Bernie W. (bernie2260) reviewed Leave No Man Behind: Bill Bell and the Search for American POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War on + 119 more book reviews
Review Written By Bernie Weisz, Historian, Vietnam War Pembroke Pines, Florida USA Contact: BernWei1@aol.com Title of Review: Vietnamese Communists Exposed; Inhumane Bone Storage Merchants Selling Answers Piecemeal for Political & Economic Concessions
Bill Bell's "Leave No Man Behind" is both a memoir of his life as well as a vicarious, in depth view of what he experienced as the head of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs from 1991-1992 in Hanoi. Bell expresses the continued frustration he encountered in negotiating with ruthless, cash strapped Vietnamese Communist Party representatives (VCP), U.S. Congressmen as well as the grieving American families of missing or lost servicemen. The VCP's sole objective was a nefarious exploitation of Bell's humanitarian missions for economic and diplomatic concessions. By dangling stored U.S. remains and piecemeal answers as to how our men disappeared the VCP blackmailed the U.S. for revenue while the grieving families of the missing suffered, wanting no more than answers and closure. However, this book is much more than any oral history, biography or other memoir you will ever encounter. Revealed is the entire Vietnam War and as a consequence America's concomitant endeavors to recover its missing or lost. Drawing upon previously unreleased details and rare anecdotes, you will find this book priceless considering the wealth of information Bill Bell serves up! Bereavement goes beyond the MIA/POW quandary. It is up close and personal, as Bell reveals the pain endured by losing his father to a train mishap early in life and his first wife and son in a plane crash during "Operation Babylift," a mass evacuation of orphaned children from South Vietnam to the U.S. and other countries only weeks before Saigon fell to North Vietnam's legions. The Provisional Revolutionary Government (also known as the Viet Cong) also lost their freedom, tossed in the "Reeducation Camps" right alongside former South Vietnamese military and government personnel, all seen as VCP enemies.
Regardless of external events, Bell's empathy never wavered in terms of his vicarious identification of bereavement and helplessness for the families of the 2,500 military personnel whom disappeared in South East Asia during the war, never to be heard from again. From being a young, idealistic infantryman in South Vietnam circa 1965 to his ultimate disillusionment and frustrating retirement after serving as America's first "field investigator" in S.E. Asia is an amazing journey considering the obstacles he dealt which are painstakingly detailed within this memoir.
The issues are complicated in most cases. No one knows the exact amount of Americans lost or captured during the war. Bell explains that some of the missing were just kidnapped by the Communists near their bases or in towns close to their bases, particularly Danang. Prostitutes would usually be the lure, and after these American "john's" were isolated by the Communist ladies of the night, they would be jumped by their Communist captors and disappear forever. Other MIA's were deserters that wound up as captives. However, Robert Pelton describes in his book "Unwanted Dead or Alive" that aside from the 2,500 MIA/POW's already documented; "The U.S. Government officially acknowledged that more than 2,500 men were lost on covert "black" operations in Thailand, China, Cambodia, Burma, etc. This is a total of at least 5,000 MIA's! There actually could have been a whole lot more of them between the ages of 18 and 30. None of these 2,500 men were officially counted as missing in action! Why? Because as silly as it may seem America's leaders couldn't bring themselves to publicly admit that the U.S. had men in areas they weren't supposed to be in! More than 550 pilots were downed in Laos. More than 300 were known to still be alive in 1973. Not one was returned by the Laotian Reds!"
"MACV SOG" stood for Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. This was a highly classified, multi-service special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations prior to and during the Vietnam War. If one looks back and studies the Korean War, which occurred from June of 1950 to July of 1953, due to a lack of "Rules of Engagement" a crisis took place that almost led to World War III and a nuclear holocaust. In the case of the Korean War, the American peace treaty concluded with Japan in 1945 ended the Rising Sun's hegemony over Korea, which existed since 1910. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half of Korea. It was agreed that reunification would occur in 1948 with free elections, and when that didn't happen, the North established a communist government and the South a capitalist one. The 38th parallel increasingly became a political border between the two Korean states. Although reunification negotiations continued in the months preceding the war, tension intensified. Cross-border skirmishes and raids at the 38th Parallel continued until on June 25, 1950 whereupon on that day the North Korean forces invaded South Korea. Communist Chinese leader Mao ZseDung's was extremely paranoid and kept a careful watch on this conflict since the bloody civil war with his country and Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalists had just ended.
U.S. forces aided the South Koreans in repelling the North's initial invasion and after launching a massive counter-offensive were able to drive the North Koreans past the 38th Parallel to the Yalu River, which serves as the border between North Korea and China. Feeling threatened, on October 25, 1950, 270,000 members of the "People's Volunteer Army" (Communist Chinese Army) attacked American forces. Almost a complete political replay occurred following the May 7, 1954 French debacle at the "Battle of Dien Bien Phu." An agreement at Geneva was struck where Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel. North of the 17th parallel was to be administered by the Communists, and just like the Korean conflict was backed by both the Soviets and Red Chinese. The South was supported by the U.S. and adopted democracy. The plan called for reunification to occur in 1956 which would be based on national, independent elections. Negotiations broke down and once again a proxy war was under way with the North attempting to subjugate South Vietnam militarily. The difference was this time the U.S. would do everything in its power to prevent Soviet or Communist Chinese intervention. This took the form of U.S. "Rules of Engagement," which prohibited American ground forces from entering North Vietnam or pursuing escaping Communist forces who used the both neutral Cambodia or Laos as sanctuaries, even building the majority of their infamous "Ho Chi Minh Trail" through Cambodia and Laos.
