Images of War (Time Life - Vietnam Experience)

The Vietnam Experience
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Images

of

War

K

The Vietnam Experience

Images

of

War

by Julene Fischer
and the

picture staff of Boston Publishing

Text

Company

by Robert Stone

Boston Publishing Company/Boston,

MA


Boston Publishing

Company

Design: Designworks, Sally Bindari
Design Assistant: Emily Betsch

President and Publisher: Robert J. George
Vice President: Richard S. Perkins, Jr.
Editor-in-Chief: Robert Manning
Managing Editor: Paul Dreyfus
Marketing Director: Jeanne Gibson

Senior Picture Editor: Julene Fischer
Senior Writers:
Clark Dougan, Edward Doyle, David

Samuel Lipsman,

Fulghum,

Terrence

Maitland, Stephen Weiss
Senior Editor: Gordon Hardy
Picture Editors:

Wendy

Johnson,

Lanng Tamura

Business

Staff:

Amy Pelletier, Amy P.
About the

editors

Wilson

Editor-in-Chief Robert Manning, a longtime journalist, has previously been editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly magazine and its press. He served as assistant

secretary of state for public affairs under
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson. He has also been a fellow at the
Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University.

Picture Researchers:

Julene Fischer, senior picture editor at
Boston Publishing Company, has headed
the picture effort for THE VIETNAM EXPERIENCE since just after the beginning of
the project. A graduate of the University of
Colorado, she received her M.A. in English from the University of Washington.

Katz Colman, Robert Ebbs,
Tracey Rogers, Nana Elisabeth Stern,
Shirley L. Green (Washington, D.C.),
Kate Lewin (Paris)

Archivist: Kathryn J. Steeves
Picture Department Assistant:
Karen Bjelke

Researchers:

Richard

Burke,
Jonathan Elwitt,
Sandra M. Jacobs, Steven W. Lipari, Michael Ludwig, Anthony Maybury-Lewis,
Nicholas Philipson, Carole Rulnick, Nicole van Ackere, Janice Sue Wang, Robert

J.

Yarbrough

Production Editor: Kerstin Gorham
Assistant Production Editor:
Patricia Leal Welch
Assistant Editor: Denis Kennedy
Editorial Production:

Sarah Burns, Theresa M. Slomkowski

spring 1967.

and authors:

Assistant Picture Editor: Kathleen A. Reidy

Nancy

Cover Photo:

Navy corpsman Vernon Wike tries vainly to save
the life of a wounded Marine under fire during
the battle of Hill 881 North, near Khe Sanh,

Robert Stone covered Vietnam in 1971 for
the British publications Ink and Manchester Guardian. His National Book Award-

winning novel, Dog Soldiers (1974), grew
out of his experiences there. In addition to
writing for LIFE, Harper's, the Atlantic
Monthly, and other periodicals, he has
published three other novels, Hall ol Mirrors (1967), A Flag for Sunrise (1981), and
Children of Light (1986).

1986 by Sammler Kabinett Inc. All
No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including

Copyright

rights reserved.

photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

Library of
85-063001

Congress Catalog Card Number:

ISBN: 0-939526-18-2

Picture Consultant: Ngo Vinh Long is a social historian specializing in China and

Vietnam. Born in Vietnam, he returned
there most recently in 1980.

10
5

9
4

6

7

8
3

2

1

Contents
Preface:

Khe Sanh

The Shattered Mirror

Introduction

8

96

Tet!

108

Resisting the French

12

War at Home

124

Saigon

28

Withdrawal

146

46

The Easter Offensive

164

Strategy of Attrition

62

The End

176

The Other Side

80

Epilogue

188

War in the

Village

s*»1

Preface
The Shattered Mirror

was a war

home, while summoning the

no other. Americans
are virtually unanimous about that,
though they agree on few other certitudes
about the war in Vietnam. Each earlier
war left behind a widely accepted image

under

War
was brother against brother. World War
was the war to end all wars. World War

be the ones to
tance from
search out such an essence. For now, it is
challenge enough to assemble, with balance and sensitivity, the chronicle of those
twenty or more years of turbulent history
and the people caught up in its currents.
Part of that story is this volume of im-

It

or sense of

its

like

character. The Civil

I

II

was

fought to stop Hitler's Nazism

and

Tojo's imperialism.

The image

of

Vietnam

the

shattered mirror. In

its

ment

of

meaning

What
passage
or

a

private frag-

of

the

more than a decade,
essence or assess the meanlittle

lessons

learned

bloody involvement thousands

from
of

that

miles

war that contorted the
conscience and brought down

from our shores— a
national

the ruling political party?

born
let

of

noble ideals

An

enterprise

and impulses— yes,

us agree on that— but which, like some

prehistoric monster

the asphalt

edy?

