Читать книгу Voices from the Vietnam War - Xiaobing Li - Страница 16

Communist Regulars

from the North

Although I met many parents from overseas on American college campuses, I have seen few grandparents from Asian countries. As a grandfather, Sgt. Tran Thanh traveled all the way from Hanoi to Florida to attend his granddaughter's graduation commencement at the university. “My son and daughter-in-law work in the government, so they can't take off from their office,” Sergeant Thanh told me. I knew that many Vietnamese officials could only come to America for official business, not for a family visit. Complacent and affable, Sergeant Thanh was very glad to see me and talk about his family story and service in the North Vietnamese Army.1 He did not mind going into detail on the Communist Party organization, political propaganda, mass mobilization, NVA guerrilla tactics, and battles against American soldiers. “I told American friends my story” he said. “They should know more about Vietnam.”

The Vietnamese Communist force was founded on December 22, 1944, during World War II, with a total of five thousand men. In November 1946, North Vietnam, then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), passed its first constitution and established its Defense Ministry with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap as its first defense minister and commander-in-chief of the North Vietnamese forces. In 1950, they were reorganized and renamed as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, or NVA, commonly known as the Viet Minhs during the French Indochina War), with 50,000 troops. By the end of the French Indochina War in 1954, the Viet Minhs totaled 120,000 regulars. In May 1955, the NVA established its navy, followed by its air force in September 1956. After 1958, it formed its armored, antichemical, radar, engineering, and other special forces. The NVA had 380,000 troops in 1964, and 1 million men by 1972.2

Tran Thanh was drafted into the NVA like all the adult males between eighteen and forty-five in the North. He received formal infantry training and learned how to use Russian- and Chinese-made weapons.3 From the early 1960s, North Vietnam sent its NVA regulars to the South to train and support Southern Communist troops, the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), to fight the ARVN and the U.S. forces in guerrilla operations. From 1964, Hanoi infiltrated an annual average of 100,000 troops, including some of the best units, through the Ho Chi Minh Trail to South Vietnam. The NVA actually provided the main force of the Communist insurgency in the South.

In the spring of 1965, Sergeant Thanh's company was sent to South Vietnam. From April to November, he fought in several battles around the Central Highlands and the surrounding mountainous areas. By the 1968 Tet Offensive, the NVA/PLAF in the South reached a total strength of 400,000 troops. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the NVA/PLAF expanded its operations into Cambodia and Laos. From January 1961 to January 1973, the NVA/PLAF suffered 851,000 military deaths.4 It is interesting to see Sergeant Thanh's views on his South Vietnamese Communist allies, ARVN opponents, and the Americans then and now. His story about life in the NVA is valuable because there is little information on the North Vietnamese Communist forces in English.

Sgt. Tran Thanh

Third Company, 174th Regiment, 316th Division, NVA (North Vietnamese Army)

I love Connie, my granddaughter. Her parents sent her to study in America four years ago. Now I traveled all the way from Hanoi to Florida, attending Connie's graduation commencement in Tampa, and helping her move to New Orleans, Louisiana. This is my first trip to America. Among other things, I like southern weather, seafood, and local Vietnamese restaurants along the gulf coast. Not many complaints, but, as a smoker, it is hard for me to find a “smoking area” by guessing the signs in English and Spanish.

Connie loves Florida, too. Active and dynamic, she participated in many international student activities on campus and didn't miss a local Asian community celebration. But she couldn't attend any Vietnamese Society (Cong Dong Viet Nam) gatherings in the Tampa Bay area, because she is from North Vietnam, or Communist Vietnam, now officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. I couldn't believe it when Connie told me what happened to her. There are still two Vietnams in today's America. The war was over almost thirty years [by 2004]. Vietnam and America normalized their relationship about ten years ago. It's history. There is no reason of disliking us, especially our kids. We can become friends. I always start my conversation with an American Vietnam War veteran by saying, “Friends are made after a fight.” Most people here liked it after Connie's translation. We truly know each other after we fought the war. And both peoples have learned that we won't fight again. I just did what the Vietnamese people had to do at that time, including the minorities in North Vietnam.

