Control Of Combat Operations In Quang Ngai example essay topic

The people of Quang Ngai, China have a history of rebellion dating back far into the sixteenth century. It was there that the Vietminh troops led revolts against and defeated the French in the 1930's and after World War II and where the Viet Cong fought the Saigon government in the 1950's and 1960's. When Vietnam was partitioned in 1954, Saigon officials estimated 90,000 southerners went north to join the Hanoi regime. More than 90 percent of them came from Quang Ngai.

By the mid-1960's Quang Ngai's population was estimated to be 640,000 making it South Vietnam's third largest province. It was also considered to be the toughest Viet Cong stronghold in the country. Attempts to separate the Viet Cong from the people began in 1962, when the Saigon government launched the Strategic Hamlet Program (a. k. a. pacification or rural construction). Entire families were taken and moved into fortified hamlets (small villages) and those that refused to go had their homes and fields burned by the South Vietnamese army, but the program failed and embittered the peasants and did very little to drive out the Viet Cong. Those living inside of the hamlets, though, were still in contact with the National Liberation Front, the political arm of the Viet Cong, and the gates and walls inside the hamlets were scribbled over with Viet Cong slogans of defiance. Quang Ngai became the target for the first major American combat operation of the Vietnam War.

The mission, conducted in 1965 by the U.S. marines, was called "Operation Starlight" and more than 700 Viet Cong were reported killed. A new concept of pacification was devised in order that the marines are able to free Quang Ngai and its people from Communist control. The orders, as told by a senior officer in 1966, were to sanitize the region-kill the Viet Cong and get the civilians out. In guerrilla warfare the guerrillas are the fish and the people are the water; to catch the fish, you must remove the water, was a common reference to how the American military should go about getting rid of the Viet Cong. By this time much of Quang Ngai had been declared a free-fire zone, in which all inhabitants were assumed to be Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers and U.S. forces needed no permission from Saigon or local officials for bombing missions or artillery attacks. This being said, soldiers took this opportunity to bomb and / or shoot at anything that looked like it may be a target, yet the Viet Cong continued their hold on Quang Ngai.

In 1967, Task Force Oregon was formed to sanitize the Communists in the area. It included two infantry brigades, one airborne unit and a brigade of Korean marines. In four months, Task Force Oregon claimed 3,300 kills of Viet Cong, 800 captured weapons, and 5,000 arrested suspects in the area. By this time, as an indirect cause of U.S. operations in Quang Ngai, at least 138,000 civilians had been made homeless and brought into refugee camps, because 70 percent of the dwellings in the province had been destroyed by bombs or fire. By the fall of 1967, the only government hospital in the area was a 400-bed facility treating around 700 patients a month.

In September a new unit, the Americal Division, took control of combat operations in Quang Ngai and was composed of three brigades-the 196th, which had served in part of Task Force Oregon, and two new units, the 11th Brigade from Hawaii, and the 198th Brigade from Texas. The new division was not an elite fighting force, and thus did not warrant having the helicopters and armored equipment of an airborne division. There was much competition between the three brigades of the division and each division ultimately came up with their own brigade patch instead of wearing the patch of the division. This competition led out onto the war grounds, where units competed over the number of enemy killed or body count. Vietnam was a chance for these men to put in combat duty and earn battle ribbons.

Coming home with combat experience was thought to be vital in future promotion. At the time, desire to see combat was so high among field grade officers-majors and above-that command experience was limited to six months. Majority of the troops in the front-line were draftees, knowing little about Vietnam and caring even less. Ranking officers had little use for the average combat GI, ground infantry, though the officers would deny it in public. One officer actually stating, "We are at war with the ten-year-old children.

It may not be humanitarian, but that's what it's like". In 1968 the GIs were educated on the rights of prisoners for approximately two hours a year. The GIs assigned to Vietnam were given a wallet-sized card entitled "The Enemy in Your Hands", which told soldiers: "Always treat your prisoners humanely". Most GIs were ignorant when it came to Vietnamese customs, most of this ignorance coming from the lack of information given to them by the Army about the country and its people while in training.

