found in America." (p18)

[In a letter to President Johnson, forty-nine volunteers said] "to stay in Vietnam and remain silent is to fail to respond to the first need of the Vietnamese people--peace." (p19) "Four of us determined to resign so we could speak out freely on what we saw and felt." (p20)

Ambassador Bunker agreed to see us. He was cordial, but termed our handling of the resignation and the letter "unethical and discourteous." He showed little interest in discussing the reasons for our actions. (p20)

On our return to the United States, we found that members of Congress were concerned and that they wanted to discuss with us the problems of Viet Nam. … They were concerned about how the United States could get out of Viet Nam in a responsible way…(p21)

After the interview [with an advisor to President Johnson], it was made clear that to discuss the widespread resentment against the Saigon government, the growing anti-American feelings in Viet Nam, the effects of defoliants on the crops of Vietnamese farmers, and the problems caused by the creation of refugees would be wasting the President's time. The President's adviser was interested in providing the President with information that would support present administration policy. (p21)

We learned that [Vice-President Humphrey] had called our resignation "one of the greatest disservices to the American effort in Viet Nam." (p21)

Secretary of State Dean Rusk felt obliged to say that our statements reflected the opinions of only a small minority of Vietnamese, that the vast majority were all for continuing the military effort. Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy expressed the view that those of us who had resigned from IVS could not see the Viet Nam issue in its proper perspective. (p22)

Lower echelon officers, if they were willing to speak out at all, admitted sympathy with our position and said they too had been ignored higher up. (p22)

The most appreciative reaction came from the Vietnamese themselves. … "You have said what we have wanted to say, yet would be put in jail for saying." (p22)

This, then, is our purpose: to tell the story of Viet Nam to our fellow Americans. (p23)

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.]