Letters

DEATH OF A LADY

I read with interest your article on pets in Vietnam, “Fur, Fangs, & Feathers.”

I was in the U.S. Army, assigned to USAMMAV Det. 4 at Camp Davies, about eleven miles outside of Saigon, from 1969-70. We had a variety of pets: a monkey, a hawk, a small bear (very briefly), and dogs. We had to get rid of most of them because they wore out their welcomes. We kept the dogs, though, and I got attached to one we called Lady. She was a Labrador mix, as best as we could tell, and as gentle as the day was long.

However, we got a new base commander who decreed that all pets had to go. One night he sent the MPs to shoot any dogs on base—Lady, of course, included. She managed to survive the onslaught, though gravely wounded. An MP sergeant later beat her to death with an ax handle. Lady is a fond memory of my time in country, and her death one of the worst.

I never did find out which sergeant used that ax handle. I wish I did to this day.

Tony Raiona
By Email

MONKEY SHINES

Upon reading the stories in the January/February issue about pets, great memories came back about a monkey one of the guys had in our hooch. My wife sent me a care package from home that contained a can of mixed nuts. I thought that the monkey, being a monkey, would take the nuts I didn’t like. But much to my surprise, he liked the same ones I did—cashews. We spent an hour fighting over them.

A month or so later I met my wife in Hawaii for my R&R. When I got back someone told me that the G.I. who owned the monkey took him on guard duty one night and either the monkey slipped through the wire and got away or was eaten by the local villagers.

Marvin Sizemore
Moore Hill, Indiana

BENEFITS BECOME IMPORTANT

With Americans now living longer, the demand for senior health care and other services has risen dramatically. Veterans benefits, available through the Department of Veterans Affairs and state departments of veterans affairs, are especially important to those in or nearing retirement. 

Veterans benefits could mean the difference between living comfortably or in fear. Benefits could mean the difference between getting medical care or going without. Only about 15 percent of eligible California veterans are taking advantage of their compensation and pension benefits and fewer than 40 percent are using their health care benefits.

Many older veterans are beginning to feel the effects of injuries sustained during military service decades earlier or are finding that their symptoms have gotten worse with age. Some Vietnam veterans are being diagnosed with ailments associated with their exposure to Agent Orange.

It would be easy for a doctor to overlook Agent Orange exposure as the cause of a patient’s type 2 diabetes when genetic and lifestyle risk factors are present. The post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury at the root of a veteran’s chronic depression could also be missed. That’s why it’s so important for veterans of every age to make doctors aware of their military histories when being evaluated, diagnosed, and treated.

Many veterans are confused about their benefits. What benefits am I entitled to? Is there an application time limit? Does a disability have to be combat-related to qualify for benefits? Most veterans are unaware that they and their spouses could live in  beautiful state-owned veterans homes, many of which offer several levels of professional and compassionate care.

Veterans can get answers to their questions and assistance filing the benefits application paperwork by contacting the veterans affairs department in their states. To find the department in your state, go to www.va.gov/statedva.htm  You served, now let us serve you.

Peter J. Gravett, Secretary
California Department of Veterans Affairs

RICH & FREE

In the last issue Reid Lyon wrote: “I have often wondered whether other combat vets who left the Vietnam War and immediately entered the unbelievably alienating contrast of college were affected in similar ways and whether their disconnections extended to the work place.” In a word: yes.

I was not like Lyon. I was no hero, though I did watch a few people die and I helped save a life; it was my job. I was an Air Force medic. I was also a “sharp troop” who was promoted to staff sergeant in under four years. Retention officers tried to get me to reenlist. When I countered with some odd things that had happened to me, they told me not to judge the Air Force by unique experiences.

My officers used me as bait to catch some bad guys, and they failed to share the intended ramifications. My experience turned me into a slightly disabled veteran whose anger erupted about a year later. I refused to cut my hair, so they hid me in the x-ray room when the general visited. I shook my fist in a major’s face and nothing happened. I then realized my superiors felt guilty for what they had let happen to me.

I toured my duty section to say good-bye when it was time to leave. One man noted that my service ribbons were on backward. The colonel, who had stopped by to see me one last time, laughed and said, “I don’t really think he cares.”

I rode an airliner to Omaha and civilian life. A young flight attendant and I discovered we knew someone in common, and it provided a hook for further conversation. We chatted so long that she moved me to first class so she could sit by me during her breaks. She had been working for only six months and she told me of the places she had seen. I shared some of my unusual adventures, and our voices carried further than we realized.

