President Obama has received much, well deserved, criticism in the US and Europe for meekly abandoning the anti-regime protestors in Iran. We’re still not sure how well the new Iraqi army will do, although performance is promising, as was ARVN's before we cut off its armament supplies. Much of our confusion or doubts about what’s the correct and best things to do are rooted in our Vietnam experience or, rather, how it is now viewed, by President Obama and many Americans. (I last wrote in December here about the current situation in Vietnam. The repression has gotten even worse, since.)
Robert Kennedy told us: “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.” That’s more hopeful and better lesson for President Obama than the course seemingly he’s on as told by Karl Marx: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
A core issue in our recollections of Vietnam is the performance of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), our South Vietnamese allies. My good friend, R.J. DelVecchio, fellow former Marine in Vietnam, able student of Vietnam, and humanitarian, just sent me an email about the “Evolution of the ARVN” that is a particularly good overview and corrective to many’s view. Let me share it with you:
R.J. DelVecchio email 6-29-09
I have had comments from other vets, especially the ones who served in
'65-'67, about the very poor quality of the ARVN troops they encountered.
No doubt those recollections are valid, as were some of the news
programs and other reports that were severely critical of ARVN units.
This has led to a general belief that the South Vietnamese soldiers were
always overall a poorly trained and badly led bunch, who tried to avoid
fighting whenever they could, and didn't fight well even when they had
to.
But this is actually an unfair and false legend, for reasons many of us
just don't know about.
In the '60-'68 time frame, there were many units that were poorly trained
and poorly led, officer commissions were obtained through politics and
bribes, intra-military politics ran rampant, and only a minority of the
units, such as their Rangers, Marines, and some others, were really good,
tough soldiers. (A unit of their Rangers held part of the line at Khe
Sanh, and performed very well there.)
However, during Tet '68 they seemed to pull together and fought well
against the attacks. (ARVN units actually retook more of the territory
of Hue than Marines did, in fighting just as nasty as the Marines went
through.)
After Tet, a lot more South Vietnamese came off the fence and decided
that they really didn't want the North to come down and take them over,
enlistments in the Army went way up, training got a lot better, and the
general quality of the South's military began to improve noticeably in
'69-'71. Of course, that was when the number of Americans serving up
front was declining all the time, so there weren't that many
opportunities for us to see the ARVN doing better.
By '72, when we were gone, the number of subpar units in the ARVN had
become a minority, and many units were excellent, their 1st Division for
one. And when the Easter Invasion hit from the North, 200,000 NVA
regulars in several divisions, with 400 tanks, much better artillery than
we'd left for the ARVN, and AA missiles and guns to shoot down the
South's planes, they wound up in a series of large pitched battles that
were as intense but a lot longer lasting than any we ever fought. The
siege of An Loc was a kind of ARVN Alamo, went on for weeks and weeks,
destroyed the city completely, but the cut off ARVN fought like tigers
and refused to surrender. They stopped NVA tanks by jumping on them
under fire to stuff grenades in the view slits. US Advisors were there
to witness it all, and there are some good books about it.
But of course by then the media (both US and international) didn't have
that much interest in what went on, there were very few reporters on the
ground any more, so the coverage of all this was minimal at best.
But by the final invasion of '75, with NVA forces twice as big as in '72,
superbly equipped and supplied from massive bases in Cambodia, the ARVN
were on limited fuel and ammo, half their tanks were down for repairs
that depended on spare parts they couldn't get any more, and they started
to fold under the blitzkrieg. Their President made a poor decision to
start an unplanned retreat, and things when to hell in just a few days,
leading to the panic scenes of soldiers running after planes and hanging
onto chopper rails in Da Nang. (What you didn't hear about were the
radio calls from VN Marine units in the hills, who never surrendered and
fought to the death.)
So it all went to pieces, but there were still some heavy duty battles,
such as the 18th Division under General Le Minh Dao at Xuan Loc holding
off three times their number of NVA and inflicting massive casualties on
them as they tried to get past them to Saigon. Finally the NVA bypassed
them, and when ammo ran out, the General surrendered them and himself
(even though the US would have gotten him out), and he became one of the
longest prisoners of the war, 18 years in "re-education".
These are the things not many of us heard about, but in all fairness have
to take into account now. I know personally more than a few South
Vietnamese veterans, who fought hard and have the wounds to prove it,
many of whom also spent a lot of time in the terrible camps after the
war, where the death rate was 30% from starvation, overwork, and disease.
They deserve our respect, and after all, they were our comrades in some
sense, who got left in the lurch when Congress cut off their critical
supplies and we broke the promise made at the Paris Accords to come to
their aid if there was an invasion again.
For anyone who doesn't know it, I go back to Viet Nam to help the
crippled ARVN vets who lead really tough lives there, still under laws
that discriminate against them, their kids, and grandkids. Go to
www.thevhf.org if you have any interest in this.
Del
For those who may want to look further about the ARVN, here’s some useful sources:
- A bibliography, slightly dated
- Another overview of the evolution of the ARVN
- A fine book on the ARVN’s “Patton”
- A critical look at the ARVN’s social difficulties, not battle worthiness, review by a professor at the US Air Command and Staff College
- Much valuable writings, photos, and links
- A promising new book on ARVN and US Marines prowess during the Easter Offensive of 1972
- The Battle of An Loc at Wikipedia
- The fate of the ARVN soldiers post-1975
- Jules Crittendon adds to this bibliography. Thanks Jules.
Also, I just added in the Comments some emails I received from witnesses to performance of the ARVN.
