Dirty Old War: Tales from Vietnam

By Jeff McArthur

The Vietnam War is perhaps the most controversial and divisive conflict in American history. Its complexities and issues are debated to this day. The political and military decisions have been second guessed and studied for decades. This book is not about the big picture, the movement of armies, or the politics. It instead dives into the lives of people who lived through the conflict; from civilians in the villages, to soldiers in the field, to survivors who fled. This book chronicles the experiences of both Americans and Vietnamese through their eyes, and how it affected their lives forever. Each chapter tells the story of a different person during this heartbreaking time in history, including an American soldier, a Vietnamese navy officer, a TV producer, a Green Beret, a Marine, a military police officer, a boat person, a chaplain, and others. Dirty Old War brings the Vietnam War to life in a way other books don’t; through the experiences of those who witnessed it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff McArthur
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005457938

Jeff McArthur

Jeff McArthur was born in Nebraska where he began writing before he could read. He went to school in New York, then moved to Los Angeles to begin a film career. In the past couple years he has written a comic book series and published three books. His most recent one, Pro Bono, has just been released, and his upcoming books include a new Relic Worlds novel, and The American Game, about a baseball game between enemy soldiers in the American Civil War.

Book preview

Dirty Old War

Tales from Vietnam

Jeff McArthur

Edited by Terri Dittberner Tanner

Bandwagon Books

Burbank, CA

Published by

BANDWAGON BOOKS

www.bandwagononline.com

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2021 by Jeff McArthur

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information stored and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Phungmai Congtang, Royal Family

Chapter 2: Lance Block, American Soldier

Chapter 3: John Stevens Berry, Military Attorney

Chapter 4: Robert Rheault, The Green Beret

Chapter 5: Wally Turner, Chaplain

Chapter 6: Ron Hull, Television Producer

Chapter 7: Than Su, ARVN Soldier

Chapter 8: Doc Watson, Military Police

Chapter 9: Hoang Din, Vietnam Navy Officer

Chapter 10: Vu Tam, Boat Person

Chapter 11: Glen Bailey, U.S. Marine

Acknowledgments

Prologue

When broaching the subject of the Vietnam War, one cannot avoid the elephant in the room; its many controversies. The rightness or wrongness of the war, and the actions of every nation involved has been debated endlessly, often to no one’s satisfaction. There have been myriad books which have covered the decisions of politicians, the movements of armies, and how those nations involved were forever changed. This is not going to be one of those books. Instead, this book will do its best to tell the stories of individuals who were there; some soldiers, some civilians.

The soldiers entered a world which we who were not there cannot imagine. In one of my earliest interviews for this book, a Marine told me that the thing he hates to hear most is ‘I understand.’ You can’t possibly understand, he said definitively.

And he’s right. No simulation can ever give us the true feeling of what it's like to know that at any second our lives could end suddenly; and quite possibly painfully. It could come from a sniper’s bullet, a mine, an improvised booby trap, a mortar, even someone you thought you could trust. No amount of describing what it was like can evoke the emotions of watching a friend die before your eyes while you have to carry on fighting to preserve your own life or accomplish an objective. Even the details of daily life are nearly impossible to comprehend, never knowing when your base will be bombarded, the tedium between battles, having to live in what we in civilian life would call sub-human conditions, and knowing that at every second of every day there’s an entire army of people who would like nothing more than to see you dead.

To add to all that is the unique nature of the Vietnam War. Soldiers went out on patrol in the humid heat for nearly a month at a time with no change of clothes. Townspeople they thought they were there to help would turn on them; sometimes because they were forced, sometimes because they wanted to. Their enemies could be anyone, even children, and they could come from anywhere. There was no front line, no safe rear base, and soldiers regularly came upon the charred remains of villages; sometimes destroyed by the enemy, sometimes destroyed by allied patrols, and sometimes they did the burning themselves.