A

lumbering blindly

swamp, descended

best of patriotism

fought in

into

into trag-

venture that brought patriotism

among

the

many who

Vietnam— Americans and South

and North Vietnamese?
dis-

the events will

ages, reflections glittering in the fragof

the broken mirror.

War was

the

most

brotherhood,

on both sides

The Vietnam

thoroughly

photo-

in

count. Pacification. Tonkin

Hanoi Hilton with
bloodied highway

torture rooms.

The

ironically called

the

its

Street of Joy.

Some

of

the most vivid reflections of

Vietnam came in the remarkable stream
of books written by those who fought in or
observed the war at close hand. One of
those writers

is

Robert Stone, whose novel

among the books
induced by the Vietnam War. He covered
the combat in 1971. Mr. Stone was invited

to

have the power to evoke images. Such words as courage, sacrifice,

Or other
memory like

the fighting.

won't go!" Pol Pot. The prison called

rillas.

Words

men

Gulf. Kent State. Boat people. "Hell, no!

We

Dog

in history.

of

time

that

their application to

buzz ominously

Body

insects.

The camera's
eye recorded it all— a GI sobbing over a
dead buddy, a naked Vietnamese child
fleeing a napalm attack, a Buddhist monk
being consumed by flames, an American
President brooding over events that have
broken from his control, the joyous return
of a hero from a Hanoi prison, the grisly
sight of villagers slain by Vietcong guer-

graphed combat

that

words

tenacity,

and again found
words

Historians blessed with greater

ments

or recollection.

simple expression can, after the

capture the
ing

is

shards, each on-

own

looker finds his or her

War

fire at

write the text for this volume, adding

to

his
of

Soldiers rates high

powerful word images

to the portfolio

photographs selected by our picture

editors

and

researchers. Together, they

assemble many fragments of the shattered mirror in which Americans can try
view the war

that

was

like

no

other.

too

—Robert Manning


know

their friends

was

It

Introduction

had seen and
had seen too.

that they

to

it

be sure

it

without form

but

itself,

it

could

assume an infinity of forms. It was as tiny
as a lizard's eye and as huge as the bad,
black

sky.

It

became

events.

It

became

things themselves.
It

was

how-

at the heart of every irony,

ever innocuous, however hideously cruel.
It

might appear as a droll incongruity

along some nameless road or as guilty
"There

it

is,"

they used to say in Viet-

nam. It was as if an evil spirit were loose,
one of the demons known to the Vietnamese as ma, weaving in and out of visible
reality, a dancing ghost. It would appear
suddenly out of whirl, shimmer for an instant, and be lost. People came to recognize it. Recognizing it, they would say
without excitement: "There it is," with emphasis on the

last

word

to let their friends

laughter over things that weren't funny.

was as palpable as a tumbling
was lacy as light, fine enough
right

and

into

confront you as

a grotesque insight.
It had no strength of its own because it
used human strength. It had no life of its
own because it used human lives with a
brave prodigality. Because it used so
many young lives it could assume a
thought,

bered images.

were comparisons

A medic at Chu

Pong, 1966.

seep

to

an oddly turned

youthful, frolicsome aspect.

this

It

your deepest inward places

page and the following three pages
appear some of the war's most remem-

On

bullet.

It

play
land.

its

It

Alice in

was

It

Wonderland
to

could disside.

Alice in

There

Through the Looking Glass and that there
was Lewis Carroll logic. Red Queen to
White Rabbit. There it is.
In

was

fact,

its

Lewis Carroll dimension

had all the obsessiveness of
Alice in Wonderland and about as much
justice and mercy.
Some people called it the Gray Rat,

This Shit, or The Show. Some called
Mr.
Gray Rat. A Marine I knew called Captain Gray Rat versus The World.
moral.

It

it

it

a peculiar nomenclature.
Among Union soldiers, the American Civil
War was called The Elephant. Before
Shiloh and Chancellorsville, some sergeant would inform the plowboys who
had never been in the line before that
they were Going to See the Elephant.
That was what going into combat was
There

exists

called then.

The Marine mentioned above was on
Operation Prairie around the Rockpile in
1967. In one fight during Operation Prairie, 32 Marines held off steady attacks by

Wonder-

said that everything

was

Awaiting evacuation. Hue,

:

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.w

1968.

