Patriots The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides

by Appy, Christian G.

• ISBN13: 9780670032143
• ISBN10: 067003214X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-26
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

An oral history of the Vietnam war in both the United States and Vietnam features first-hand accounts of how the war was experienced by soldiers, policy makers, protesters, operatives, doctors, artists, and journalists; in an accont that includes contributions by such figures as Oliver Stone, James Brown, and Alexander Haig. 40,000 first printing.

Author Biography

Christian G. Appy has taught at both Harvard and MIT, where he was an associate professor of history.

Table of Contents

Preface	xv
PART ONE: INTRODUCTIONS
Commanders	3	(9)
``It turned out the mayor of Danang was a double agent.''	3	(6)
Bernard Trainor
``With all those choppers they seemed terribly strong.''	9	(3)
Dang Vu Hiep
War Heroes	12	(8)
``We were babes in arms in every way.''	12	(3)
Roger Donlon
``I was stuck in a tunnel for seven days.''	15	(5)
Tran Thi Gung
Paying the Price	20	(8)
``They carried me the whole way back to the North.''	20	(1)
Ta Quang Thinh
``That sand was probably the only thing that saved me.''	21	(4)
George Watkins
``All my ancestors are buried here.''	25	(3)
Phan Xuan Sinh
Where is Vietnam?	28	(7)
``I just thought I was going to Europe.''	28	(2)
Jo Collins
``How can my country be at war and I don't know about it?''	30	(5)
Deirdre English
PART TWO: BEGINNINGS (1945--64)
``History is Not Made With Ifs''	35	(9)
``These were not ragtag farmers.''	38	(3)
Henry Prunier
``The most atrocious conflict in human history.''	41	(3)
Vo Nguyen Giap
``Deliver us From Evil''	44	(16)
``The doctor who won the war in Indochina.''	47	(3)
Daniel Redmond
``Tell 'em I'm not French before they lynch me.''	50	(4)
Rufus Phillips
``If they're making maps, they're preparing for war.''	54	(6)
Ngo Vinh Long
``Kick the Tires and Light the Fires''	60	(19)
``It was like `Terry and the Pirates.'''	62	(2)
Richard Olsen
``You could smell the burning flesh.''	64	(8)
Malcolm Browne
``There was one coup after another.''	72	(4)
Le Lieu Browne
``My cock lost the fight.''	76	(3)
Paul Hare
``The Emperor Has No Clothes''	79	(11)
``What's good for Peru is good for Vietnam.''	81	(2)
Paul Kattenburg
``Dissent which contradicted the public optimism was ignored.''	83	(1)
Evelyn Colbert
``Boy, you speak just like an American.''	84	(3)
Chester Cooper
``The Vietnamese had their own ideas.''	87	(3)
Sergei Khrushchev
``Paradise Island''	90	(11)
``We sent them all back with a generous gift package.''	90	(4)
John Singlaub
``She divorced her second husband and waited for me.''	94	(7)
Luyen Nguyen
PART THREE: ESCALATIONS (1964--67)
Trails to War	101	(11)
``The Truong Son jungle gave us life.''	103	(2)
Vu Thi Vinh
``We came home hairless with ghostly white eyes.''	105	(1)
Nguyen Thi Kim Chuy
``I was their wife, their sister, their girlfriend.''	106	(6)
Helen Tennant Hegelheimer
``You Want me to Start World War III?''	112	(16)
``This was crazy and deceitful policy making.''	115	(3)
James Thomson
``We could stop this war tomorrow.''	118	(3)
Seth Tillman
``He used the f-word more freely than a marine in boot camp.''	121	(3)
Charles Cooper (I)
``Take the North Vietnamese city of Vinh hostage.''	124	(4)
Walt Whitman Rostow
Central Highlands	128	(14)
``Man, if we're up against this, it's gonna be a long-ass year.''	130	(5)
Dennis Deal
``It approached the vicinity of the spiritual.''	135	(3)
Ward Just
``Sometimes I operated all night while the staff took turns pedaling the bicycle.''	138	(4)
Le Cao Dai
From Civil Rights to Antiwar	142	(8)
``They said I was guilty of treason and sedition.''	143	(3)
Julian Bond
``When the call is made to free the Mississippi Delta . . . I'll be the first one in line.''	146	(4)
General Baker Jr.
``The Ultimate Protest''	150	(6)
``It was like an arrow was shot from Norman's heart.''	150	(6)
Anne Morrison Welsh
Free-Fire Zone	156	(6)
``A goddamn chopper was worth three times more than David''	139	(23)
Jim Soular
Triage	162	(15)