With the exception of the April 1970 Cambodian Incursion, the January, 1969 foray into Western Laos called "Operation Dewey Canyon"and the February 1971 move into Laos named "Operation Lam Son 719." In Lam Son 719 U.S. helicopters were used only to transport ARVN soldiers to and from Laos. Throughout the war. Determined not to provoke either the Chinese or Soviets again, American political and military commanders walked a fine line to prevent this reoccurrence in Vietnam. Only aerial reconnaissance and bombing operations would occur over North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. However, SOG troops would be secretly inserted via helicopter in all three areas. Their extremely covert cross border operations were known as "going over the fence" and many did not return. Their missions included sabotage of enemy weapons caches, capturing key North Vietnamese personnel capable of providing useful intelligence, calling in tactical and strategic B-52 bombing missions, search and rescue of imprisoned servicemen and downed airmen and those missing in action, etc. In his memoir "Across The Fence," John "Tilt" Meyer recalled the following briefing of what was expected of him on his first mission; "Now listen up real close," the sergeant major said. When you go across the fence, you will carry no identification of any manner, shape or form." That meant no identification papers, no dog tags, no diaries, no photos, no love letters and certainly no green berets.
John Meyer continued; "Everyone would wear sterile fatigues, with no company insignia, no nametags, no unit designators, no jump wings or Combat Infantryman Badges. Why? Without giving anyone a chance to respond, he said that because Laos and Cambodia were neutral, the U.S. Government could publicly proclaim that the U.S. respected that "neutrality." Thus, if we were killed in Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam, the U.S. Government would deny having anything to do with us, thus explaining that no Americans were stationed in Laos or Cambodia, which was technically accurate. The U.S. Government had "plausible deniability" if we were captured or killed. And if captured, we were to speak a foreign language." An epitome of America's involvement in this war can be found in the following comment Bell wrote; "Although I had enjoyed many opportunities to learn the language and culture of the country, It became obvious to me how little the other men knew about Vietnam, other than it was a war they were trying to survive. Once I observed a machine gun squad setting up a position to fire into a small hamlet displaying a large banner reading "Viet Nam Cong Hoa." When I asked why the men intended to fire into the hamlet, the Squad Leader, a young man from Alabama advised me that he was certain the hamlet was enemy because he had seen the banner saying "The Cong Will Win." The man's face turned crimson when I informed him the sign meant "Republic of Vietnam."
Needless to say, Bell's memoir reveals a facet never so carefully elucidated; a rare glimpse at the former North Vietnamese elite in attempting to discover the fate of the MIA/POWs. Bared are the "Vietnamese Communist Party" (VCP) and its cadre, described as conniving, dishonest opportunists placed in the role of high party members. Bell's constraint is nothing less than inspiring when one considers how regardless of the VCP's attempts to thwart his objective, the author never wavered in his quest to resolve the fate of these missing Americans and provide closure to their families. This is especially true of Bell's last years of service, faced with a growing U.S. sentiment to forget about the war and capitalize on then President Clinton's February, 1994 lifting of trade restrictions and ultimately Vietnam's 1986 economic reforms initiated with the goal of ostensibly creating a "socialist-oriented market economy" dubbed "Doi Moi." As Hoi Tran, author of "A Vietnamese Fighter Pilot in an American War" wrote in his memoir, and confirmed by Bell in "Leave No Man Behind," Hanoi's henchmen were little more than "Red Capitalists." Between Clinton's actions and the VCP's corrupt opportunists, sadly the fate of our MIA's would be forever pushed into the history books. Shown here are the inner machinations of those that clashed stateside in regard to this tempestuous issue; U.S. politicians as well as the activists representing the families of the missing. In an attempt to assuage both groups Bill Bell found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place in Southeast Asia as a senior investigator for the "POW/MIA Search and Recovery" investigations in the late 1980's and eventually as the "Chief of POW/MIA Affairs" in the early 1990's.
Bill Bell's derailment and being branded as a maverick, incredibly by members of our own U.S. military that were bent on intimidation and revenge is a pathetic story in itself as you finish his book. Heartbreaking anecdotes are given in regard to the obstacles Bell encountered in post war financially destitute Vietnam where the ultimate objective of the Vietnamese Communist Party was fleecing the "Ugly American," as evidenced in their non cooperation with the U.S. in regards to resolving the missing American servicemen's fate. Instead of putting the war behind them, the VCP greedily set forth in a campaign to fleece America for every penny it could get away with. From seeking diplomatic concessions, financial remuneration for the most trivial matters, as well as being caught red handed with storing American remains for eventual sale to the U.S., Bill Bell was able to obtain result oriented information from the Vietnamese despite facing formidable odds. This, coupled with the passage of time and American entrepreneurship no longer seeing Vietnam as a war but rather a potential profit laden corporate gold mine would seal the fate of the missing Americans as an obsolete issue." He joined the "Joint Casualty Resolution Center" shortly after as the Chief Field Investigator going to Laos and Vietnam following up on live sighting reports, crash and grave sites of American MIA's. Bell carefully takes the reader through case investigations, determined to find the fate of those not released during "Operation Homecoming" or those disappearing at frustrating incident-of-loss sites.