The flight attendant gave me a Disneyland balloon and wished me luck. Suddenly, someone behind me began to clap, then another did. Soon, all of the passengers gave me a standing ovation. I was overwhelmed because April 10, 1970, was not noted for friendliness toward Vietnam veterans.

I entered graduate school in the fall and was part of an experimental accelerated program for Ph.D. students. Our professors watched us closely because they were uncertain of our fates. I attended my first department party, and my recollection of the ovation led me to believe I would be accepted after I said I was in university on the GI Bill.

A tense quiet settled over the group in my part of the room. One man said, “You don’t belong here, you fascist. We’ll get rid of you.” I don’t remember how I replied, but before the party ended, I told them as politely as possible where they all could go. I was not there to please them. I was working for myself, and I would earn my degree.

I did, too. My professors liked me for my offbeat way at looking at the world, and they had plans for my future. I got good grades, and I learned to use my anger like a tool. It kept me awake better than coffee.

A Navy friend consulted a job counselor who advised him to hide his veteran status. He told him to say he had been on the road for four years—anything but reveal what he had truly done. I was disturbed enough to speak to someone, too. He told me the same thing.

My world collapsed. It was all a lie. The officers who had put me in harm’s way, the efficiency reports they told me assured me of a good job, and the ovation when I left the plane were nothing. I was good at going through the motions, but I had felt like an outsider as soon as I had stepped off the plane. I didn’t want to try any more. 

I remembered the man and his daughter who were incinerated in a wrecked truck while we could do nothing. I remembered the silly promise I had made. I gave meaning to the tragedy by promising to live the good life the girl had missed.

I promised myself that I would never let another human determine my destiny. As soon as I finished my last test, I left the university and never returned. My wife stayed at her job a few more months because we needed the money, but I was gone. We built a farm, which led to another, and we successfully raised two children. It was hard during the farm crisis, but we survived.

My wife and I are the richest, freest people I know. Our nearest neighbor lives two miles away, and if I want to cross-country ski, I step into the yard and put on my skis. In retrospect, the bad treatment some people gave me was a favor. The negative attitudes also helped me keep my promise to the girl and her father. I still feel a wall separating me from others, but I am happy.

James C. Perley
Little Sioux, Iowa

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Americans don’t know what to do with the Vietnam War and its veterans. I believe this to be true for the year I spent in Vietnam with the 4th Infantry Division (1968-69), upon my return to civilian life, and, actually, to this very day. It seems as if there continues to be a great need by both veterans and others to “define” the Vietnam vet—as well as critically discern what the war meant then and now. I am not sure either can be accomplished with much certainty or resolution.

The January/February issue proved that to be true. Letters to the Editor both lauded and panned the article, “Lost and Found Connections,” by Eleanor Krassen Covan, with equal emotions in support of what she wrote and with some readers expressing great disdain and displeasure. How can it be both? Welcome to the world of the Vietnam vet.

In that same issue, Marc Leepson reviewed the book, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, in which the author contends that the Vietnam War was virtually non-stop “murder, torture, rape, abuse, forced displacement, home burnings, specious arrests and imprisonment without due process” by those Americans who were there (that’s you and me).

Again, this brings home the point that every Vietnam vet’s experience was highly personal and individual and varies greatly depending on branch of service, military specialty, unit, year, comrades, and leadership. I consider myself fortunate for being with a 4th Infantry line company in which there was moral leadership by enlisted men, NCOs, and officers. 

I cannot relate, personally, to what Nick Turse contends to be true in his book, even as I cannot say that things he “documents” did not happen. However, they did not happen with D Co., 3/12th Infantry of the 4th Division from November 1968 through August 1969.

Perhaps the point I am trying to make is that each of our recovery journeys is and has been so different. There have been times when I wished I wasn’t a vet. There are times when I don’t want to be with Vietnam vets. There are times when I descend into PTSD and times when my life is quite good. And there are times when I go to the phone or computer to seek the voice or counsel of those I served with. What I know to be true is that each of us is the best person to determine what our legacy from Vietnam is—and that legacy may vary from 0-100 on the scale of reality. 

We are a product of a national experiment unlike any other in our history. This leads me to believe that the overwhelming need to define us, discuss us, write about us, patronize us, and lionize us will never lead us—as vets or the nation—to a simple understanding. Simply not going to happen. My best to the men and women who served in Vietnam and are still on the journey. 