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Army

and he was credited with a partial disability. He saw Captain Gray Rat versus
The World as a Saturday morning car-

would go them. "So the gunny goes— "You
been doggin' the bush, Smith?' So I go
"hell no, gunny!' " The average American
infantryman in Vietnam was seven and a
half years younger than his counterpart
in the Second World War.
In those days it was unsettling to hear
so much bitter whimsy from young Americans. Pre-Vietnam America had become
a stranger to irony. These youths and
their wit were brutally sophisticated.
They'd all caught a glimpse of the ma, the

toon in which you got killed.

war's infernal antic

300 North Vietnamese

two days.

Marx

It

was

called

regulars for

Groucho
said Op-

the

My

Marine friend
eration Prairie was a Walt Disney True
Life Adventure. He was badly wounded
there, so badly that the first doctor who

saw him decided to amputate his right
hand but changed his mind at the last
minute. The Marine's hand was saved
Battle.

Understand how young a

lot of

people were. Their youth

factor in

how

spoke.

For ex-

they thought

and

ample, they would not say things, they

Below. The crush

to

escape.

Nha

"There

these

was a

Trang,

it

is!"

it

itself, but what was it?
Whether they knew it or not, everyone
was looking for a metaphor.
A napalmed tiger was a metaphor

was, the thing

answer

It

was Captain Gray

to culture shock,

and The

of

dreadfully, he might

relativity of things, the Fool

anywhere.

kill

hospital

through a rice

namese
back of

the

same

to

became

well.

Hill.

his

corpsman
field

The

is

running

carrying a small Viet-

been shot off the
water buffalo by the Fool on

child.

child, the Fool

Forest, the tigers

was

it.

A

beguiled. The colonial hunting preserves

Minn

motion

He saw an essential gookishness
deep down things, and he kept trying to

the

corpses might find themselves inciner-

All

might turn his

him.

World's revenge on Nam, mysterious Asia

ated on a hunch. Burning bright in the

Alone

above a grapefruit patch, issued amphetamine to keep him alert, seduced by the

1968.

for

be a duly authorized

friendly sniper turned free-lance.

Rat's

prowling

Nobody and

was innocent, or free, or neutral.
There was a metaphorical figure
known as the Fool on the Hill, a figure of
legend, compounded of fear and morning
mist. The Fool might be hostile; bombproof, bulletproof, Luke the Gook. More

1975. Bottom. Street execution. Saigon,

free fire zones. Tigers

innocence.

nothing

fire

spirit.

they would say. There

rich in implication.

bankruptcy

child's

Not content with shooting the

has popped the buffalo as

The corpsman runs with the bleeding child, making for dry ground, risking

U

demonstrated the

On

Mutter's Ridge. Operation Prairie, 1966.


.

submerged punji sticks and immersion
foot. He knows the next thing the Fool will
shoot may be him.
Eventually, il it were certain he was
friendly, and il there were time, someone

would have to go talk to the Fool and get
him down and try to make him well

"Talk not

Ahab

me

to

replied, "I'd

He

blasphemy, man,"
strike the sun if it inof

an ab-

pondered a moral dilemma. Reasoning
carefully, he decided the Vietnam War

was wrong. He

again.

great American novel

dad and

went to Canada. In Canada he began to
think he might have taken an easy way
out. He came back and took the draft and
went as a medic.
He was sent to I Corps, a known

enraged the Fool with their
basically foolish appearance. But anyone—a bored door gunner, a senior officer on his way to an inspection— might
have a shot at a buffalo. Buffaloes didn't
seem innocent. They chased people and
they hated grunts. It was stupid to be
chased by a buffalo. The animals were a
useful metaphor because the human dimension was so painful and so hard to

passion

conshy, looking out at

Buffaloes

a moralist
was going
It's

to fix

oil.

it.

not gratuitous that

for control

no one

Moby Dick

is

.

and Ahab, with his
and his "can do" spirit,

at

all.

Laos,

we

They achieved complete astonishment as
the

first

elephant exploded.

Once a young man from Missouri, an
earnest German-American farm boy,
slow spoken, Catholic, and bespectacled,

1
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wt

,

to.'

10

the

used Cobra gunships
against elephants on the Ho Chi Minn
Trail. Descending like gigantic insects,
the Cobras achieved complete surprise.
In

1966.

1

in

for

He was
an immoral world and he

straction like victory or for the

for

race against death. Operation Prairie,

„

it

an American hero. Ahab started out
chasing the whale because it represented
everything that was wrong with the
world. By the end of his disastrous voyage, no one remembered where goodness resided and the whale and the
whalers went down together in a victory

"Vengeance on a dumb brute
seems blasphemous." So the Quaker
Starbuck in Moby Dick sought to reason
with Captain Ahab.