In 1939, I was born to a Black Thai family in a small mountainous village near Lai Chau, North Vietnam. Among Vietnam's minorities, the Black Thai people are different from the White and Red Thais. With a total of a half million, the Black Thais are so called for our darker skin color and black garb of the women. We dwell mainly in the upland valleys of northwestern Vietnam and northeastern Laos. Our family affiliation determines our status and occupation. While a few families in my village formed political and religious elite, others furnished farmers, artisans, and soldiers.

According to the Black Thai tradition, every man is a soldier. He lives a life close to the land and to the warfare. Bravery, self-discipline, physical toughness, stoicism, and martial arts are fundamental to his lifestyle. Discipline, loyalty, and frugality are the ethical values of the mountain warriors and have been an active force in the Black Thai community. For a Black Thai man, his integrity and loyalty are based on the protection he can provide to his family and village. It's a collective effort, or a team defense. In the past, Black Thai villages always faced external threats and foreign invasions such as Chinese, French, and Japanese conquests and occupations. Since long, each village organized its men into a “self-defense team” to protect its people and land. The self-defense team trained the men, organized village defense, and also sent volunteers or conscripts to the national armed forces.

My family has a tradition of service. My father joined the nationalist resistance force against the Japanese invaders during World War II. Two of my brothers served in the Viet Minh against the French invading forces and fought at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.⁵ The Vietnamese Communist Party provided a strong military and political leadership that helped the Black Thai and all the Vietnamese peoples in the North achieve their victory and national independence. My father and my brothers became heroes of our village since they served the country and the people against foreign invasions. Servicemen are respected. Those who were killed in action have their names placed in the village temple next to the ancestors. They are worshipped by younger generations. My childhood dream was to be a soldier when I grew up.

In 1950, I went to a nearby elementary school about three miles from my village. I remember having a one-hour drill every morning, including marching, shooting, bayoneting, and martial arts training. It seemed to us at the time that joining the army and fighting a war would be a lot of fun. I learned for the first time about the Geneva Settlement of 1954 in my elementary school. We were told that the settlement ended French colonization in Vietnam (1876–1954). But a corrupted, dictatorial, and brutal government, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), controlled the South and was murdering and torturing its people. It made sense to us that the North should liberate the South and achieve national reunification by force.

After elementary school, I returned to my village in 1954 and became a farmer working in rice paddies and coffee plantations. As with all the males between sixteen and fifty-nine, I joined the “Self-defense Force” in 1955. The Self-defense Force was a local militia organization. Based on the rice-rooted, traditional “village self-defense team,” it was well established in the rural areas across North Vietnam. The Self-defense Force in my village was under the command of a self-defense committee chaired by the village chief. He was under the command of the county self-defense committee. The county committee was commanded by the provincial self-defense committee. In my village, each family had two or three militia members. Three families formed a group, three groups became a team, and three teams served as a section. All the section leaders sat on the village self-defense committee. I remember that we drilled regularly with light weapons, and that we provided local security and emergency or rescue services. Women and children under sixteen were encouraged to participate in some of our training and activities. The most dangerous job, as I remembered, was hunting mountain tigers in the winter when they came down from the mountains and attacked villagers and their livestock.

After two years of farming and militia training, I was conscripted by the NVA in 1958 as a reservist, like all the adult males between eighteen and forty-five in the village. I served two months every year in a Black Thai battalion stationed at Lai Chau, a small city in northwestern Vietnam. The reserve was local, ethnic, and based on a rotation system. Our company mainly consisted of Black Thai soldiers who came from my village and several surrounding villages. I knew most of the men in the company. We came to the same company under the same commanding officers and preformed active duties, including border patrol, city security, political study, and intensive training. That was the moment of the year for me since there were so many new things to learn during each active duty service.