Richard Timmerman
River Falls, Wisconsin   

NO POLICY OF ATROCITY

In his review of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, Marc Leepson fails to mention the author’s well-known political biases and his history of twisting facts to support his theories.

Turse, who has a Ph.D. in sociomedical sciences, has no credentials as a serious historian, and his output as a journalist consists almost entirely of anti-American polemics. Most of the documented atrocities he reveals have been public knowledge since the 1960s and early 1970s, and provide no support to his primary thesis—that the slaughter of innocent Vietnamese civilians was an American war aim, and that this slaughter was covered up as a matter of policy.

Writers like Turse rely on the ignorance or laziness of the reader to make their case. But what are the facts? Between January 1965 and August 1973 the U.S. Army prosecuted thirty-six war crimes cases against Army personnel, with thirty-one Army servicemen convicted. Twenty-seven Marines were convicted of premeditated or unpremeditated murder of Vietnamese during the same period. A total of 278 soldiers and Marines were convicted of serious crimes against Vietnamese civilians. A large number of other cases were prosecuted by the military, but unsuccessfully. Still other cases were investigated but not prosecuted. All of these were reported by the press at the time. Surely Turse is aware of this, but he trusts his readers will not be.

No one doubts that the war wrought havoc on Vietnam’s civilians. Political scientist Rudolph Rummel, a respected expert on wartime atrocities and hardly an apologist for U.S. involvement in Vietnam, has estimated civilian deaths at 486,000 to 840,000. But Rummel estimates deliberate killings of civilians by American forces were between 4,000 and 10,000 of that total—between 0.5-2.1 percent of all civilian deaths, depending on the numbers one chooses.

In contrast, he estimates the South Vietnamese government was responsible for between 58,000 and 285,000 civilian deaths—as many as 58.6 percent of the total, and communist forces for between 106,000 and 227,000—as much as 46.7 percent. There are credible estimates that a minimum of 400,000 Vietnamese died of political violence after the war ended in 1975, many in communist concentration camps. Of these, about 100,000 were executed outright, the rest died of mistreatment, disease, or starvation. Hundreds of thousands more died trying to escape Vietnam after 1975, and thousands more died in the 1980s from famine resulting from severe communist economic policies.

Certainly the failure of the U.S. military to prosecute in every case where there was strong evidence of crimes, as with the horrendous 1967 murders by elements of the 101st Airborne Division in Quang Ngai Province, is a shameful blot on American military honor. And there is no doubt that officers and enlisted men involved in serious crimes against Vietnamese civilians sought to cover up their crimes—most criminals do.

But these are things we all know. Where is the evidence that these crimes were American policy? Except in Turse’s imagination, there is none.

David Andrew Sciacchitano
McLean, Virginia

KINDER & MORE GENEROUS

Marc Leepson, writing about Kill Anything That Moves by Nick Turse, is to be highly commended for his detailed and articulate review. Additionally, he should be recognized for his stamina and objective posture in digesting such an inflammatory, skewed, and sensationalistic work. His exemplary review embraces the finest level of professionalism in literature commentary.

We inhabit a small globe. As an Intel advisor and linguist assigned through MACV to the ARVN 23rd and 22nd Divisions, I was inserted daily in Kon Tum City during the siege in the 1972 Easter Offensive. Many a night, in the context of high casualty rates on both sides, and the city an incendiary show, I was reprieved with John Paul Vann in his four-seater Loach back to Pleiku to live another day. A part of my work involved interviewing surviving North Vietnamese POWs. Never in all those encounters did I observe any improprieties against them, including by ARVN officers. They were treated with fairness and humanity, in spite of the tense environment.

In 1989 I returned to Vietnam as a member of a private delegation advocating for Amerasians. This experience entailed numerous contacts with Vietnamese officials and Vietnamese civilians in communication that was exclusively in their language. In subsequent years eight more trips have occurred that included medical aid to rural areas, Montagnard rights support, MIA concerns, wheelchair donations, and participation as a former national-class marathoner in Vietnam’s two marathons staged in Saigon and Hanoi. In all of my social contacts with hundreds of Vietnamese, only once did a villager divulge with understandable anger that a local woman had been raped by American soldiers. Generally, Vietnamese civilians and rural folk remember Americans fondly and rate them far kinder and more generous than other historic outsiders.