Last known MIA sites where unaccounted-for pilots or other aircrew members who were alive when their aircraft crashed or shot down were examined. Intimidated local villagers and double talking provincial officials, combined with bizarre bone collectors and grave robbers are all part of this memoir. Described are downed American warplanes scavenged by gold collectors. Living in Communist bugged billets with miserable food and transported by out of date, poorly maintained Soviet helicopters, Bell would be led by his VCP counterparts on wild, remote mountainside wild goose chases intentionally designed to physically challenge and discourage him. Even worse, Bell would visit a crash site completely "sanitized" of any valuable information prior to his visit. Bell's frustrations are palpable while going on worthless excavations costing the American taxpayer untold millions, as well as his team being allowed archeological digs only if a sum of money was paid in advance or a road built. Convinced the Communists were hiding either torture and execution, particularly when they were unable to proselytize U.S. POW's, the author states unequivocal that the Communists had live prisoners being held for political concessions or economic considerations." Between the VCP warehousing deceased POW's stored bones, charging the U.S. outrageous sums to excavate intentionally developed former crash sites and POW camps, as well as Bell's team being charged outrageous amounts of money for everything from hotels and transportation, the reader empathizes with Bell's frustration. Even more debasing, Bell relates that many POW/MIA's were kidnapped by the Communists, lured pathetically by loyal Communist prostitutes or even children. Some POWS re kept alive only as a blood source for wounded Communist soldiers.
Relating that the VCP believed all Americans were rich and stupid, Bell writes scornfully of the rip off of American tourists, particularly returning Vietnam Veterans, the pervasive problem of pick picketers in the South, and to Bell's ire, while the majority of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's population lived in abject poverty, without jobs, fuel, electricity or running water, the VCP lived the life of luxury. Commenting, Bell wrote "Despite the claims of a just society, there were two separate worlds in Vietnam, one for the people and one for the high ranking Communist cadre." Deeming this group the "Red Capitalists," expatriate Hoi Tran elaborated on this in his memoir: "On April 30th, 1975, the Communist Party won, but all the people lost, to be ruled by a one party dictatorship. And today the Party is rich, filthy rich. Under their skillful management, Viet Nam is now known as the largest source of providing girls and women to neighboring countries as sex slaves. They sneered at culture, all forms of literary arts, books, and music in the South as depraved and were aggressively scouring everywhere to confiscate these materials to discard them. Sadly, after they took over the South, morality, good old traditions and virtues went into extinction! Prostitution, pornographic materials, HIV, venereal diseases and drugs went rampant in this amoral, depraved society! The Communists are no longer Communists! They have become Red Capitalists! These Red Capitalists and their children are living an ultra luxurious life over their poor and miserable people in Vietnam. Never in the former Republic of Vietnam did I see politicians and high ranking officials have multimillion dollar mansions or vacation houses like today's Red Capitalists."
You, the reader, must judge Hoi Tran's statement with Bill Bell's insistence warning America that before they normalized relations with the DRV and cashed in on their Doi Moi, a precondition must be a full accounting of all POW/MIA cases. No American conduct toward North Vietnam during the war could justify the Communists current treatment of ignoring our requests for an honest accounting of our missing. Perhaps the VCP felt unresolved enmity towards the U.S. for its Phoenix Program, a controversial combined CIA and U.S. Special Forces counterinsurgency operation that existed from 1967 until the end of the war. Members of this program were tasked with identifying, capturing and ultimately killing members of the Viet Cong, or PRG. Between being caught in free fire zones including the exposure to un detonated land mines and finally the North's "Reeducation Camps," one could legitimately claim the Vietnamese civilian as the most tragic casualty of the Vietnam War. Although Bell intelligently points out that during the course of the war twice as much explosives were aerially dropped on North Vietnam then the combined nuclear tonnage released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the number of war caused casualties could support Hanoi's assertion that the people of North Vietnam despised Americans as a result of war induced suffering. While John Tirman points out statistics in his book "The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars," that verify this, Bell wrote in this memoir that while traveling through Hanoi the average Northern citizen acted both amiable and devoid of any trace of American resentment unless agitated to do so by VCP members.
Bell was even able to extract valuable MIA information from one willing citizen that watched his helicopter land near a site due for inspection, although this unfortunate good Samaritan certainly faced heavy handed VCP retribution later. From the two Gulf of Tonkin Incidents of August 2nd and August 4th, 1964 to the April 30, 1975 Fall of Saigon, The Vietnamese government estimated 4,000,000 civilians on both sides were killed. Tirman does note that the North's casualties have a built in measure for error because of accurate measure of fatalities rendered an impossibility due to obliteration of areas resulting from B-52 "Carpet bombing" sorties as well as usage of the BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter 1000 Lb. bomb." Tirman also mentions the further complication of unreported deaths of both Northern and Southern Vietnamese in later years resulted from the U.S. implementing "Operation Ranchland. This operation lasted from 1962 until 1971 and involved spraying an estimated 20 million US gallons of defoliants and herbicides over the South's rural areas in an attempt to deprive the PRG insurgents of Vietnam's plentiful jungle vegetation and triple canopy cover. Areas of Laos and Cambodia were also sprayed to a lesser extent. Author Fred Wilcox reports in his book "Waiting For an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange" that Ranchhand sorties consisted of 3 to 5 planes flying abreast each other. 95% of the herbicides and defoliants used in the war were sprayed by the US Air Force as part of Operation Ranch Hand.