One example of this ignorance was given by Clair Culhane, a Canadian who served as a volunteer in a tuberculosis hospital in Quang Ngai City in 1967-68, who told about GIs who complained about Vietnamese not caring about their own children, believing that the mothers tried to leave their young behind while being evacuated. One GI commented on an incident in which a woman got onto a helicopter after setting her baby on the ground and when he picked the child up to hand it to her she began shouting and pointing at the ground. What the GI didn't know is that a peasant woman in Quang Ngai believes that it is unlucky to carry a baby across a threshold, and so she always sets the child down, steps across, and then reaches back and picks up the child in one single movement. Since most GIs could not speak the Vietnamese language, they assumed the Vietnamese to be cruel and ignorant themselves. "Find the bastards and pile on" was the motto of one of the highly praised colonels in Vietnam, in 167-68 was George S. Patton, son of the famous World War II leader, who was commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment just south of Quang Ngai. He celebrated Christmas of 1968 by sending Christmas cards wishing peace on earth from him and his wife with an attached photograph of dismembered Viet Cong soldiers stacked in a pile.

In September of 1969 Colonel Patton was promoted to brigadier general of the U.S. Army, making him one of the youngest officers to achieve the rank. The Viet Cong made it very hard for the Americal Division's to find them, because the Viet Cong controlled their military only at night. Much tension was caused between the Americans and the people of Quang Ngai, because when reports were made of sniper fire, the only choice that the soldiers of the divisions had was to drop bomb and artillery into villages, mostly destroying them, and hope that they were getting the Viet Cong that were supposedly there. This method was called the search-and-destroy method, or informally as the scorched-earth policy. Terry Reid of Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, spent much of 1968 serving with the 11th Brigade of the Americal Division near Chu Li, north of Quang Ngai. Indiscriminate slaughtering of Vietnamese women and children was commonplace in his unit.

He stated that his company was credited with hundreds of kills, yet no one in his platoon saw a Viet Cong (VC) body and on one occasion, some GIs were killed in a mine accident and his unit retaliated killing dozens of civilians, claiming that their captain told them everything was free game. Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, led by Captain Ernest L. "Mad Dog" Medina, led the advance party to Vietnam in December 1967 after readying themselves at the Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Most of the men in Charlie Company were eighteen to twenty-two years old and ten percent of these men had failed the Army's basic intelligence test to qualify for the service, but were accepted under the new program, Project 100,000, which gave them remedial education. Medina loved his men and treated them like they were his own children. The soldiers respected him back, but nobody in the unit admired Medina as much as William L. "Rusty" Calley, Jr., a twenty-four-year-old second lieutenant from Miami who was serving as platoon leader. Calley and Medina had many differences, but one thing in common: they both wanted to make the military a career.

After many weeks of being in Vietnam and not seeing any combat, Charlie Company began to beat its prisoners, and it began to be less discriminating about who was-or was not-a VC, "everything that walked and didn't wear any uniform was a VC", according to Medina. Medina's feelings were contracted by most of the GIs, because when trying to get information from civilians, the civilians would refuse while allowing VC snipers to shoot down American soldiers. From then on out, GIs would beat the Vietnamese until information was given, or until they were dead. Excuses were constantly being made as to why civilians were being killed whenever they were not VC. When a soldier would shoot and kill a civilian he thought was a VC, he was ordered to drop a bomb on the body to dispose of the ruins.

A few days before their mission at My Lai 4, Medina and another colonel flew from their base, LZ Do tti, to get a peek at My Lai 4. Barker told Medina that elements of the 48th Viet Cong Battalion, on of the enemy's best units, with a strength of 250 to 280 men, was in My Lai 4 and that reports predicted the hamlet's women and children would be out of the area by 7 a. m., heading for weekly markets in Quang Ngai City. The mission assigned to Charlie Company: destroy the 48th Battalion as well as My Lai 4. Though Medina and Calley claimed the VC would outnumber them at least two-to-one, they had much confidence in their men and believed that they would return with no more than a few casualties. Medina's order: kill everything in the village and the enemy... anyone who is running from us (Hersh 3-59). On March 16, 1968, personnel of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, an element of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade of the 23rd Americal Division ever, committed the worst atrocity.