As a retired clinician of twenty-seven years of service with Vet Centers and the VA, with an expertise in treating PTSD, the theme of atrocities was rare. Not surprisingly, a number of veterans with PTSD diagnoses report the genesis of their symptoms from exposure to atrocities perpetrated by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers. Given the philosophy of wholesale destruction of South Vietnamese and Americans and the formal sanction of tactics of terror by North Vietnamese leadership, Hanoi is a runaway winner in the “Atrocity Superbowl.” The heinous and savage murders of South Vietnamese civilians, including children—at times by disemboweling, staking, burning, decapitating, and filleting—defies description. Similar to a statement made by Dith Pran, a Cambodian survivor of the Pol Pot nightmarish genocide, “those who committed such acts of darkness were like fiends from some outer galaxy.” 

True, the guerilla and brutal nature of the Vietnam War, with a body-count system and an enemy who was often invisible and difficult for even ethnic Vietnamese to identify, was a climate rife for casualties in general.

An element of Turse’s book, aside from its alienating distortions of misplaced atrocities, is a question and challenge implied as to what preventive programs and preparation the Pentagon may develop to minimize atrocities by American forces in international theaters. By personal observation, a sad shortfall by U.S. military leadership in Vietnam was the dearth of preparation of youthful troops in the basics of the culture, social norms, history, and basic language rudiments of the Vietnamese people.

The noble path for literary truth is not easily achieved by those who were not facing the battle. Nick Turse’s book is an incandescent example.

Jim Barker
San Jose, California

TRUE MERITORIOUS ACHIEVEMENT

When Richard Chase wrote his letter, “Earned Heroism,” he may not have realized that there are two types of Bronze Stars. The one that Andrew Anderson mentioned that would automatically accompany the CMB or CIB is the Bronze Star for “meritorious achievement.” The other Bronze Star, accompanied with a “V” device, is specifically awarded for valor.

I served two tours of duty in Vietnam and have several medals and badges, including the CIB and Bronze Star. I have seen many Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, and even Silver Stars received for relatively minor acts of “heroism” and a mere cut for the Purple Heart. But to earn a CMB or CIB in Vietnam you underwent some of the toughest conditions imaginable for the entire tour of duty.

I prize my “mere badge,” the CIB, above all other medals, and I would be equally as proud if I had earned a CMB.

To earn a Bronze Star with “V” device is largely subjective. I witnessed many acts of valor during my tours of duty by many enlisted personnel that weren’t recognized. 

Also, even truly earned medals are one-instant acts of “heroism,” whereas the holders of the CIB and CMB must endure the repeated hardships and ambushes of an entire tour of duty.

But I wouldn’t expect anyone who hasn’t served a tour of duty in the infantry or as a combat medic to understand.

Carl Davis
Belgrade, Maine

DO THE TIME & LISTEN

I’m responding to James Engel’s letter, “Do the Time & Shut Up.” I don’t know the details of the case that he was referring to, and I bet he didn’t, either. However, his attitude came across loud and clear. I would be willing to bet that Engel never has reached out to a fellow veteran truly in need, nor has he volunteered any hours at a local VA or his state veterans home.

I, too, am of the opinion that there is too much bending over for the incarcerated. That said, I will express an opinion from lessons learned since I ended my time in service.

For a period of time I was a city employee in the criminal court clerk’s office. I saw too many city policemen pad the charges of people they arrested just because they got ticked off or were in a bad mood. I also saw city policemen huddle and discuss the tale they were to attest to on their written state of arrest in order to have their ducks in a row, even if it was a lie.

To further complicate the situation of the veteran, too often and too many of those who were arrested were homeless or had mental issues. The only defense lawyers they were going to end up with were the court-appointed ones that could “give a good rat’s a**” about digging into the situation to discover the truth and trying to give that vet a real defense. 

Most of these court-appointed lawyers that I saw wanted to get the case over as fast as they could. Their method was to con the defendant into taking a plea deal by scaring the veteran with the possible high number of years of imprisonment compared to the plea deal sentence.

That said, I also have seen many veterans who deserve every year of the sentences they received.

It’s a mixed bag with incarcerated veterans. The majority of the incarcerated will tell you that they are innocent of all charges and will lie to you in a New York second. So I hope that each case is investigated before someone jumps in with both feet to assist an incarcerated veteran or makes a statement condemning all incarcerated veterans. 

There is also a middle group of incarcerated veterans who will admit their criminal actions, have wised up from their experiences, and want a helping hand to be a productive member of society upon their release. These should be helped for sure. Yet there are some con artists also posing as members of this middle group, so caution must be used. These con artists will even pose as a veteran or a combat veteran. 

Sid Shown
Nashville, Tennessee