Whatever the C-123's couldn't handle were tackled by men holding portable hand held spraying units, spray trucks, helicopters and boats protecting US military installations tasked with removing possible areas of concealment used by enemy sapper suicide squads. Because of later birth defects and abnormally caused cancers, perhaps this could be a source of Communist held American postwar antipathy and concealment of MIA information. While having seemingly innocuous names such as Agent(s) Orange, Blue and White, the decade of spraying resulted in the destruction of over five million acres of food and oxygen producing tropical rain forests with concomitant destruction of half a million acres of crops poisoned, thus rendered inedible. In "Harvests of Death; Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia" author J.B. Neilands gives an in depth look at this man made environmental tragedy that prematurely killed uncountable Vietnamese due to intentionally caused American poisoning of both Vietnam's food sources, including fruit and vegetable as well as both land borne animal and aquatic fish food sources. Neilands mentions in this book that during Ranch Hand, the herbicides employed were sprayed up to 50 times the concentration dictated for normal agricultural use. Another possible cause of lasting Communist resentment towards Americans could have been from atrocities such as My Lai in March of 1968 and "Operation Speedy Express," conducted over a 6 month period ranging from December of 1968 to May of 1969.
As author Hoi Tran compared Vietnam's North-South partition and resulting Civil War juxtaposed with America's 1861-1865 War Between the States where an ideologically devoid family was pitted against other members of his or her family if for no other reason than the address of their residence. Ira Hunt, the Ninth Infantry Division's division "Chief of staff" for this campaign released in 2010 his memoir entitled "The Ninth Infantry Division in Vietnam" and justified this operation by insisting that the grounds were a hotbed of heavily armed PRG guerilla forces that posed an invasion risk to Saigon. Like the VCP handled the POW/MIA issue by not answering inquiries about it, Hunt never answered in his book why there existed a kill ratio of 272 enemy soldiers to every American felled (40 were the total of 40 U.S. KIA's). Even more bizarre was the fact that despite almost 11,000 nonmilitary Vietnamese civilians losing their lives, among that figure only 748 possessed enemy weapons such as B-40 rockets and AK-47 assault rifles recovered by Hunt's Ninth. It is a foregone conclusion that Vietnamese civilian innocents perished among the 10,889 murdered in Hunt's area of operation, in this case the Mekong Delta, or IV Corps.
Learning of this senseless killing, it is a sure bet that the 9th Infantry Division's actions incited angry relatives in the North to possess perpetual enmity bent on revenge. Adding another piece of incongruity to this already atrocity laden event, Hunt coauthored with the Ninth's 1970 Company Commander General Julian Ewell a 1974 book curiously called "Sharpening the Combat Edge:The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgement." Similar to Hunt's evasiveness in his 2010 authorship in regards to inconsistencies in "Speedy Express," the only comment of this operation in this 1974 penning came from coauthor General Ewell. A known advocate and highly vocal proponent of "Body Counts" which during the Vietnam War measured factors such as progress, victory, as well as determining the need for follow-up operations, Ewell was quoted as saying; "the hearts and minds" approach can be overdone....in the Delta the only way to overcome VC control and terror is with brute force applied against the VC." Historians argue that the reason atrocities such as the My Lai Massacre occurring was directly attributable to American forces not being able differentiate among the indigenous population Vietnamese friend or foe. Although the VCP could justify its shoddy postwar treatment of America and the POW/MIA issue by citing the unjust and wanton murders of its fellow countrymen while failing to mention their part in the crime committed in Hue. similar to the Communists accusation of Americans doing anything for money while the VCP acted equally if not more Capitalistic, Hanoi's southern recruiting tactics were equally brutal.
During the Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese and PRG forces on January 31, 1968 captured and occupied Hue. When they withdrew on February 28th, American forces found bound, tortured and buried alive approximately 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war.
Although this never makes any of the history collegiate textbooks, the PRG forced on usually helpless Southern villages or hamlets communist allegiance with threats of reprisal, kidnapping and violent murder. After VCP agents took control of an area it would be used to billet and resupply Viet Cong guerrillas, supply intelligence on US and South Vietnamese military movements, provide taxes to VCI cadres, and conscript locals into the PRG. SOG over the border kidnappings of key VCP intelligence targets, or even ex South Vietnamese President Thieu's use of his intimidating "White Mice" police or his punitive "Tiger Cages" on Con Son Island did not rightfully justify the Communists usage of America's missing as commodities after the conclusion of hostilities. The actions and extortionist behaviors of the Vietnamese Communist Party certainly lend weight to both the title of his memoir as well as former major General Smedley Butler's assertion as the most decorated Marine in U.S. history that "War is a Racket." Poignantly demonstrated in this memoir, Bill Bell's book is an essential read for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of America's involvement in the Vietnam War and the cruel way the Communists treated a man that gave his all to finding out what happened to them! It is pathetic that if you ask anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War what the 5 most common remembrances about that conflict come to their mind, it will most likely be: 1. A Buddhist monk sitting at a Saigon intersection immolating himself to protest the South Vietnamese Government. 2. The little girl running naked down Highway 1, fleeing a napalm attack. 3. The national police chief executing a terrified man suspected of being a VC and shot in the side of his head. 4. The bodies in the ditch after the My Lai Massacre. 5. Americans (and Bill Bell!) evacuating from the Saigon Embassy's rooftop. What about the POW/MIA'S? This is the true tragedy of this war, and they must never be forgotten. By reading "No Man Left Behind," you will do your part in ensuring that they won't! An absolute must read to any Vietnam War collection!
