I became draft eligible at the end of the Vietnam Conflict. During the last years of the draft, I was in college. The US Draft Board was running lotteries for selection, based on date of birth. And to use a sports acronym, I just barely squeaked into the top twenty, thus I had an immediate 1-A. In just over a week, I received my notice to report for my physical. I was running on the college track team, so I was certain to pass. I was torn by my future decision. Enlisting would mean committing four years of my life, but it would put me in the service of choice, versus two years of assignment to a random branch of service.
My father said, “You could end up chest-deep in a rice paddy, holding your gun over your head, while bullets are zinging past.” Obviously, my father wanted me to continue in his footsteps, entering the US Air Force. You see, when my father was seventeen, he enlisted in the US Air Force shortly after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
I took a lot of time and thought hard about the decision. I did not rush my choice. Just over a week before I was to report for my physical, President Nixon called an end to the draft. I can tell you that at that point, I still had not decided whether to enlist.
About two years ago, I decided to write a book, or a series of books, on the Vietnam Conflict. Why? Well, I lived it from the beginning to end. The year of my birth, 1954, was the beginning of Vietnam, and it ended while I was in college. When I was about nine years old, a friend of our family had a son killed in Vietnam. I remember sitting in their home with them, but—typical of a ten year old—it had no impact on me then.
When I was in junior high, the youth of America quickly began to turn against the Vietnam Conflict, but again, I really didn’t understand. Richard Nixon was elected President as I was entering high school, but the war was still too far off to impact me, even when they talked about doing away with college deferments. During the time, the momentum grew against the conflict, and President Nixon discussed ending it. I noticed that, as our soldiers came home, I felt they were not treated properly. And sadly, the silent majority of people sat silent as to how these soldiers were treated. Now, please understand that I am aware there was a great misunderstanding of the two peoples; the Vietnamese people did not understand the American soldier, and many of the American soldiers disrespected the Vietnamese people.
Why, then, did all this hit me so hard two years ago? The Vietnam Wall came to my hometown of Parkersburg, WV. I couldn’t wait to see it. Plus, I wanted to find the name of the friend-of-the-family’s son. I wanted to know why and how he died. Talk about a fateful moment . . . when I asked the men in the tent where I could find his name, a lady who sat writing down names looked up at me and said, “I wanted to marry him!” How startling! That statement alone humanized the book project for me.
I wanted to write a book shedding positive light on the American soldiers in an attempt to honor these men who served over there. These men who were chest-deep in a rice paddy with a gun over their head as the bullets whizzed by. Plus, I wanted to show how the American public changed during the course of the Vietnam Conflict. After extensive research, I decided that the best place to start was at the first point of the conflict—the coup of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. This event had tentacles that were entwined around the entire fabric of the conflict.
What are your experiences with and perceptions of the Vietnam Conflict? If you are younger, or if you remained stateside, has any revelation regarding our soldiers surprised you, as I was startled by that woman’s statement? I would love to hear from you! Where do you think the Vietnam Conflict first started, and why?
I was in the very first draft lottery. I was sitting in the student union at the college I was attending when someone had a radio and they announced the dates. I was fortunate, my number was 189, but some guy sitting in the union heard his number called at number one. Man, he flipped out, jumped up and ran out accross the field and no one ever heard from him again. Those were scary days, I don’t know what I would have done if I got drafted, but I can remember that at the time I was not mentally prepared to fight anyone, especially someone who hadn’t done me any harm and wasn’t about to threaten my way of life.
You asked and I will tell you how I understand the Vietnam conflict,
It was place far far away and for child in 1962-66, I was told by my father he was on a job for Uncle Sam, & he was always going on TDY (temporary duty) and would be gone from 3-6 months but then magically re-appear again usually with no fanfare. These were the Secret Days of the conflict, The rhetoric of the time was “to stop Communism in Southeast Asia”.
I would hear my parents yell and fight over my father volunteering and going away again for Uncle Sam. I knew through my mother that JFK was keeping the illusion that Uncle Sam could not back down and look weak to the world and these were the early years when Uncle Sam was supporting the Diem regime and plotting against him. On paper we were only advisers but in reality American pilots began to fly combat sorties out of Bienboa, an air base north of Saigon & their flights camouflaged as training exercises for the Vietnamese.