``No draft board ever failed to meet its quotas.''	164	(3)
James Lafferty
``The knife man.''	167	(3)
David M. Smith
``We saved their lives, but what life?''	170	(5)
Sylvia Lutz Holland
``Being wounded was not considered the worst thing that could happen.''	175	(2)
Chi Nguyen
Morale Boosters	177	(23)
``I got a butterfly right on the butt. So that's my war story.''	179	(5)
Bobbie Keith
``After they got the funk they went back and reloaded.''	184	(2)
James Brown
``An artist can be as important in war as a soldier.''	186	(2)
Quach Van Phong
``I can't believe the Donut Dollies got us to do that.''	188	(2)
Nancy Smoyer
``Nothing was more essential than our sandals.''	190	(5)
Vu Hy Thieu
``I was president of my high school marching band.''	195	(5)
Joe Mcdonald
Air War	200	(21)
``I had my notebook right there in the plane.''	202	(7)
Jonathan Schell
``Good luck and good hunting.''	209	(3)
Harlan S. Pinkerton Jr.
``Before I trained as a pilot I had never been in an airplane.''	212	(3)
Luu Huy Chao
``That was the first time I ever saw an American.''	215	(2)
Nguyen Quang Sang
``What would it be like to hide in a cave day after day for five years?''	217	(4)
Fred Branfman
Prisoners of War (I)	221	(17)
``I don't see how you've got a worse place than this.''	222	(6)
Porter Halyburton
``They tried to make us say, `Down with President Ho!'''	228	(3)
Truong My Hoa
``Friction against the wheel.''	231	(7)
Randy Kehler
Cameras, Books, and Guns	238	(24)
``Go see what they did to those people with your money.''	240	(3)
Philip Jones Griffiths (I)
``We had this idea that we were king of the fucking hill.''	243	(4)
Larry Heinemann
``We didn't need a darkroom.''	247	(3)
Duong Thanh Phong
``The counterculture was visible everywhere.''	250	(3)
Joan Holden
``He lived to kill. He was like a real Ahab.''	253	(3)
Oliver Stone
``Whoever won, the people always lost.''	256	(1)
Nguyen Duy
``Soul Brothers, what you dying for?''	257	(2)
Yusef Komunyakaa
``We would write something and the magazine would ignore it if it wasn't upbeat.''	259	(3)
H. D. S. Greenway
Antiwar Escalations	262	(17)
``A rather grandiose sense that we were the stars and spear-carriers of history.''	265	(3)
Todd Gitlin
``It was like Vietnam had somehow come all the way into our living rooms.''	268	(6)
Tom Engelhardt
``What? Meet separately with women?''	274	(5)
Vivian Rothstein
``They Slept At Our House''	279	(6)
``We fought for a separate South Vietnam, but there wasn't any South.''	279	(6)
Paul Warnke
PART FOUR: THE TURNING POINT (1968--70)
Tet	285	(19)
``He asked me for directions to the police station.''	288	(2)
Tran Van Tan
``Then---boom!---Tet comes along.''	290	(4)
Barry Zorthian
``You're not safe in those cities.''	294	(1)
Philip Jones Griffiths (II)
``I was living a double life.''	295	(3)
Nguyen Qui Duc
``We buried our own men right there.''	298	(4)
Bob Gabriel
``Attack! Attack! Attack!''	302	(2)
Tuan Van Ban
Memorial Day 1968	304	(3)
``He Was Only 19---Did You Know Him?''	304	(3)
Clark Dougan
From Johnson to Nixon	307	(18)
``Our only shot was to help Humphrey break away from Johnson.''	309	(4)
John Gilligan
``Political conversion was the greatest aphrodisiac.''	313	(3)
Peter Kuznick
``The palace guard.''	316	(3)
J. Shaeffer
``You had to be pretty stupid to stay out in the countryside.''	319	(2)
Samuel Huntington
``While we had the power, it turned out they had the will.''	321	(4)
Douglas Kinnard
``A Three-Square-Mile Piece of the United States''	325	(3)
``It was like being in a minimum-security prison.''	325	(3)
Tom O'Hara
Families at War	328	(15)
``You will not be welcome here again.''	328	(2)
John Douglas Marshall
``Receiving a letter was a mixed blessing.''	330	(2)
Huynh Phuong Dong
``They told me I needed to choose between my country and my brother.''	332	(2)
Richard Houser
``A sign this country has grown up will be when there is a memorial erected to the war resisters.''	334	(6)
Nathan Houser
``This nice young man from the FBI was here.''	340	(1)
Suzie Scott
``I was away from home for twenty-nine years.''	341	(2)
Lam Van Lich
My Lai	343	(11)
``They were butchering people.''	346	(3)