I learned more combat skills and new weapons, including automatic rifles, machine guns, antitank and antiaircraft rockets, and group-attack tactics. Every month, half the company rotated while the other half stayed for their second month. In my political education class, the company political instructor told the reserves that the American imperialists had invaded South Vietnam with a large number of their troops. North Vietnam now had two enemies in the South: the corrupt RVN government and aggressive U.S. forces. We should be better prepared for a new war against the Americans. After the “Tonkin Gulf Incident” in August 1964, I knew that the United States had escalated its ground war in South Vietnam, and had shifted its war efforts to North Vietnam by increasing its air strikes and heavy bombing. Ho Chi Minh, chairman of the Vietnamese Communist Party, adopted a new strategy: to defend the North by fighting the war in the South. At that time, we believed that we could win the war as long as we followed Chairman Ho. History has proven he was right.

In the fall of 1964, the NVA sent more infantry troops to the South. In the North, the NVA established five antiaircraft artillery divisions and one radar division for air defense. In 1965, it formed two surface-to-air missile regiments.⁶ The DRV government launched a massive mobilization to meet the manpower need for its new operations. The NVA divisions began to activate their reserves. Each NVA infantry division formed regionally. For example, most of the soldiers and officers of the 308th Division were from Hanoi, the capital city of North Vietnam. The 308th was also called the “Capital Division,” as one of the first six divisions established in the First Indochina War. Our 316th Division was an ethnic minority division in which many soldiers and officers were Tho, Miao, and Thai minorities from the northwestern mountainous region.

In December 1964, the 316th Division command called up all of its reserves for active duty. At the division assembly point, I was assigned to the Third Company, 174th Regiment. I was excited when I reported to the company. I didn't care what was going to happen next. I was not afraid. Two of my best friends, Tuan and Waong, were in my company. We knew that we would take care of each other. In a “three-three formation,” the 316th Division, about fifteen thousand men, had three regiments, each having three battalions, with each battalion having three companies. The soldiers of the Third Company were mostly the Black Thais from the Lai Chau area. During the intensive training for the Southern guerrilla operation, the Black Thai soldiers impressed the officers and men by our martial arts, shooting, and hand-to-hand combat skills. We earned our nickname, the “mountain tigers,” in the company.

In March 1965, the Third Company departed for the South.⁷ We traveled southward by truck along the Black River from Son La, a northwestern city, to Linh Cam, a small town in the central region close to the 18th parallel. Then we rode westward on small trucks entering the Annam Cordillera, the Great Mountain Range. I had heard a lot about this forested mountain range. As a mountaineer, I really enjoyed traveling up to the great mountain by day and listening to mountain tigers roaring at night.

One morning, Lieutenant Ngu told us that we were going to pass the border and enter Laos. He also asked everybody to hand over our personal belongings, which might identify our Northern status.⁸ I surrendered my ID papers, a couple of books, and my wallet. But I hesitated about giving up my girlfriend's picture since all collected items would be burned. If her photo got burned, it would mean bad luck to her, and it could mean I would never see her again. I decided to keep her photo. Back on the mountain road, our trucks got slower and slower. At noon, we crossed the border, where a pine tree separates the two countries with a big bi-lingual sign on it, “Viet Nam-Laos.”

After entering Laos, we began our journey on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The narrow and rocky road was in poor condition through the western side of the Truong Son Range in Laos. We had to get off the truck many times and walk through the sections under expansion or repair. Because of enemy reconnaissance and air raids, we mostly traveled at night and rested by day along the trail. The traffic at night was very heavy and slow. Northern troops, artillery pieces, ammunition, equipment, and supplies were lined up for miles, traveling more than five hundred miles, and passing through Laos from north to south.

In April 1965, the Third Company entered South Vietnam from Laos. I remember that after we moved into the South, we received a couple of new officers as well as a new order from the Central Office for South Vietnam, the NVA frontline command in the South. The “new” officers, only new to us, were experienced NVA officers in the South for years. They told us that we were here to assist the South Vietnamese Communist troops, and that we needed to work together with the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) and the South Vietnamese Communist Party, or the National Liberation Front (NLF). What do you call them, the Viet Cong?