After the assassination of JFK in 1963, my family was stationed at George AFB in California when things really escalated at our home. My father was gone longer periods of time on oversea’s exercises under the auspice of training exercises in Japan, Okinawa , ect …. The physical and verbal assaults between my parents had come to the attention of the squadron, base and wing commanders. My mother disappeared one night & had checked into the hospital and was under psychiatric observation due to her suicidal ideation.
In 1964-65 , My fathers squadron of F105 was sent to McConnell AFB in Wichita Kansas. My father was ordered to live on base and my mother with 3 children packed us up and we drove to Kansas to base housing. There were many families of my father’s 469 th squadron living in base housing. Before my father left for his 1st tour, I heard my parents in the dawn yelling and I walk into the room and hear my mother swearing at him go ahead and leave your children and your pregnant wife and he was straddling her and slapped her. All I could do was shut down inside because he was gone again and now the squadron was secretly flying missions from a place called Thailand. My mother began going to more and more funerals but there never was a coffin. The officer of the day would tell the widow that her husbands plane went down over water and he drowned. I knew a lot of dads who could not swim.
It was at this time that mother was asked to leave base housing and we packed up and headed back to Austin Texas. Her pregnancy was advancing and her mood was grim. It was at this time that I decided to write Lyndon Baynes Johnson, President of the United States to tell him I needed my father to come home and he could find him in Thailand. Unfortunately, someone read my letter and it caused my father’s security clearance to be put under investigation because of a 10 yr old who knew the secret location of a tactical fighter squadron that was flying for Uncle Sam in Thailand. My father was grounded for a time and he called home to find out “what the hell did Jeannine write to the President of the United States”
Flying out of Thailand was still being kept a secret partly because it violated the Geneva agreement and partly to deceive the American public. My mothers venomous rants were not only for LBJ but for the Secretary of Defense. Robert McNamara who served in Kennedy’s and Johnson’s administration and I knew him as “that yellow belly coward” who was known as a bean counter. It was told he could scan a balance sheet with unerring speed and after many trips to Vietnam from 1962-65, he concluded optimistically that the bean count shows that we are winning the war! The many quantitative measurements used of measure was missing one important element in that “quantitative measurement” that guided McNamara and U.S. policy . It was there was no way to calibrate the motivation of the Vietcong guerrillas. They could not understand the hopes and fears of the Vietnamese peasants. The corrupt reign of Diem and his family also baffled the U.S. diplomats.
The real commitment came when Diem declared it was time for real U.S. troops to be present and in Washington it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended a troop commitment and they were seconded by William P. Bundy, then acting assistant secretary of defense. The banging on the chest and the basic tenets of the domino theory was the call of the day. Warning Americans that” if Vietnam goes, it will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to hold Southeast Asia”. This would shatter the faith that Uncle Sam has the will and the ability to deal with the evil tenticles of Communism.
William Bundy (September 24, 1917 – October 6, 2000) was a member of the CIA and foreign affairs advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He had a key role in planning the Vietnam War. After leaving government service he became a historian. Raised in Boston, Massachusetts he came from a family long involved in politics. After attending Yale University (where he was one of the first presidents of the Yale Political Union) and a member of Skull and Bones, he entered Harvard Law School but left to join the Army Signal Corps during World War II. During this time he worked at Bletchley Park in Britain as part of the top secret ULTRA operation to break Nazi codes. In 1960, Bundy took a leave of absence from the CIA to serve as staff director for Eisenhower’s Commission on National Goals. During the Kennedy years he was deputy to Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Paul Nitze and worked for the Secretary of the Navy. During much of the LBJ era he was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs. After resigning from the executive branch in 1969 he taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and in 1972 moved to Princeton University where he remained for the rest of his life. He edited the influential journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (of which he was a member) — Foreign Affairs — Bundy’s most noted work is A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (1998).
The Truman administration first set American’s in Vietnam by supporting France’s futile effort to reimpose its rule there as a barrier against Communism; then Eisenhower pledged the nation to South Vietnam defense. John Kennedy and his aides deepened the American commitment by their complicity in a plot that led to the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson escalated U.S by sending hundreds of thousands of American troops. It was Nixon and Kissinger who finally made the concessions that led to the Vietnamization to describe the process by which U.S. troops would be replaced by South Vietnamese forces and the fall of Phnom Penh Cambodia on Apr 12, 1975 and the fall of Saigon April 30, 1975. I will come back to Phnom Penh and the impact of the fall of both capitals and how it affected me.
