Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier

21 Defeat on the Home Front

342 Defeat on the Home Front From 1962 to 1975, there were nearly 160,000 communist troops who reported to the South Vietnamese side for Chiêu Hồi. Of these, 15,000 were from regular North Việt Nam units. They included one senior colonel, four lieutenant colonels , about ten majors, three dozen captains, hundreds of lieutenants, a few members of the provincial Party Standing Committees (equal in rank to lieutenant colonel), two capable engineers graduated from Eastern European universities , dozens of engineers graduated from Hà NộI, some college professors, hundreds of teachers, ten army physicians, a talented violinist graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, and two famous novelists. Typical among the defectors was Colonel Trần Văn Đắc, alias Tám Hà, a rare,well-educatedNVAofficerwhohadattainedaFrenchhighschooldiploma (baccalaureate).Intheearly1940s,notmanypeoplegraduatedwiththisdegree. He had a strong anticommunist conviction, but was never very demonstrative in voicing his opinions about the communist leaders. He always showed his impartiality in his comments about the communist regime. Also typical were Phan Mậu (Lt. Col. Regiment CO), Lê Xuân Chuyên (Lt. Col., Reg. CO), Huỳnh Cự (Maj.), Phan Văn Xướng (Senior Captain, Armor Corps),VươngQuangXuân(SeniorCaptain,Intelligence,anundercoveragent), andothers.TheformerNVAofficerscontributedimportanttacticalandstrategic information, according to classified reports from various intelligence agencies sent to my directorate. Captain Vương Quang Xuân, the intelligence agent, was trained in China andsenttoSouthViệtNamastheleaderofaspynetwork.Heprovidedvaluable information to the RVN and American intelligence community. Lieutenant La Thanh Đồng, a NVA antiaircraft battery commander, who reported to the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh in January 1968 for Chiêu Hồi, helped the Marines with important reports about the NVA units in the area. twenty-one • Defeat on the Home Front · 343 TheRVNgovernmentassignedmanydefectorstojobsinandoutoftheChiêu HồiMinistry.LêXuânChuyênwasappointeddirectoroftheNationalChiêuHồi Center from April to November 1967 and later served as a member of the Chiêu HồiMinistryadvisoryboardalongwithHuỳnhCựandothers.FiveNVAdoctors were serving as doctor’s assistants after passing the medical comprehension test. In 1968, under Chiêu Hồi ministers Nguyễn Xuân Phong and Nguyễn Ngọc An, the Ministry was working on a project to commission dozens of exNVA officers. I was a member of the studying board that included other officials from the ministries of Chiêu Hồi, Defense, Interior, Education, the Joint General Staff, and the National Police. General Trần Thanh Phong, the chief of staff/JGS along with the Chiêu Hồi Ministry, was an active supporter of the project. If the board’s proposal had been approved, many ex-NVA officers would have been commissioned as ARVN officers: NVA Junior Colonel Tám Hà as ARVN lieutenant colonel in the Political Warfare branch, Lt. Colonel Phan Mậu as ARVN major to serve the Command and Staff College, Senior Capt. Phan Văn Xướng as ARVN captain of the Armor Corps, and many other captains and lieutenants. Thegovernmentrejectedourproposal,andtheboardstoppedworking.We wereunabletoconvincetheold-fashionedconservativeanticommunistranking members of the administration. The ex-communist defectors also brought true images of North Vietnamese life to the people in the South. The famous writer Xuân Vũ, who had had manynovelspublishedintheNorth,joinedthenationalistsidein1968.InSouth Việt Nam and in America after 1975, his books artfully described life in the North, especially the fate of NVA soldiers on the Hồ Chí Minh Trails and their psychology in the war. His best novel, Đường Đi Không Dến (The Route That Failed to Reach Destination) attracted a great number of readers. Onthepsychologicalfront,thedefectorscontributedasignificantparttothe assertionofSouthViệtNam’snationalistrightcause.Atthesametime,aseyewitnesses of true life in the North, they provided a profound comprehension of the communist regime to the South Vietnamese, who by then had only a vague and false knowledge about what was happening north of the 17th parallel. Growth of the Chiêu Hồi Program The years 1967 to 1969 saw an increase in the number of communist soldiers rallying to the government side, probably due to military pressure against communistforcesandraidsdeepintothecommunist -controlledareas.Inearly1969, General Nguyễn Đức Thắng, commander of the Military Region IV (the Mekong delta), sent troops far into the remote areas in the delta, creating good opportunitiesforcommunistguerrillastojointheChiêuHồiprogram.Thenew 344 · Victory or Defeat defectors amounted to more than 1,000 a month in the populated provinces in the Mekong Delta. Most of them were ethnic South Vietnamese. Each of the northern provinces (from Bình Định to Quảng Trị) received from...