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Reflections on the ARVN

By lex, on June 30th, 2009

Might be useful as American combat soldiers fall back to rural encampments in Iraq and take on a support and training role.

Might not. Cultures vary.

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June 30th, 2009 | Tags: | Category: History

9 comments to Reflections on the ARVN

  • virgil xenophon
    June 30, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    Most people don’t know, but the northern part of I-Corps just south of the DMZ extending theu 21/2 provinces down to DaNang (Quang Tri, Quang Tin, and Quang Nam) were populated mainly by ex-N. Vietnamese Catholics run out of N. Vietnam by the NLF. As such they were fiercely anti-communist and the 1st ARVN Div was ALWAYS the best Div in Vietnam–even pre-Tet and led by a no non-sense hard-charging General.

    VNAF pilots were usually excellent with YEARS of combat experience and usually super accurate in getting ord. on tgt. And while the ARVN were often accused of technical inefficiencies and lacking good technique in use of mechanized equip., I had an Army Capt. MACV advisor tell me over drinks one steak night at the MACV Club (The old French Officers Club in DaNang–their steak-nite was almost as good as the one at the Navy’s Stone Elephant and MUCH cheaper $.67 cents vs $2.67 at the Stone Elephant) that : “We Americans bitch when we have to swim and rarely do (ford rivers, etc. with APCs, etc.) and hell, the ARVN I’m with are always out in the field and we swim every day.”

    I gained another perspective one day in the swimming pool at the Siam Intercontinental in Bangkok when on a 2-day R & R via a quick O-2 flt from DaNang. I was talking to an “Old China Hand” civilian type GS-13 who had homesteaded in SEA half his life (worked with USAID or COORDS–don’t remember) about the reputation the ARVN had for lack of aggressiveness.”Just remember,” he said, “When one of you guys get the million-dollar wound it’s off to Japan and then home for good–if these guys lose a hand or foot or are otherwise seriously wounded they just patch him up and send him back. These guys fight until they die. If you were an ARVN you too just might hang back and pound that hill for a few more hrs with arty and call for a few more air-strikes before you went charging up that hill.”

    We always should remember that. One day we’ll leave. The guys who fought on our side are stuck there. It’s root hog or die (unless they hop on the right C-130)

  • Potosi Joel
    June 30, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    My Dad was there as a navigator on 130s and 141s as well as as a lowlight TV operator on the Spectres. Flying the gunships he had lots of good things to say about the Hmong and the refugees from the North.
    He didn’t have much good to say about the ARVN, whom he mostly met in the Saigon area. He always reminded me that he would not have met many of the good ARVN soldiers anyway, because the good soldiers were in mud fighting, and the politically connected weasels were the ones who could be closest to the runways during a retreat.
    On the other hand also told me the ARVN (if he told me whether Regulars, Rangers or VN Marines, I was too young to note) would pop the pins on grenades and put them in coffee cups, because their hands were too small to hold the safety handles, so that they could use them after landing. I guess it didn’t make the A/C or the Load-master too happy, but that sounds like some brave and dedicated troops to me.

    It takes a brave man to ally himself with the US. The complaint department is always an ocean away. The Iraqis have to be brave to fight alongside people from as far away as ourselves against people who live next door.

  • AW1 Tim
    June 30, 2009 at 6:17 pm

    The stories I remember about ARVN troops come from international reporters and others who saw them at the end. Soldiers selling their lives dearly, holding out as long as possible to delay the North Vietnamese and allow more civilians to try and escape.

    Soldiers with one or two magazines left, heading forward to buy time, knowing full well they wouldn’t be retreating. Pilots taking off for CAP missions to help those same guys, going right down on the deck against armoured vehicles, and with only enough gas for a one-way trip.

    The end must have been bitter for them, knowing that the vaunted United States Congress, in a fit of pique to punish Nixon, and appease their leftist comrades, had cast aside the sacred promise of support for a friend, and abandoned millions of innocents to a horror no less brutal than that faced by European Jews.

    Every single member of Congress who voted to end support to South Vietnam should have been charged with crimes against humanity, with aiding and abetting genocide, and hanged. The talking heads from Cronkite to Rather should have been swinging alongside them for undermining our Republic, and contributing to the horror in SEA.

    And now the same party would have no qualms about a reprise of that role in the ME.

    Shame, a thousand-fold over upon all of them, each and everyone of them.