Then our company was assigned to consolidate and strengthen the liberated villages in the mountainous area not too far from the South Vietnam-Laos border, or the tri-state region. As a mountain unit, the Third Company was good at hillside defense work, village underground tunnels, antitank positions, and antiaircraft outpost construction. We worked very hard during the spring of 1965. We built the village defense work day and night. We also tried to share our defense tactics with the NLF/PLAF villagers. But I don't think they trusted us. There may be a couple of reasons for that.

The first reason was a political one between the NVA in the North and PLAF in the South. We had a civil war between the North and South. Then, we had a war against America. The Southern Vietnamese wanted us to help them resist America, but didn't want us to take over the South. They saw the NVA and PLAF as separate entities. We considered them as the one Communist force.

The second reason may be an ethnic one. They are the Vietnamese people, the majority. Some of them were kind of stuck up and didn't want to ask for help from the minorities like the Black Thais from the North. They saw us as the “barbarians.” The Vietnamese people, farming the central highlands, coastal lowlands, and the deltas of the Red and Mekong rivers, make up 85 percent of the Southern population.

Through the spring of 1965, the Third Company worked on defense work one village at time. After turning each into a fortress, we moved on to another village. From time to time, we engaged with the ARVN troops in small scale. In many cases, we launched an attack on the ARVN-occupied village in order to expand our territory. A typical battle began with a charge on the ARVN defense point by a squad from the Third. The ARVN defenders called in their reinforcement, or actually their rescue troops, from the nearby town. The rescue troops usually provided firepower strong enough to stop our attack and cover the defenders’ withdrawal. During their retreat, we just waited for the ARVN defenders to get on their vehicles and run away from the village.

Sometimes, however, the ARVN came back and tried to retake the village. One day in 1966, the ARVN attacked one of our well-built defense works in a village. The Third Company got the information ahead of time and put together all of its men to defend the village's underground tunnels. Our captain tried to send a message to the enemy troops that we would not easily give up our territory. After a two-day fight, the Third and local Viet Cong guerrilla troops successfully defended the village by a joined force. Although we won the battle, I lost one of my best friends in it. Waong was badly wounded when the ARVN soldiers destroyed part of the underground tunnel and threw several grenades into the section where he was. When I saw him after the battle, he was covered by blood. He couldn't move at all. We were family friends, and like brothers. I couldn't help my tears while holding one of his hands. “Don't,” he shook his head, “We are the mountain tigers.” These were his last words. We buried him and other comrades who were killed in the battle in the village cemetery. Lieutenant Ngu told us that we had destroyed one enemy armored vehicle, killed nineteen, and wounded thirty-six ARVN soldiers.

In 1968, when our company moved back into Laos, I was promoted to sergeant. In Laos, we engaged with the American troops for the first time, although most of the battles were in small scale. In 1971, I served as a Black Thai combat training master, or a drill sergeant. We stayed in Laos until 1973. Our company entered South Vietnam again in 1974 and participated in several major offensive campaigns to liberate our country.⁹ After we won the war in 1975, I retired from the army with honor.

I did what everybody had to do during the war. We did what we felt was right for our country and for our family. We did it so they [our kids and grandkids] don't have to go through it. The war should be remembered as it was. It's over, and it's history. The war can't go on forever. People and things are no longer valued on the basis of whether they are “ours” or “yours.” Connie is right. Let's get over it and move on. Well, many Southern Vietnamese have left their homeland. They have a home there. They like to express their grievance and justify their residency in a foreign country like America. We should understand why they are here. They love America, but they don't have to hate Vietnam. I love my country, and I don't have problems with America. Connie loves both countries. I know why she wants to find a job here and stay in America after her graduation. My son and I don't have any problem with her decision.