A

wasn't doing

is

think about.
.

sulted me."

weak

talked to his

all

it

with his honest

When

he told them he
wouldn't carry a weapon, they made him
blue eyes.

carry everybody's

weapon on

home. They kept

up

bush.

When

it

the

way

amwent down and

until the first

the point

called for a medic they waited to see

if he
would go, and he went. They found out he
would always go. Everybody loved him
because he was without a grain of meanness, he liked to talk about important

Below. Convoy of tears.

Bottom. Kent State, 1970.

Highway

1,

1975.


and he had so much heart. Time
passed. When he was short, his time in
country nearly elapsed, no move was

and

made

were being
smuggled out to The World in them.
People said "there it is." It sounded a little
too right to be true, but eventually the CID
arrested some individuals at Aberdeen,
Maryland, and their accomplices at Bien

things,

keep him out of the line. Other
people complained on his behali; he said
not a word.
to

At that time they

were

on the Laotian border

in

fighting for hills

Corps. People

I

were confused. The American command
declared that it was not a war of hills. On
one hill, they lost fifty-six men, and a general explained that the "hill had no military value whatsoever." There seemed to
be a contradiction.
In these worthless hills the
to hurt

man

him he was out

of

When

He
wounded men mints as
everything.

went back

to

The World

liked

in

a

fight

they killed
of

almost

placebos.

a

Hoa. Millions
purest heroin
KIAs.

folding

the

DMZ.

1966.

was being

flown

be

to

in

of

the

with the

true after

all.

is,"

was

we

just

rumor.

said,

in

our great

sweep for metaphors. We never determined quite what it was. No single image

of

control.

wash

fiery

Its

burned people down
lescents into bags of garbage, sucked a
million

people

out

of

turned them into their

we

The images
embers.

own

carried

away

der in his classic study, The

most 500 years

old, the

are

its

it.

the historian

Renaissance, treated with

and

flayed ghosts.

We will never forget

Decades ago,

skin,

their

Ralph Roe-

Man

of the

a war now

invasion

al-

of Italy

by King Charles VIII of France.
"Swollen by the confluence of so many
causes," Roeder wrote, "it advanced like
some complex, blundering, uncontrollable
force which absorbed its own authors,
and which assumed more and more the
featureless and irresistible likeness of
fate."

served.

the

It

He

ning

box

it

was
of

us.

It

was

them.

death— the destroyer
It

It

was

the cun-

dice play. The smoke, the rain,

girls in the

Humping. Near

worth

dollars'

of

turned out

It

"There

bringing

in

said that drugs

remains. That part

morphine, out

was

was

It

and they

from Missouri died

twenty-four hours long.

Strange rumors circulated about cof-

medic up.

They wanted the medicine

would kill the medic to get it.
The

lieved.

fins.

spinning out

and processed ado-

Then it was said that the gang at Aberdeen had missed one, and an undertaker
in some tank town opened his son's coffin
and found a bag full of smack beside the

enemy

the point to bring the

no longer mattered what he be-

it

of

boom-boom

was a mistake

worlds,

and

the

rooms.

10,000

miles long,

Napalm

strike.

Highway

1,

1972.

11


Resisting the French

Vietnam's

resistance

commenced even
completed

their

the

second

The

situation of

against

the

to

before the

conquest

French

had

latter

Indochina

of

in

half of the nineteenth century.

a small country struggling
an imperial power was one the

Japanese seized direct control of Indochina only to surrender it in defeat to the
Vietrninh. After over 100 years of
rule,

the

whole

French

Vietnam had an

of

in-

digenous government.

Ho Chi Minh counted on

his cordial

changed. Her wartime

had come

anticolonialist pol-

seem naive and even
treacherous. China had been "lost" and
grave accusations exchanged that would
paralyze the country's Asian policy for a
icy

to

Some

generation.

strategists professed to

Vietnamese understood profoundly. Hav-

relationship with the United States to pro-

China for centuries, they
knew all the weaknesses of an empire at
war and all the advantages accruing to

tect

Vietnamese autonomy. American pol-

an American interest in any antiCommunist war. America must bear any

icy

seemed

burden,

the guerrilla.

theater of war,

Beyond the limited circle directly profiting by French authority, the desire to be
rid of French rule was universal, embrac-

