The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War dominated the lives of people my age for a long time. I would say from about 1965 or so to about 1975. Early on we didn't know too much about it and then, when we became aware, we learned more and depending on when and where we first became appreciative of the facts, and who taught them to us, we formed our own opinions.

I remember the shootings in 1970 at Kent State University and Nixon calling them campus bums and that a majority of the Americans agreed with the shootings. No wonder they voted in Trump! I saw the demonstrations on TV, the cops and soldiers ill treating the demonstrators and watched with pity for the students getting beaten up. I remember the demonstration in Grosvenor Square; a lot of what was happening sunk in.

I had to go to hospital – an RAF hospital – for a tiny operation on my wrist in 1972 and the demonstrations were on TV there too. I was still appalled when I saw demonstrators being man handled and bullied by police and soldiers but in hospital, with a load of air-force patients, I found they were sympathising with the bullies – the police, the military.

I was in that particular hospital because I was in their catchment area and it was the first time I had seen and been with people who had different sympathies. This was 1972, as I have said; they didn't know that America in 1965 knew that they wouldn't be able to win that war and had accepted that fact and were only staying in Vietnam to save face.

Save Face was 70% of the reasons – they had others. The RAF men in the hospital were on the side of the military because that is what the military taught their people; what more could be expected?

I bring all this up now as there is a terrific documentary series, that has just been shown on BBC4. It's an American documentary made by, maybe, the best producer of documentaries there is; Ken Burns. He has made some marvelous series all shown in America: there was one called Jazz; others were The War, Lewis & Clark; the Journey and the Corps of Discovery, The Civil War and he seems to make a series called The American Experience now and again.

The Vietnam War is no exception – it is an outstanding series and I strongly recommend it. There are ten parts and a few things, which I will mention later, stuck out, apart from seeing the paper work by Johnson saying they would never (and they didn't they lost) win the war and were only over there to save face. 

In the process they spent over $70 Billion and over 58 thousand young Americans with an average age of 19 were killed together with 250,000 South Vietnamese and on the other side 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong. All to save face!

President Johnson was a president who could do anything. He fought, bullied, cajoled and pushed civil rights through congress. 
Up to that time the Jim Crow laws ruled the south. The famous and first black baseball player, Jackie Robinson, had a gun shoved in his face for drinking out of a whites only fountain, blacks had to sit at the back of the bus, swimming pools at hotels were emptied and re-filled if it was found there had been a black person in it. Civil Rights Bills were needed which is what Johnson aim in life was: his raison d'être, his life's work and he had to concentrate on Vietnam which he hadn't started and never got to finish. He ended up growing his hair and smoking himself to death.

The Americans were against communism and that was their reason to be there; it also generated the Eisenhower doctrine of the Military Industrial Complex which, in simple words, would make war a business. Eisenhower predicted such a future in a speech in the 1950s, and in fact there was a helicopter company who were going broke before Vietnam, and at the end of that war they were one of the biggest companies in America, as with most of the armament companies.

The two things that stuck out for me in the series: first there was a pilot whose job it was to bomb the Hồ Chí Minh Trail; The Hồ Chí Minh trail was a logistical system that ran from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the north) to the Republic of Vietnam (the south) through the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia. The pilot, in question, would fly over the trail and bomb the trucks with the weapons and supplies heading south, and as he looked down he realised he was on the wrong side. Looking down he admired their bravery. He realised he, with his American army, was being seen off just as the Vietnamese had seen off the Japanese, after World War II and the French who followed them.

The other thing that stuck out to me was strange.

It was told by a Japanese American who was the highest decorated Japanese American soldier of the war. I was surprised he even related it.

He was born in an Internment Camp in America as the USA were at war with Japan. His family, when released, would eat Japanese food, of course, but when he was in Vietnam the military didn't serve rice; and he longed for some.

One day they reached a village with his troop and searched it house by house and found nothing. 
In one of the houses he met a couple of grannies as he called them and they were cooking. He said it smelt beautiful, he had not eaten any rice since he was there and he stared at the rice and vegetables with big eyes. He asked if he could have some and offered a pack of American cigarettes and other stuff in exchange and sat outside eating every bit of his meal.

He wanted more and one of his buddies he told, said 'these people don't have much food for themselves so why take it?' he looked and said 'no – look they have plenty of food; in fact enough for a lot of people – men!!!!'

So they looked again around the village and found a trench which was like a priest hole, which they have in the old houses in England. 
He took two grenades and popped them in to the hole. Then they pulled up four bodies of the young men they had killed.

They studied the faces of the women to see which ones were crying for their loved ones – they all cried.

It was quite obvious who lost the war and why – but what do it know?