I966, as the war intensified, the can-sdo American image was still being projected by the American fighting men. My father came home for RR (rest and relaxation) after my brother was born in Feb 16, 66 and he was put on local Austin TV talk show on Vietnam Conflict
(Don, I will send you a copy of the CD of that TV interview & of actual film from missions over North Vietnam , I will share the 469th pictures and song books and book called rolling thunder.)
Of course no one ever mentions the missions over Laos, Cambodia and China because again we had to demonstrate to the world that the American government’s mission and reiterated its resolve to stop Communism in Southeast Asia was focused on Vietnam. That will be the main motive for the U.S. commitment in Vietnam.
American pilots climbed to over 20 thousand over the next two years and grew from bases out of Vietnam to bases out of Thailand (Korat, Takli, Udorn, Udapou and rescue base for down pilots NKP). More and More pilots were shot down ironically by SAM missiles & the 469 TAC Squad had lost over half of their pilots/( F105 was the war or work horse of bombing North Vietnam) in 6 months and tragically their squadron commander Lt Col Cooper was shot down when he was “short” (close to his mandatory 100 mission, many mission that were flown did not count for their 100 ct , so they harnessed to their work horse THUD to more missions and the odds were stacked against them)
I am going to fast forward … My father accepts 3 tours , 2 tours out of Korat and his last tour was with the Wild Weasels squadron which played Russian roulette with SAMs. He flew 292 missions that were counted and his F105 has been restored and is at Air War Museum in Lubbock at Reese AFB. My father now lays at Arlington and I think has finally found peace. I know I have come to peace with my father after his death June 3, 1988. I hate to say it but I have a much better relationship with him since his death. It is through understanding and reading and learning the history of Vietnam, my relationship has grown with understanding of him and his stressors.
My final thoughts and I am sure you are dancing in your head (Will she ever shut up)
As you know, I left for Southeast Asia after the fall of both Phenon Pehn in Cambodia and fall of Saigon Vietnam on Apr 1975. In Cambodia Phenon Penh falls to the Khmer Rouge on Apr 17, 1975. Operation Eagle Pull was the U.S. evacuation by air of Phnom Penh Cambodia, on April 12, 1975. Phnom Penh the last remaining stronghold of the Khmer Republic, was surrounded by the Khmer Rouge and totally dependent on aerial resupply through Pochentong Airport. With the Khmer Rouge victory for Pol Pot the U.S. made contingency plans for the evacuation of US nationals and at risk Cambodians by helicopter to ships in the Gulf of Thailand. The mission was known as Operation Eagle Pull it took place on the morning of 12 Apr 1975 and was a tactical success carried out without any loss of life. So , here comes it comes……….
I was married twice, my practice husband for 16 years starting after the fall of Saigon and then I have been married to Allen Racey for 17 years. I knew Allen had been in a covert tactical group stationed out of Zama Japan and I knew he had spent his time on missions in Cambodia and Laos 1974-1975. It was last summer when we learned his military record had been de-classified and stored in Washington. We were putting together his story for his compensation and pension report and he needed to show he had a boot on the ground in Vietnam to claim Agent Orange exposure.
He tells me of the mission called Operation Eagle Pull, on April 12, 1975 several men were picked from his team including him and their mission including a dozen Marines were to evacuate the staff and ambassador from the embassy at Phnom Phen. Allen was to destroy certain specific decoding devices and materials that could be damaging in the hands of the Khmer Rouge. He told me the marines are for support and used to assist in the evacuation of Embassy personnel, U.S. citizens and designated Cambodians and evacuated by helicopters to the Gulf of Thailand and were landed on a naval vessel. Allen’s team and the last of embassy personnel were to be flown out by A.F C-130 piloted by Capt. Howey Beuribay. They were flown by helicopter across town to the Pochentong Airport were the C-I30 was on the runway with engines roaring and had to use their JATO’s rockets to get the hell off the runway because they were taking fire from 50 cal by the Khmer Rouge. The C-130 flew to DaNang Vietnam and were they spent the last three days before DaNang closed.