French

At one point, beset by Chinese pressure in the north and the arrival of British

Vietnam. She had forgotten that in 1945

ing all social classes. But the strongest

troops determined to install the regroup-

an American

and most enduring faction of the independence movement was that controlled
by the Communist party of Vietnam. This
was due in great measure to the fact that
the
most influential and resourceful

ing French,

Ho requested

States take

Vietnam under

ing

resisted

fighter for

Vietnamese independence was

also one of the founding fathers of the

Comintern, the

man known

to his

early

favor the Vietminh.

to

United States, predominant

opposed the

in the

The

Asian

restoration of

control. His request

was

that the United

temporary

its

declined, but at

Hanoi proclaiming an independent Vietnam, Ho announced his
Vietnamese Declaration of Independence
based in large part on America's.
Supported by Britain, the French rein

by the nom de guerre Nguyen Ai Quoc and later to all the world as

were

Ho Chi

France's colonial wars. Time after time,

collaborators

Minh.

During World

War

a weak Vichy

II,

regime governed Vietnam

ance

of

tory,

Ho

Japan. Foreseeing

in force.

Quite soon,

engaged

in

jungle that suffocated conventional armies.

Monsoons and

trees

made

the Japanese.

part of the year.

American

Command came

to

forces

of

recognize the

Vietminh as the authentic representative
of the Allied

close

war

effort in

Indochina.

collaboration developed

American OSS

operatives

A

between

and Ho's guer-

12

air

canopy of
support difficult a large
the high

The enemy was skillful and ruthless,
avoiding engagement, then striking at

the

war turned

against them, the

was

said, to

preserve the free

world her power had created. Her power
was vast, a mighty force for good.

be secure. It was a dirty war, fought under demoralizing conditions. By 1954, the French

were fighting their last losing battle at

sea-horse-shaped

clared in his

man was

"Lesser

Dragon"

intelligence officer
last

of

had de-

report that the white

"finished"

in

Southeast Asia.

She had forgotten her fierce, indomitable
wartime allies and their ruthless, singleminded rejection of foreign control.
France, free of its dirty war, watched

with some cynicism as America began
the process of involvement in Vietnam.

The advance guard of the American
Presence appeared in Saigon, and many
found Vietnam charming, with its flame
trees,

cafes,

and

lovely

women. At

the

a French scholar was writing
of French soldiers' agony as their road
came to an end at Dien Bien Phu. Place
names along that road— Ban Me Thuot,
Dak To, An Khe, Hue— would one day be
familiar in remote American towns. The
Frenchman's book was entitled, Hell in a

same

time,

Very Small Place.

isolated posts or in cities thought to

Dien Bien Phu.

rillas.

As

of

carefully

tional guerrilla tactics effectively against

China

bitter

From

their

jungle redoubts, his Vietminh used tradi-

the

most

armies

Allied vic-

consolidated the resistance.

Eventually

the

their

planned "encirclements"
ended in frustration. The terrain was hellish. Sixty percent of the country was a

at the suffer-

an

turned

it

America's attention turned toward the

rule.

ceremonies

detect

In

the interim,

America's

mood had

Vietnamese nationalists are hauled off
jail under the watchful eye of a French
guard in the fall of 1945.

to


13


14


On August

19, 1945,

1,000 Vietminh sol-

Hanoi
drum up support for

Ho Chi Minh, who
was to declare Vietnamese independence three weeks
diers entered

later.

oi

to

Here, thousands

Hanoi residents

gather in front of the

Opera House as

their

revolutionary stan-

dard

is

unfurled.

15

.-•""*


Above. Ho Chi Minh proclaims independence {or Vietnam in Hanoi on September
2,

1945.

war

with the resurgent

Below.

Right. Preparing for

(with

French colonial force in late 1946, Vietminh
soldiers dig trenches inside the former residence of the French governor-general in

Ho 's lieutenant, Vo Nguyen Giap
plaid tie), and Major A.L.A. Path of

the U.S. Ofiice ol Strategic Services
right) salute the flags of their

August

16

26, 1945.

(to

his

two countries,

Hanoi.


17


18


Ho Chi Minh

inspects

a Vietminh guerrilla
unit in

Cao Bang

Province, near the

Chinese border.

Driven from Hanoi,

Ho

directed resistance

to

the

renewed

colonial

French rule from his
jungle headquarters.

19


Above. Oiiicers' evening mess at a French
Phu Lo in the Red River Delta, early
1951. Later that evening the Vietminh attacked the post.

post at

20

French reinforcements sent north
from Saigon crowd the decks of an AmeriRight.

can-built landing craft in

January

1951.

Ha Long Bay in


21

WL