Larry Colburn
``The portable free-fire zone.''	349	(5)
Michael Bernhardt
``You Look Like a Gook''	354	(17)
``Damn, I'm a gook.''	357	(5)
Vincent Okamoto
``I was thanking God they didn't have air support.''	362	(4)
Wayne Smith
``It sure as hell wasn't `English Only' in Vietnam.''	366	(5)
Charley Trujillo
``An Acute Lack of Forgetfulness''	371	(6)
``Before the war, I was Miss Mary Poppins.''	371	(3)
Gloria Emerson
``To get their ID cards, the girls had to go to bed with the police.''	374	(3)
Nguyen Ngoc Luong
From Cambodia to Kent State	377	(16)
``Quitting wasn't heroic.''	380	(2)
Anthony Lake
``I think they pictured it as a kind of huge bamboo Pentagon.''	382	(2)
A. J. Langguth
``As much as we hated the war on April 29, we hated it more on April 30.''	384	(9)
Tom Grace
PART FIVE: ENDINGS (1970--75)
The End of the Tunnel	393	(20)
``Even the tough guys . . . caved in.''	397	(5)
Alexander M. Haig Jr.
``Kissinger did not trust anybody fully.''	402	(5)
Morton Halperin
``Vietnamization wasn't working any better than Americanization.''	407	(6)
Judith Coburn
``We Really Believed . . .''	413	(17)
``God forbid my boss finds out I'm here.''	413	(4)
Beverly Gologorsky
``Why should my son die for your country?''	417	(5)
Nguyen Ngoc Bich
``The campus was turning into a celebration of Maoism.''	422	(3)
Chalmers Johnson
``Steve Sherlock, bronze star with a V.''	425	(5)
Steve Sherlock
Watergate	430	(11)
``We're eating our young.''	432	(4)
Daniel Ellsberg
``Let's circle the wagons.''	436	(5)
Egil ``Bud'' Krogh
``The World Was Coming to an End''	441	(15)
``The whole attitude was, stand back little brother, I'll take care of it.''	441	(4)
Frank Maguire
``All this area was Indian country.''	445	(4)
Charles Cooper (II)
``I didn't know there was a bad war.''	449	(7)
George Evans
``Everybody Thought We'd Won the War''	456	(5)
``Reporters just kept writing as if it were Tet '68.''	456	(5)
Charles Hill
Paris	461	(9)
``I wouldn't buy a used car from that man.''	463	(2)
Daniel Davidson
``The longest peace talks in history.''	465	(3)
Nguyen Thi Binh
``It wasn't a mistake, it was an inexplicable crime.''	468	(2)
Nguyen Khac Huynh
Prisoners of War (II)	470	(23)
``I read Anthony Adverse about four times.''	471	(4)
Jay Scarborough
``The curriculum was designed to `detoxicate' us.''	475	(5)
Tran Ngoc Chau
``Americans like conspiracies.''	480	(3)
John Mccain
``What mushroom do they think we were hatched under last week?''	483	(6)
Patty
Earl Hopper Sr.
``The government wanted to control the POW/MIA movement''	489	(4)
Gloria Coppin
Collapse	493	(15)
``There was classified confetti all over the trees.''	496	(8)
Frank Snepp
``We could either lose or tie, but not win.''	504	(4)
Truong Tran
``The Merriment Was Short-Lived''	508	(7)
``The letters remain, but the senders are gone forever.''	508	(7)
Le Minh Khue
PART SIX: LEGACIES (1975--)
Missing in Action	515	(5)
``We saw so many parents crying for their lost children.''	515	(2)
Tran Van Ban
``Why do you hate the Vietnamese?''	517	(3)
Tom Corey
War-Zone Childhoods	520	(9)
``I never got there in time to capture an American pilot.''	520	(2)
Tran Luong
``It's not worth my energy to lay blame on anybody.''	522	(4)
Bong Macdoran
``People just disappeared and you didn't say anything.''	526	(3)
Loung Ung
Silences	529	(5)
``I didn't want her to worry, so I lied.''	529	(1)
Toshio Whelchel
``Your real self was only for you.''	530	(2)
R. Huynh
``I just want to know what happened.''	532	(2)
Jayne Stancavage
Souvenirs	534	(2)
``They bought Zippos as a kind of birth certificate.''	534	(2)
Hoang Van Thiet
Taps	536	(15)
``Old geezers . . . playing taps on a tape recorder.''	538	(1)
Leroy V. Quintana
``I was leading an unpopular war.''	539	(1)
William Westmoreland
``The first time I ever encountered the Vietnam War was in Hollywood movies.''	540	(2)
Thai Dao
``You can't talk with people you demonize.''	542	(3)
Tim O'Brien
``We no longer hate the Americans.''	545	(2)
Huu Ngoc
``The roof that hasn't been built.''	547	(1)
Wayne Karlin
``Because love is stronger than enmity.''	548	(3)
Duong Tuong
Acknowledgments	551	(4)
Index	555