Bill Bell's "Leave No Man Behind" is both a memoir of his life as well as a vicarious, in depth view of what he experienced as the head of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs from 1991-1992 in Hanoi. Bell expresses the continued frustration he encountered in negotiating with ruthless, cash strapped Vietnamese Communist Party representatives (VCP), U.S. Congressmen as well as the grieving American families of missing or lost servicemen. The VCP's sole objective was a nefarious exploitation of Bell's humanitarian missions for economic and diplomatic concessions. By dangling stored U.S. remains and piecemeal answers as to how our men disappeared the VCP blackmailed the U.S. for revenue while the grieving families of the missing suffered, wanting no more than answers and closure. However, this book is much more than any oral history, biography or other memoir you will ever encounter. Revealed is the entire Vietnam War and as a consequence America's concomitant endeavors to recover its missing or lost. Drawing upon previously unreleased details and rare anecdotes, you will find this book priceless considering the wealth of information Bill Bell serves up! Bereavement goes beyond the MIA/POW quandary. It is up close and personal, as Bell reveals the pain endured by losing his father to a train mishap early in life and his first wife and son in a plane crash during "Operation Babylift," a mass evacuation of orphaned children from South Vietnam to the U.S. and other countries only weeks before Saigon fell to North Vietnam's legions. The Provisional Revolutionary Government (also known as the Viet Cong) also lost their freedom, tossed in the "Reeducation Camps" right alongside former South Vietnamese military and government personnel, all seen as VCP enemies.
Regardless of external events, Bell's empathy never wavered in terms of his vicarious identification of bereavement and helplessness for the families of the 2,500 military personnel whom disappeared in South East Asia during the war, never to be heard from again. From being a young, idealistic infantryman in South Vietnam circa 1965 to his ultimate disillusionment and frustrating retirement after serving as America's first "field investigator" in S.E. Asia is an amazing journey considering the obstacles he dealt which are painstakingly detailed within this memoir.
The issues are complicated in most cases. No one knows the exact amount of Americans lost or captured during the war. Bell explains that some of the missing were just kidnapped by the Communists near their bases or in towns close to their bases, particularly Danang. Prostitutes would usually be the lure, and after these American "john's" were isolated by the Communist ladies of the night, they would be jumped by their Communist captors and disappear forever. Other MIA's were deserters that wound up as captives. However, Robert Pelton describes in his book "Unwanted Dead or Alive" that aside from the 2,500 MIA/POW's already documented; "The U.S. Government officially acknowledged that more than 2,500 men were lost on covert "black" operations in Thailand, China, Cambodia, Burma, etc. This is a total of at least 5,000 MIA's! There actually could have been a whole lot more of them between the ages of 18 and 30. None of these 2,500 men were officially counted as missing in action! Why? Because as silly as it may seem America's leaders couldn't bring themselves to publicly admit that the U.S. had men in areas they weren't supposed to be in! More than 550 pilots were downed in Laos. More than 300 were known to still be alive in 1973. Not one was returned by the Laotian Reds!"
"MACV SOG" stood for Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. This was a highly classified, multi-service special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations prior to and during the Vietnam War. If one looks back and studies the Korean War, which occurred from June of 1950 to July of 1953, due to a lack of "Rules of Engagement" a crisis took place that almost led to World War III and a nuclear holocaust. In the case of the Korean War, the American peace treaty concluded with Japan in 1945 ended the Rising Sun's hegemony over Korea, which existed since 1910. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half of Korea. It was agreed that reunification would occur in 1948 with free elections, and when that didn't happen, the North established a communist government and the South a capitalist one. The 38th parallel increasingly became a political border between the two Korean states. Although reunification negotiations continued in the months preceding the war, tension intensified. Cross-border skirmishes and raids at the 38th Parallel continued until on June 25, 1950 whereupon on that day the North Korean forces invaded South Korea. Communist Chinese leader Mao ZseDung's was extremely paranoid and kept a careful watch on this conflict since the bloody civil war with his country and Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalists had just ended.
U.S. forces aided the South Koreans in repelling the North's initial invasion and after launching a massive counter-offensive were able to drive the North Koreans past the 38th Parallel to the Yalu River, which serves as the border between North Korea and China. Feeling threatened, on October 25, 1950, 270,000 members of the "People's Volunteer Army" (Communist Chinese Army) attacked American forces. Almost a complete political replay occurred following the May 7, 1954 French debacle at the "Battle of Dien Bien Phu." An agreement at Geneva was struck where Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel. North of the 17th parallel was to be administered by the Communists, and just like the Korean conflict was backed by both the Soviets and Red Chinese. The South was supported by the U.S. and adopted democracy. The plan called for reunification to occur in 1956 which would be based on national, independent elections. Negotiations broke down and once again a proxy war was under way with the North attempting to subjugate South Vietnam militarily. The difference was this time the U.S. would do everything in its power to prevent Soviet or Communist Chinese intervention. This took the form of U.S. "Rules of Engagement," which prohibited American ground forces from entering North Vietnam or pursuing escaping Communist forces who used the both neutral Cambodia or Laos as sanctuaries, even building the majority of their infamous "Ho Chi Minh Trail" through Cambodia and Laos.