And that's just talking from the American point of view. All but forgotten are the millions of Vietnamese who were involved in their own civil war; either in one of the armies, or caught in the crossfire. For them, this was not some strange passing period of their history. This was their nation. The results of this war would determine their futures. They were less interested in the global struggle of Communism and Democracy than they were about the land they called home, and the futures that lay ahead for their families.

When the United States pulled out, many of our Vietnamese allies got left behind. Some of them were soldiers, many were civilians; and their stories inside what we called the Iron Curtain are eye opening to say the least. Those who had defended their country suffered under oppression. Those who tried to break free had to overcome enormous obstacles, and many of them died along the way; far more than most of us realize.

In this book, I endeavor to tell those stories without regard to the bigger political picture. These are personal stories shared with me by the people who were there. Though my words can never hope to provide a complete portrait of what it was like to actually be in Vietnam during the war, I feel strongly that these stories deserve to be preserved in whatever manner possible.

I hope, too, that this book inspires others to share their stories. It is difficult to come forward and relive those painful moments, but it is important to our civilization that the truth be memorialized to better our decisions in the future.

Equally important is the responsibility of the presenter, whether it is an author who is writing a book like this, a producer of a documentary, or a screenwriter for a film. Many of the people I interviewed told me they did not want to share their stories because they had done so before and felt their testimonies had been exploited by irresponsible publishers of magazines, newspapers, and books. Movie producers and documentarians were even worse. It felt to the people I spoke with that these companies and individuals had an agenda from the beginning which they hadn't shared with the veteran or Vietnamese civilian. They felt used, and believed it was better their stories die with them than they be manipulated again.

Our job as historians is to preserve the truth of the past; not to use the people who lived it to justify our own preconceived notions. We are the translators of history, and it is our responsibility to interpret what is being said correctly so the readers can make their own decisions based on the facts.

It is my hope that this book will inspire a more open dialogue so that more people who witnessed the Vietnam War will come forward, and that their words will be properly translated to the page so that future generations can understand the truth of what people who were there went through and felt.

And I hope this happens soon, as time has a bad habit of relentlessly moving forward. And if these stories aren't shared, we may find them lost to the swift currents of time.

To all those who experienced the horrors of this war;

from the veterans to the civilians to the witnesses of history.

Chapter One

Phungmai Congtang

Vietnamese Royal Family

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

-Buddha

The Nguyen Dynasty began in 1802 when Nguyen Phuc Anh defeated the Trinh Lords of the north, and the Tay Son Dynasty of the inner realm. After doing so, he united the various territories of Viet Nam, or at that time known as Dai Nam, into one nation.

He took the name Gia Long as a name of unification. Gia was extracted from the city name Gia Dinh, which had been the original name of Saigon, and Long came from Thang Long, the original name of Hanoi. He then moved the capitol to the very center of the country into the city of Hue, another sign of unity between the south and the north.

He had grown up in hiding along the Mekong Delta, sheltered from the Tay Son Army by a pair of Catholic priests: Paul Nghi, and Pierre Pigneau de Behaine, a French missionary in southern Dai Nam. Behaine helped Nguyen rise to prominence in Saigon through connections he had to allies with weapons and supplies. Supported by the French, Nguyen Phuc Anh had been able to launch his successful attack that now landed him on the Imperial throne.

Ruling from his citadel in Hue, Emperor Gia Long continued to strengthen relations with France; modernizing their military and fashioning it after their ally who was currently one of the most powerful forces in the world. Aside from this, he partook in very little other trade with Europe as a means to avoid favoritism between the factions that seemed perpetually going to war with one another.

Just as Gia Long had renamed himself after the two extremes of the country, so too did he rename the country itself to Nam Viet. Both words came from the Imperial Chinese Tributary System; Nam deriving from An Nam of the north, and Viet coming from Viet Thuong of the south. The Emperor of China, however, refused to recognize the name because it matched a Chinese territorial name and an ancient kingdom. They instead agreed to a reversal of the two words, Viet Nam.