One month later I am doing my C& P exam and a Black Marine who I have read his C-file he was a marine who was at Operation Eagle Pull on Apr 12, 1975 and he was also assigned to the evacuation of the last Americans from Embassy from Saigon ond Apr 29, 1975. Ambassador Martin departs and communist forces capture Saigon Apr 30, 1975. So, I am interviewing this Marine and I ask him about Operation Eagle Pull and begin by asking him if he saw a guy that was built just like him wearing a Thai tiger uniform wearing a black beret but was white. He grinned at me and said “Lady we were running so fast , I wasn’t looking ” I then told him about my husband and he opened up to me. So, I ask him when you were in Saigon at the Embassy did some Capt from A.F. ask you to burn 5 million dollars. He looked at me and said” who do you know lady”. The story is Capt Goff from NKP is telling this new bride his story about having to pay off the Vietnamese and to buy them some time and then burn what was left, 5 million dollars. I looked at him like he was from another planet …..who burns 5 million dollars. The marine finishes the story and tells me four of us surrounded the pile of money and were told to shoot anyone who tries to grap any of the money including your fellow marine and then they lit it…….he said it took awhile but we burned it.
So the Vietnam Conflict has played out many times in my life and in many ways. It took my own husband of 17 years to tell me about the fall of Cambodia and he said I can’t and won’t tell you about any other covert missions. You do not want to know…is all he said.
Thank you for letting me share.
That is impressive,heart stopping but heart breaking story at the same time. I would like to use some of this material in my Vietnam book series, as it points out, with detail, many things that I had been told by my “friends”. With my history book, I always sought out two independent sources prior to writing about a subject.
Thank you very much for sharing. Clearly it defines your character!
There is a reason and a season for all truth to be shown. I feel almost re- born in a weird way by spending the night with my thoughts and feelings yesterday.
I will send the materials to you, please keep them safe as I know you will because you have always as I now realize watched by back! Okay I was not actually chest deep in rice paddies but I followed Al Chang MD our tropical medicine expert in AF who & our hospital commander at Nakhon Phanom (GI’s called Naked Fanny)
So I guess you think I just walked into a hot zone after the fall of Vietnam and Cambodia…..You are right to think that because NKP I later learned ran their own secret war from 1962-1975. All I new at the time was the Jolly Greens mission was to rescue downed pilots N. Vietnam and Laos. NKP is logistically 235 miles from Hanoi and sits on the Mekong River you can take a boat ride across to Loas City of Thakhet known as the foreigner crossing . NKP was known as “END OF THE LINE….at the edge of the world” Going into tropical jungles into villages was going into a world I can not describe, I was always surrounded by the locals because White Round Eye Females from the US were a rarity and the locals just wanted to touch me and giggle. The indigenous people were amazing and I learned more about humanity and who really is spiritually connected from these people. I could talk for hours but will send you my photos…..
I did not know it at the time but General Burns who was Pacaf Commander who knew my father well granted permission and I was under the protection of the General who use to pinch the hell out of my cheeck when I was 5-6.
I lived in a compound with 6 other Thai families and rented our bungalow which came with Joan (my new best friend) she was my companion and my interpreter . She would go with me on Med-Cap missions and translate for me. After we treated the village (inoculate for yellow fever, clean wounds and manage diarrheal diseases. ) They were really a much healthier people than Americans because of what they ate and walked a million miles barefoot. We would then be treated to lunch by the village….I learned about Lao Lao a rice /fruit moonshine…..Damn, it was as good as seeing green fairies. We had OV10 flying over our group but if overrun….I would of been raped to death but I hear it would of take long time….very small parts and Al would loose his head and the OV10 would take pictures.
The mekong river a muddy winding life blood that runs the border and it has its on history….. I have to stop because I have 6 cases to close today and I have much material to share ….
I hear we are going to get our butts kicked with the next cold front. Hang on to your seat ….I think its going to be a bumpy spring….
I have no idea why the conflict started or how. In 1969, after I graduated from high school, I was waiting for my recruiting seargent to call me about my physical. I could not wait to be in the Air Force. I had no realistic ideas what joining could mean , that is in a negative way After several issues and hold-ups, they didn’t have a space for me in San Antonio, TX. I was to “re-up” in a few months.
I went to work as a long distance operator for “Ma Bell” in my hometown of Schenectady, NY. I loved the work, I got paid to talk all day. In early December of ’69, I introduced myself to my future husband, at church. Suffice to say I never looked back.