With the exception of the April 1970 Cambodian Incursion, the January, 1969 foray into Western Laos called "Operation Dewey Canyon"and the February 1971 move into Laos named "Operation Lam Son 719." In Lam Son 719 U.S. helicopters were used only to transport ARVN soldiers to and from Laos. Throughout the war. Determined not to provoke either the Chinese or Soviets again, American political and military commanders walked a fine line to prevent this reoccurrence in Vietnam. Only aerial reconnaissance and bombing operations would occur over North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. However, SOG troops would be secretly inserted via helicopter in all three areas. Their extremely covert cross border operations were known as "going over the fence" and many did not return. Their missions included sabotage of enemy weapons caches, capturing key North Vietnamese personnel capable of providing useful intelligence, calling in tactical and strategic B-52 bombing missions, search and rescue of imprisoned servicemen and downed airmen and those missing in action, etc. In his memoir "Across The Fence," John "Tilt" Meyer recalled the following briefing of what was expected of him on his first mission; "Now listen up real close," the sergeant major said. When you go across the fence, you will carry no identification of any manner, shape or form." That meant no identification papers, no dog tags, no diaries, no photos, no love letters and certainly no green berets.
John Meyer continued; "Everyone would wear sterile fatigues, with no company insignia, no nametags, no unit designators, no jump wings or Combat Infantryman Badges. Why? Without giving anyone a chance to respond, he said that because Laos and Cambodia were neutral, the U.S. Government could publicly proclaim that the U.S. respected that "neutrality." Thus, if we were killed in Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam, the U.S. Government would deny having anything to do with us, thus explaining that no Americans were stationed in Laos or Cambodia, which was technically accurate. The U.S. Government had "plausible deniability" if we were captured or killed. And if captured, we were to speak a foreign language." An epitome of America's involvement in this war can be found in the following comment Bell wrote; "Although I had enjoyed many opportunities to learn the language and culture of the country, It became obvious to me how little the other men knew about Vietnam, other than it was a war they were trying to survive. Once I observed a machine gun squad setting up a position to fire into a small hamlet displaying a large banner reading "Viet Nam Cong Hoa." When I asked why the men intended to fire into the hamlet, the Squad Leader, a young man from Alabama advised me that he was certain the hamlet was enemy because he had seen the banner saying "The Cong Will Win." The man's face turned crimson when I informed him the sign meant "Republic of Vietnam."
Needless to say, Bell's memoir reveals a facet never so carefully elucidated; a rare glimpse at the former North Vietnamese elite in attempting to discover the fate of the MIA/POWs. Bared are the "Vietnamese Communist Party" (VCP) and its cadre, described as conniving, dishonest opportunists placed in the role of high party members. Bell's constraint is nothing less than inspiring when one considers how regardless of the VCP's attempts to thwart his objective, the author never wavered in his quest to resolve the fate of these missing Americans and provide closure to their families. This is especially true of Bell's last years of service, faced with a growing U.S. sentiment to forget about the war and capitalize on then President Clinton's February, 1994 lifting of trade restrictions and ultimately Vietnam's 1986 economic reforms initiated with the goal of ostensibly creating a "socialist-oriented market economy" dubbed "Doi Moi." As Hoi Tran, author of "A Vietnamese Fighter Pilot in an American War" wrote in his memoir, and confirmed by Bell in "Leave No Man Behind," Hanoi's henchmen were little more than "Red Capitalists." Between Clinton's actions and the VCP's corrupt opportunists, sadly the fate of our MIA's would be forever pushed into the history books. Shown here are the inner machinations of those that clashed stateside in regard to this tempestuous issue; U.S. politicians as well as the activists representing the families of the missing. In an attempt to assuage both groups Bill Bell found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place in Southeast Asia as a senior investigator for the "POW/MIA Search and Recovery" investigations in the late 1980's and eventually as the "Chief of POW/MIA Affairs" in the early 1990's.
Bill Bell's derailment and being branded as a maverick, incredibly by members of our own U.S. military that were bent on intimidation and revenge is a pathetic story in itself as you finish his book. Heartbreaking anecdotes are given in regard to the obstacles Bell encountered in post war financially destitute Vietnam where the ultimate objective of the Vietnamese Communist Party was fleecing the "Ugly American," as evidenced in their non cooperation with the U.S. in regards to resolving the missing American servicemen's fate. Instead of putting the war behind them, the VCP greedily set forth in a campaign to fleece America for every penny it could get away with. From seeking diplomatic concessions, financial remuneration for the most trivial matters, as well as being caught red handed with storing American remains for eventual sale to the U.S., Bill Bell was able to obtain result oriented information from the Vietnamese despite facing formidable odds. This, coupled with the passage of time and American entrepreneurship no longer seeing Vietnam as a war but rather a potential profit laden corporate gold mine would seal the fate of the missing Americans as an obsolete issue." He joined the "Joint Casualty Resolution Center" shortly after as the Chief Field Investigator going to Laos and Vietnam following up on live sighting reports, crash and grave sites of American MIA's. Bell carefully takes the reader through case investigations, determined to find the fate of those not released during "Operation Homecoming" or those disappearing at frustrating incident-of-loss sites.