Though it had been Catholics who had saved his life, Gia Long instituted Confucianism as the predominant religion, and many of his policies were based on their practices. Some in his family followed suit, including his successor, Nguyen Phuc Dam.

Gia Long warned his son to treat the Europeans respectfully, especially the French, but to not grant them any positions of prominence, for they would take advantage of it. He died in 1820.

Taking the throne, Nguyen Phuc Dam adopted the name Minh Mang, and he did not heed his father's advice. Minh Mang claimed the term Han people for the Vietnamese as part of China's Han Dynasty, and insisted on a strict line of Confucian-only policies. Other religions were to be treated as inferior. Muslims were forced to eat pig meat and Hindus were forced to eat beef to assimilate them into Vietnamese culture.

Tensions grew to their highest when, in 1833, Minh Mang desired to punish General Le Van Duyet, the general which had helped Minh Mang's father ascend to the throne, but who had also opposed Minh Mang replacing him. Having died the year before, the emperor was unable to punish the general, so he instead had inscribed on his tomb, This is the place where the infamous Le Van Duyet was punished.

That was the final straw for many. The general's adoptive son, Le Van Khoi, who had been imprisoned but escaped, led a revolt against the emperor. This uprising gained the support of the local Catholics, who wanted to place Prince Canh on the throne since he had converted to Catholicism.

They gained the support of the Siamese, whose territory had been reduced under the rule of Gia Long, and the combined forces fought out of the Citadel of Saigon. However, when La Van Khoi died in 1834, he was succeeded by his eight-year-old son, and the uprising fell apart soon after.

Three years later, Minh Mang had regained control. Nearly two thousand people were executed and buried in mass graves. New waves of persecutions against Christians followed, along with anti-Catholic edicts. Missionaries were hunted down and executed regardless of whether or not they participated in the uprising.

The French government took notice; and Emperor Napoleon III, who was looking for excuses to rebuild French colonialism, took action. French and Spanish armadas set sail for Viet Nam in 1858 and landed military forces into the Cochinchina Province in the south where many of the persecutions were taking place.

The armies immediately set to defending Europeans and other missionaries in the region, especially Catholics. By 1859, they conquered Saigon. The fighting might have subsided with a truce at this point; but as often happened in the region, outsiders spotted opportunity. Napoleon III wished to expand his colonial gains, and China joined in against the invaders.

The Europeans and Asians fought over the territory for the next three years. Spain had reduced their involvement, but France continued to push. In the end, the Treaty of Saigon required Viet Nam to legalize the free practice of Catholicism within its borders, and they had to cede the provinces of Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh, Dinh Tuong, and the islands of Poulo Condore to France. Plus, they had to allow France to trade and travel freely along the Mekong River, and to open the ports of Tourane, Quang Yen, and Ba Lac. And for all of this, Viet Nam would have to pay an indemnity of one million dollars to both France and Spain over a ten-year period.

Though this ceded only the south to France, over the next 20 years, the European nation slowly took control of more provinces, finally taking Tonkin as a French protectorate in 1883.

Throughout this period, the Nguyen Dynasty was able to retain its position as the royal family of Viet Nam, though its power was greatly reduced. By 1885, they had only nominal control over their own country, and in 1887, Viet Nam was combined with neighboring Cambodia and Laos into French Indochina.

Vietnamese nationalism grew in both world wars as their people were forced to fight under French objectives rather than their own. When their nation was taken over by the Fascist Vichy France, then Japan, resistance intensified. When more than a million people starved to death, the populace rallied behind a leader named Ho Chi Minh.

All along, Bao Dai, whose birth name was Nguyen Phuc Vinh Thuy, retained the position within the Nguyen Dynasty as the leader of a puppet government under one autocrat after another. Each emperor did what he could to retain as much autonomy of the nation as he could; walking a balancing act between its conquerors and its people.