  • hornetgunner
    July 1, 2009 at 6:12 am

    Don’t know much about the ARVN but I can speak on the VNAF. I was a Spec. Ops. Heli-gunner with MACV-SOG from 70′-72′ and was well aquainted with VNAF ‘King Bee’ pilots. They were as good as if not better than any of ours. Skilled, gutsy and courageous. Sure some were cowboys but certainly not lacking bravado and flying skills when needed. Sure is a shame and disgrace how we just left em’ to wither on the vine. Hope the same doesn’t come to pass in the M.E.

  • Snake Eater
    July 1, 2009 at 7:47 am

    I had minimal contact with ARVN troops…my little brown brothers were part of the Civilian Irregular Defense Group (the CIDG)specifically the Mobile Strike Force, a//k/a Mike Force…a Corps level quick reaction force for”A” camps in trouble. Assigned first as a Platoon Leader/XO and then Company Commander we conducted, in our spare time, long range extended operations deep in I Corps Indian Country… far outside the arty range fan…with no re-supply or reasonable expectations of any meaningful CAS. You get the full measure of a man on long gut busting operations like these and my guys fully measured up.

    I was in law school when it hit the fan in 1973…the nightly news was increasingly alarming…I knew my guys, or those that had survived, were in the thick of it and then it all came down… and the predicted horror commenced. I knew the CIDG and particulary the Mike Force, as creations of the SF/CIA, would be in for some special attention…and I assume they were.

    Its been forty-one years since I left and thirty-six years since the fall and seldom does a day go by that I don’t think about one or another of my little brown brothers, as they were then, in fun times and bad, now frozen in the way back.

    It was my singular honor to have known them. Best

    • virgil xenophon
      July 1, 2009 at 9:19 am

      Snake Eater/

      “Stanley Looker, Stanley Looker,
      come up Stanley Looker.” Over.

      • Snake Eater
        July 1, 2009 at 12:57 pm

        VX,Not familar with “Stanley Looker” sounds like a call sign…like most designed to be a tongue twister for the locals…my first A Camp call sign was “Strider Insole” I had some trouble at first with that one… the camps just west of me was “Macon Weapon”…go figure those Com/Sec Gomers having some fun. Best

        • virgil xenophon
          July 1, 2009 at 1:11 pm

          Snake/

          Gee, you were over there EXACTLY the same time I was, it seems and “Stanly Looker” was call sign for all of 67-68 for Thong (sp?) Duc SF camp just west of DaNang, IIRC. Only one I really remember, although “Macon Weapon” sounds vaguely familiar. I always liked the name (not call-sign) of that SF A Camp south of DaNang in Thua Tien province we called “the mechanical whore”–Tien Phuc. :)

          BTW, did you ever run into a Capt. MACV advisor (for a while, at least) to the Mike Force named Bud Dent? And the dedicated I-Corps FAC assigned to you SF guys was an AF Capt named Richard Sizemore, IIRC–flew the O-1 with the M-60 on top of the wing in support of you guys.

          • Snake Eater
            July 1, 2009 at 3:17 pm

            VX, Ah yes Tien Phuc…a blast from the past as well as Thong Duc…I visited and remember most…call signs are more elusive…a quick Zoomie war story…

            I was assigned to A-106 Ba To a/k/a Strider Insole (SE I Corps) as Team XO for my first three months in country…a real piss and vinegar FNG I was…one bright sunny afternoon right after lunch an 0-1 flies in…some sh*t hot Zoomie, could have been Sizemore, wanders in and asks if anyone wants to take a ride and view the countryside…of course nubie me jumped at the chance…now the 0-1 for the uninitiated is one basic flying machine…wing over, multiple willy pete rockets on each wing ( no M-60 MG that I remember) pilot in front and me right behind bobsled like…most intimate indeed. We take off all’s well flying around great views nice cool breeze…then he says to me over the intercom do see that? …of course I see nothing next thing that Zoomie Pecker-Wood does a nose/wing over or whatever you guys call it and I’m looking straight down at the back of his head and the ground rushing up to meet us…he poops off a couple of rockets at the suspected target we take some small arms fire… evasive action follows and I’m about to blow my recently ingested lunch all over the back of his head…fortunately God was on my/our side…just in time he pulls out of the dive and the resulting g-forces ends my travail… wisely for me I never flew on an 0-1 again…I’m a fast study that way. Best
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