Last known MIA sites where unaccounted-for pilots or other aircrew members who were alive when their aircraft crashed or shot down were examined. Intimidated local villagers and double talking provincial officials, combined with bizarre bone collectors and grave robbers are all part of this memoir. Described are downed American warplanes scavenged by gold collectors. Living in Communist bugged billets with miserable food and transported by out of date, poorly maintained Soviet helicopters, Bell would be led by his VCP counterparts on wild, remote mountainside wild goose chases intentionally designed to physically challenge and discourage him. Even worse, Bell would visit a crash site completely "sanitized" of any valuable information prior to his visit. Bell's frustrations are palpable while going on worthless excavations costing the American taxpayer untold millions, as well as his team being allowed archeological digs only if a sum of money was paid in advance or a road built. Convinced the Communists were hiding either torture and execution, particularly when they were unable to proselytize U.S. POW's, the author states unequivocal that the Communists had live prisoners being held for political concessions or economic considerations." Between the VCP warehousing deceased POW's stored bones, charging the U.S. outrageous sums to excavate intentionally developed former crash sites and POW camps, as well as Bell's team being charged outrageous amounts of money for everything from hotels and transportation, the reader empathizes with Bell's frustration. Even more debasing, Bell relates that many POW/MIA's were kidnapped by the Communists, lured pathetically by loyal Communist prostitutes or even children. Some POWS re kept alive only as a blood source for wounded Communist soldiers.
Relating that the VCP believed all Americans were rich and stupid, Bell writes scornfully of the rip off of American tourists, particularly returning Vietnam Veterans, the pervasive problem of pick picketers in the South, and to Bell's ire, while the majority of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's population lived in abject poverty, without jobs, fuel, electricity or running water, the VCP lived the life of luxury. Commenting, Bell wrote "Despite the claims of a just society, there were two separate worlds in Vietnam, one for the people and one for the high ranking Communist cadre." Deeming this group the "Red Capitalists," expatriate Hoi Tran elaborated on this in his memoir: "On April 30th, 1975, the Communist Party won, but all the people lost, to be ruled by a one party dictatorship. And today the Party is rich, filthy rich. Under their skillful management, Viet Nam is now known as the largest source of providing girls and women to neighboring countries as sex slaves. They sneered at culture, all forms of literary arts, books, and music in the South as depraved and were aggressively scouring everywhere to confiscate these materials to discard them. Sadly, after they took over the South, morality, good old traditions and virtues went into extinction! Prostitution, pornographic materials, HIV, venereal diseases and drugs went rampant in this amoral, depraved society! The Communists are no longer Communists! They have become Red Capitalists! These Red Capitalists and their children are living an ultra luxurious life over their poor and miserable people in Vietnam. Never in the former Republic of Vietnam did I see politicians and high ranking officials have multimillion dollar mansions or vacation houses like today's Red Capitalists."
You, the reader, must judge Hoi Tran's statement with Bill Bell's insistence warning America that before they normalized relations with the DRV and cashed in on their Doi Moi, a precondition must be a full accounting of all POW/MIA cases. No American conduct toward North Vietnam during the war could justify the Communists current treatment of ignoring our requests for an honest accounting of our missing. Perhaps the VCP felt unresolved enmity towards the U.S. for its Phoenix Program, a controversial combined CIA and U.S. Special Forces counterinsurgency operation that existed from 1967 until the end of the war. Members of this program were tasked with identifying, capturing and ultimately killing members of the Viet Cong, or PRG. Between being caught in free fire zones including the exposure to un detonated land mines and finally the North's "Reeducation Camps," one could legitimately claim the Vietnamese civilian as the most tragic casualty of the Vietnam War. Although Bell intelligently points out that during the course of the war twice as much explosives were aerially dropped on North Vietnam then the combined nuclear tonnage released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the number of war caused casualties could support Hanoi's assertion that the people of North Vietnam despised Americans as a result of war induced suffering. While John Tirman points out statistics in his book "The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars," that verify this, Bell wrote in this memoir that while traveling through Hanoi the average Northern citizen acted both amiable and devoid of any trace of American resentment unless agitated to do so by VCP members.
Bell was even able to extract valuable MIA information from one willing citizen that watched his helicopter land near a site due for inspection, although this unfortunate good Samaritan certainly faced heavy handed VCP retribution later. From the two Gulf of Tonkin Incidents of August 2nd and August 4th, 1964 to the April 30, 1975 Fall of Saigon, The Vietnamese government estimated 4,000,000 civilians on both sides were killed. Tirman does note that the North's casualties have a built in measure for error because of accurate measure of fatalities rendered an impossibility due to obliteration of areas resulting from B-52 "Carpet bombing" sorties as well as usage of the BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter 1000 Lb. bomb." Tirman also mentions the further complication of unreported deaths of both Northern and Southern Vietnamese in later years resulted from the U.S. implementing "Operation Ranchland. This operation lasted from 1962 until 1971 and involved spraying an estimated 20 million US gallons of defoliants and herbicides over the South's rural areas in an attempt to deprive the PRG insurgents of Vietnam's plentiful jungle vegetation and triple canopy cover. Areas of Laos and Cambodia were also sprayed to a lesser extent. Author Fred Wilcox reports in his book "Waiting For an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange" that Ranchhand sorties consisted of 3 to 5 planes flying abreast each other. 95% of the herbicides and defoliants used in the war were sprayed by the US Air Force as part of Operation Ranch Hand.