In 1945, Japan overthrew the French administration and proclaimed independence for Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam. Bao Dai was still emperor, but Ho Chi Minh had won over the hearts of many of the people. So on August 25, Bao Dai abdicated the throne, handing power to the war hero. In return, Ho Chi Minh appointed him the Supreme Advisor to his Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, whose capital was moved back north to Hanoi.

One year later, the French took control of the country again by force. Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh forces went underground while the French offered Bao Dai the position of Head of State. He reluctantly took the position, but served with little interest.

When the French were defeated in 1954, Bao Dai moved to Paris, though he was made Head of State of South Viet Nam when the country split the following year. Most of the rest of the Nguyen family remained in Viet Nam. They were numerous, and many of them lived in the center of the country around their ancestral capitol of Hue.

De That Ton was a descendant of the seventh lord of Vietnam, (now one word), and Phungmai Congtang was a descendent of the ninth lord, Gia Long, making both of their heritages from the Nguyen Dynasty. They met while De was in medical school and Phungmai was valedictorian at her college. De knew of her family as she had come from a famous line of Buddhists. They shared an admiration of literature, and they both liked to write poems. They grew close, and fell in love.

Because of the nearness of their heritage, they had to have their lineages studied to make sure they were not too closely related. Nguyen tradition held that no one within the family should consummate who are within fifteen generations.

The results came back in their favor. Their relations were far enough away from one another that they could marry; and so they did in 1958.

After they graduated, De became a doctor in the military. He was often away on deployment or being trained in the United States where he did both his internships and his residency. Phungmai went into private practice, running a clinic out of her uncle's house.

They had six children of their own, and adopted five more. They raised their family in Hue, across the river from the old Nguyen citadel. Though they were descendants of the royal family, the Nguyens did not live within the fortress walls. The last emperor had abdicated two decades earlier, so they were the first generation to make it on their own.

Whenever the subject of the royal family came up in school, the teachers of Phungmai's daughter Emmy would point her out and use her as an example. It was a distant thing for Emmy; not something to which she related personally. When her family went to the palace, they went as tourists, though they recognized the names in the tombs as their ancestors on both sides.

In the early 1960s South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem's regime imposed oppressive restrictions on Buddhists throughout the country. The resulting tensions were personal to the Nguyen family as most of them were members of the religion. Phungmai's sister Tri Hai was even a highly respected nun. Her poems were famous throughout Vietnam, and were even translated into other languages.

On May 8, while monks were holding the annual Phat Dan celebrations in honor of the Gautama Buddha, some people used the opportunity to protest the Diem Roman Catholic government policies. Police moved in and fired live rounds and grenades into the crowd. They also ran over some of the protesters with armored personnel carriers, crushing several people, including children. Many more were murdered in front of the Hue Broadcasting Center as part of an order to reduce the Buddhist population to below that of the Catholic population.

One month later, a monk immolated himself in Saigon in protest of the murders, and of the ongoing oppression of Buddhists within the country. He was surrounded by other monks and nuns who helped him light himself on fire. Further immolations followed throughout the country.

These acts put pressure on the South Vietnamese government to make changes. They pretended to impose positive advancements to their policies, but nothing improved. Further protests and an escalation in violence increased as war with the North seemed to grow ever closer. Tri Hai was soon listed as one of the nuns who would be giving her life through immolation.

But before that happened, a military coup deposed Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother with the help of the American CIA. Though violence against the Buddhists subsided, leadership of South Vietnam devolved into chaos, making it more difficult to hold off enemy forces. Soon North Vietnam and their Viet Cong (VC) allies were making attacks throughout the South.

Despite Hue's proximity to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) only 50 kilometers to the north, and the U.S. base at Da Nang about the same distance to the south, Phungmai's family did not see much from where they lived. They occasionally heard distant shooting at night far away in the wilderness, but it did not come close to them in the city. To them, the war seemed like a far away thing.

Near the end of 1967, De was transferred to Bao Loc far to the south near Saigon. Even though they were further from most of the fighting, he and his wife and children would be leaving