On that morning, as part of the larger search and destroy operation, Lt Calley led his troops into the village of My Lai 4. The troops went in firing, but after a few minutes realized that there was no fire coming back at them. By the time that Charlie Company had arrived in My Lai and attempted to set up a perimeter, the Viet Cong who were in the area had slipped away with local supporters. As local civilians began to try to flee, GIs shot them down, one by own, whatever ran away. Soldiers gathered all of the Vietnamese out of their homes and began killing them, even when they yelled "No VC!" (Dunnigan 233). Though most all of the GIs were enjoying the killing, few did not want to, but kept it to themselves, one pilot stood against the group.

Chief Warrant Officer Hugh C. Thompson flew over a fleeing VC while his other crewman attempted to shoot him down. When he missed, Thompson turned around and, while flying back to My Lai 4, he noticed wounded and dead Vietnamese civilians all over the hamlet, with no sign of the enemy. Thinking that he could help, Thompson began flying over wounded civilians and marking their locations with smoke so that the GIs could go to them and treat them. As Thompson marked the injured, the GIs approached them, but did not help them, instead they finished off the job of what had been left, and they shot the victims to death.

When Thompson tried to radio brigade headquarters, but no action was taken, as Medina and Calley reported kills of "VC". Approximately two and a half hours after arriving at My Lai 4, an old man begged for Calley not to kill him, and this must have set him off, because Calley ordered all civilians, that were still alive, to be brought to a ditch and ordered to lay in it. Calley then ordered all GIs to shoot and kill the remaining that survived, close to 200 (Summers, Jr. 140).

When GIs refused, Calley did the job himself, and even went as far as chasing after a young boy, who had survived the shootings while being underneath his mother, catching him, throwing him back into the pile, then shooting him until death. Thompson, who watched the slaughter overhead, saw a group of nine people in a rice field and quickly flew over to save them. He landed and shielded the civilians from any attempted gunfire, while they loaded into his helicopter. Thompson then flew the civilians to safety (Lawson 104-106). The day after the massacre at My Lai 4, Medina heard of a report made by a helicopter pilot and that there would be a possible investigation. Medina told his men that they had nothing to worry about and that he would back them up in case of trouble, claiming that there was a gunfight and that they did a lot of shooting.

The soldiers heard no more of My Lai 4 for quite some time after that. A little over a year after the occurrence, Ronald Ridenhour, a former door-gunner in a helicopter, who had heard about the massacre from various members of Charlie Company, decided to bring about the situation at My Lai 4 once again, mailing letters, telling of everything that he had heard and the names of the people who had given him information, to President Nixon, various military authorities, and to senators and congressmen, who, Ridenhour, thought might be able to exert some pressure on the army to take action in investigating this event. Most never replied, but Congressman Morris Udall, telephoned Ridenhour to say that he was going to do everything in his power to see that the matter was investigated. The army began a full-scale investigation on April 23, 1969, and in September justice was made (Sevy 125-126).

As a result of the investigations, the commander of the Americal Division at the time, Major General Samuel H. Koster, was reduced in rank to brigadier general and censured for failing to investigate the atrocity when it happened. Medina and Calley were brought to trial, along with two-dozen other officers. Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 22 unarmed civilians but the others were acquitted. Although the Court of Military Appeals upheld Calley's sentence, the Secretary of Army reduced it to ten years. On November 9, 1974, Calley was paroled by President Nixon and set free (Summers, Jr. 140).

To some, these acts were considered commonplace and even condoned and encouraged by the Army itself, but the incident at My Lai was an aberration and not the norm.

Bibliography

Dunnigan, James F., and Albert A. Nof i. Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Hersh, Seymour M. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath. New York: Random House, 1970.
Lawson, Don. The United States in the Vietnam War. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1981.
Sevy, Grace. The American Experience in Vietnam. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Summers, Jr., Harry G... Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.