Whatever the C-123's couldn't handle were tackled by men holding portable hand held spraying units, spray trucks, helicopters and boats protecting US military installations tasked with removing possible areas of concealment used by enemy sapper suicide squads. Because of later birth defects and abnormally caused cancers, perhaps this could be a source of Communist held American postwar antipathy and concealment of MIA information. While having seemingly innocuous names such as Agent(s) Orange, Blue and White, the decade of spraying resulted in the destruction of over five million acres of food and oxygen producing tropical rain forests with concomitant destruction of half a million acres of crops poisoned, thus rendered inedible. In "Harvests of Death; Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia" author J.B. Neilands gives an in depth look at this man made environmental tragedy that prematurely killed uncountable Vietnamese due to intentionally caused American poisoning of both Vietnam's food sources, including fruit and vegetable as well as both land borne animal and aquatic fish food sources. Neilands mentions in this book that during Ranch Hand, the herbicides employed were sprayed up to 50 times the concentration dictated for normal agricultural use. Another possible cause of lasting Communist resentment towards Americans could have been from atrocities such as My Lai in March of 1968 and "Operation Speedy Express," conducted over a 6 month period ranging from December of 1968 to May of 1969.
As author Hoi Tran compared Vietnam's North-South partition and resulting Civil War juxtaposed with America's 1861-1865 War Between the States where an ideologically devoid family was pitted against other members of his or her family if for no other reason than the address of their residence. Ira Hunt, the Ninth Infantry Division's division "Chief of staff" for this campaign released in 2010 his memoir entitled "The Ninth Infantry Division in Vietnam" and justified this operation by insisting that the grounds were a hotbed of heavily armed PRG guerilla forces that posed an invasion risk to Saigon. Like the VCP handled the POW/MIA issue by not answering inquiries about it, Hunt never answered in his book why there existed a kill ratio of 272 enemy soldiers to every American felled (40 were the total of 40 U.S. KIA's). Even more bizarre was the fact that despite almost 11,000 nonmilitary Vietnamese civilians losing their lives, among that figure only 748 possessed enemy weapons such as B-40 rockets and AK-47 assault rifles recovered by Hunt's Ninth. It is a foregone conclusion that Vietnamese civilian innocents perished among the 10,889 murdered in Hunt's area of operation, in this case the Mekong Delta, or IV Corps.
Learning of this senseless killing, it is a sure bet that the 9th Infantry Division's actions incited angry relatives in the North to possess perpetual enmity bent on revenge. Adding another piece of incongruity to this already atrocity laden event, Hunt coauthored with the Ninth's 1970 Company Commander General Julian Ewell a 1974 book curiously called "Sharpening the Combat Edge:The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgement." Similar to Hunt's evasiveness in his 2010 authorship in regards to inconsistencies in "Speedy Express," the only comment of this operation in this 1974 penning came from coauthor General Ewell. A known advocate and highly vocal proponent of "Body Counts" which during the Vietnam War measured factors such as progress, victory, as well as determining the need for follow-up operations, Ewell was quoted as saying; "the hearts and minds" approach can be overdone....in the Delta the only way to overcome VC control and terror is with brute force applied against the VC." Historians argue that the reason atrocities such as the My Lai Massacre occurring was directly attributable to American forces not being able differentiate among the indigenous population Vietnamese friend or foe. Although the VCP could justify its shoddy postwar treatment of America and the POW/MIA issue by citing the unjust and wanton murders of its fellow countrymen while failing to mention their part in the crime committed in Hue. similar to the Communists accusation of Americans doing anything for money while the VCP acted equally if not more Capitalistic, Hanoi's southern recruiting tactics were equally brutal.
During the Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese and PRG forces on January 31, 1968 captured and occupied Hue. When they withdrew on February 28th, American forces found bound, tortured and buried alive approximately 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war.
Although this never makes any of the history collegiate textbooks, the PRG forced on usually helpless Southern villages or hamlets communist allegiance with threats of reprisal, kidnapping and violent murder. After VCP agents took control of an area it would be used to billet and resupply Viet Cong guerrillas, supply intelligence on US and South Vietnamese military movements, provide taxes to VCI cadres, and conscript locals into the PRG. SOG over the border kidnappings of key VCP intelligence targets, or even ex South Vietnamese President Thieu's use of his intimidating "White Mice" police or his punitive "Tiger Cages" on Con Son Island did not rightfully justify the Communists usage of America's missing as commodities after the conclusion of hostilities. The actions and extortionist behaviors of the Vietnamese Communist Party certainly lend weight to both the title of his memoir as well as former major General Smedley Butler's assertion as the most decorated Marine in U.S. history that "War is a Racket." Poignantly demonstrated in this memoir, Bill Bell's book is an essential read for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of America's involvement in the Vietnam War and the cruel way the Communists treated a man that gave his all to finding out what happened to them! It is pathetic that if you ask anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War what the 5 most common remembrances about that conflict come to their mind, it will most likely be: 1. A Buddhist monk sitting at a Saigon intersection immolating himself to protest the South Vietnamese Government. 2. The little girl running naked down Highway 1, fleeing a napalm attack. 3. The national police chief executing a terrified man suspected of being a VC and shot in the side of his head. 4. The bodies in the ditch after the My Lai Massacre. 5. Americans (and Bill Bell!) evacuating from the Saigon Embassy's rooftop. What about the POW/MIA'S? This is the true tragedy of this war, and they must never be forgotten. By reading "No Man Left Behind," you will do your part in ensuring that they won't! An absolute must read to any Vietnam War collection!
