Vietnam. Max Hastings

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Vietnam - Max  Hastings


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      Wherever possible without forfeiting coherence I omit province names, to avoid crowding the narrative with geographical detail.

      Translations often yield stilted prose. When quoting from foreign-language documents and memoirs in all my books, I respect Dryden’s admonition that a translator ‘should not lackey behind his author, but mount up beside him’. Thus, I seek to convey Vietnamese and French conversations in colloquial English.

      ‘African American’ is a modern term; in the Vietnam era, the word ‘black’ was used, and thus I retain it here. I cite an American’s race only where this seems relevant.

      Ranks attributed are those held at the time of episodes described.

      North and South Vietnam are capitalised thus when referenced as separate states, but lower-cased as north and south when the country was unified pre-1954 and post-1975.

      All the combatants measured distances metrically. I nonetheless adopt feet, yards and miles, even in direct quotations.

      The colloquial phrase for joining South Vietnam’s communist guerrillas was ‘ra bung’ which meant ‘going out into the marshes’, rather as some French World War II Resistants designated themselves maquisards, because they sought refuge in the maquis wilderness. Vietcong and its abbreviation ‘VC’ were South Vietnamese slang terms, but too familiar not to retain here.

      American spellings are used in quoted speech by Americans, or in a conspicuously American context, for instance ‘secretary of defense’.

      In thematic sections – notably, about the experience of combat – personal experiences from different periods of the war are sometimes merged, where this does not distort their significance and validity.

      Timings of military operations are given by twenty-four-hour clock, but otherwise in accordance with twelve-hour civilian practice.

      No attempt seems plausible to set a value upon the South Vietnamese piaster against the US dollar, since chronic inflation and unrealistic official exchange rates render no comparison valid for more than a short period of the wartime era.

       Glossary

      AFN US Armed Forces Network radio stations

      AK-47 Soviet-designed Kalashnikov assault rifle of which a Chinese variant began to be issued in quantity to Vietnamese communist forces in 1965

      APC armoured personnel-carrier, most often in Vietnam the tracked M-113

      ARVN Army of the Republic of [South] Viet Nam, pronounced as ‘Arvin’

      bangalore torpedoes explosive charges packed in sections of metal or bamboo tubing, for breaching wire entanglements

      battalion military unit, comprised of 400–1,000 men, normally organised in three/four companies and a headquarters

      boonie-rat slang term for US infantry soldier

      brigade military headquarters, controlling up to 5,000 men

      cadre communist functionary

      CAP combat air patrol

      cherry green infantryman

      chieu hoi literally ‘welcome return’, name of Saigon’s programme to process and rehabilitate defectors from the VC or NVA, often used to categorise the many thousands who joined it – ‘He’s a chieu hoi

      CIA Central Intelligence Agency

      Claymore M-18 directional anti-personnel mine, spraying a hundred steel balls across a 40-degree arc, triggered manually or remotely

      company military unit, a captain’s command, comprised of 100–180 men, in three or four platoons

      CORDS Civilian Operations and Revolutionary [later changed to Rural] Development Support

      corps military headquarters directing two/three divisions, commanded by a lieutenant-general

      COSVN communist headquarters – the Central Office for South Vietnam, or Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam, usually located near the Cambodian border

      CP command post

      division military formation, comprised of 8–15,000 men, organised in two/three brigades, commanded by a US major-general or sometimes by a Vietnamese colonel

      DMZ the Demilitarized Zone, created near the 17th Parallel by the 1954 Geneva Accords, separating the new North and South Vietnams

      dust-off slang for a medevac helicopter

      DZ dropping zone for paratroops

      ECM electronic counter-measures deployed by US aircraft against North Vietnamese ground defences

      FAC forward air controller

      flak slang term for anti-aircraft fire

      FO [artillery or mortar] forward observer, accompanying infantry

      FOB forward operating base

      FSB fire support base

      GCMA French special forces – Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés

      grunt slang term for US infantry soldier

      hooch slang term for soldiers’ quarters, alternatively a bunker or hut

      ICC International Control Commission, established under the 1954 Geneva Accords with Indian, Polish and Canadian membership to monitor implementation. It persisted, albeit little heeded, until the 1973 Paris Accords, following which it was supplanted by a new

      ICCS, International Commission for Control and Supervision, which had a wider membership to address an alleged 18,000 ceasefire violations, but proved equally ineffectual

      JCS US Joint Chiefs of Staff

      Kit Carson scouts NVA or VC defectors serving with US units

      LAW shoulder-fired 66mm Light Anti-tank Weapon, used by US and South Vietnamese forces

      LRRP long-range reconnaissance patrol

      LZ landing zone for a helicopter assault – a ‘hot’ LZ was one defended by the enemy

      M-14 US Army 7.62mm semi-automatic infantry rifle, standard until 1966–68, when progressively withdrawn

      M-16 5.56mm rifle, a much lighter automatic weapon than the M-14 that it replaced, of which 1966–68 versions proved prone to jam in action

      MACV Military Assistance Command Vietnam, US headquarters in Saigon – pronounced ‘Mac-V’

      MEDCAP Medical Civil Action Program – deployment of military medical teams to provide care to the civil population

      montagnards originally French term for Vietnamese hill tribes, often abbreviated by Americans to ‘Yards’, who were almost universally anti-communist and often recruited by special forces as irregulars

      NLF National Liberation Front: the supposed political coalition – in reality entirely communist-run – movement, established in 1960 to promote and direct Southern resistance to the Saigon government

      NSC National Security Council

      NVA North Vietnamese Army, a contemporary American usage adopted below, in preference to the more common modern PAVN, People’s Army of Vietnam

      platoon element of 30–40 men, normally four to each company, customarily commanded by a lieutenant, seconded by a sergeant

      PRC-10, later replaced by PRC-25, US infantry voice radio set, weighing 23.5lb including battery. A company commander might be accompanied by up to three RTOs – operators – each carrying a set tuned to different nets

      PRG Provisional Revolutionary Government-in-waiting created by the communists in June 1969 to supersede the NLF. It was initially located at COSVN,


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