Debunking the myth of the Vietnam vet

Young or old, most Americans have been exposed to the stigma of the
Vietnam War. It was a “lost cause,” we were told — a “conflict” fought
mostly for the enrichment of the military-industrial complex by cowardly
politicians who were never really interested enough in Southeast Asia to
win.

As a result, most of us who were not there were taught to believe in
the well-worn mainstream image of the Vietnam vet — a burned-out,
drug-infested, undisciplined loser with one foot in the grave and no
desire to reintegrate into society. Few Americans had the insight to
ever ask themselves why some — not nearly all, but only
some — Vietnam veterans fit this description. Worse, fewer still
bothered to realize that some GI’s came home from other conflicts in
much the same shape. War, I’m told, has a nasty habit of changing some
men like that.

But the worst abuse of Vietnam vets came at the urging of the liberal
left, many of whom foisted these lies on millions of us through
controlled apparachiks in the mainstream media. Precisely
because we weren’t there in the jungles alongside them, fighting for our
own lives and those of our men, we could never defend the Vietnam vet.
The left didn’t know the facts about the war either, but they did know
they didn’t like it, and they knew it was easy to get others to believe
their lies because they didn’t know any better.

So, in an attempt to get the truth out, we’ve had to rely on those
who were there to tell their own stories. Many have, and we thank God
for them.

Now comes a new book
that not only puts to rest the “big lie” about the mentality and makeup
of the Vietnam vet, it also brilliantly depicts a side of the war many
have either forgotten or have chosen to ignore. America wasn’t merely
fighting the North Vietnamese; Americans were also fighting amongst
themselves here at home in what has proven to be a vain attempt to
invalidate or justify the 11-year war.

“First Force Recon Company: Sunrise at Midnight,” written by
ex-Marine Recon lieutenant and hero extraordinaire Dr. Bill Peters, is a
long overdue account of a side of the war few of us have seen — and
even fewer survived. Lt. Peters provides an intricate account of the
atrociously divisive life on American university campuses before
shipping out to Vietnam, as well as the oft-glorified but seldom
accurate depiction of small unit combat in Southeast Asia.

“Always outnumbered, always outgunned,” Lt. Peters and his Marine
officer peers led small groups of highly professional, highly trained
grunts into the dangerous mountains, jungles and rice paddies of North
and South Vietnam. The countryside was always heavily occupied by enemy
troops, especially at the pinnacle of the U.S. withdrawal from South
Vietnam, when Lt. Peters began his tour. Soon after the Tet Offensive
in 1968, the political will to continue the war had collapsed in the
United States, leading a newly elected President Nixon and his foreign
policy staff scrambling to find victory in a conflict they clearly did
not have the popular support to win.

Rather than withdraw completely, though, Nixon and his military
command staff devised a plan to harass, intimidate, and whenever
possible, hurt the advancing North Vietnamese army even as thousands of
American troops were packing up and heading home. This was being done
in an effort to bolster the South Vietnamese army so they could take
over where U.S. troops left off — a decision that left the South
Vietnamese leadership reeling and feeling abandoned.

Beginning in 1969, Peters and Co. led small elite teams of specially
trained Recon Marines into enemy strongholds around An Hoa and the Que
Son Mountains, as well as near the Laotian border. Their mission was to
reconnoiter enemy positions, record enemy troop movements, observe and
assess enemy strengths and weaknesses, and report their findings to
Marine commanders. Once this information was gleaned, U.S.-led air
strikes and artillery barrages were directed against those enemy
concentrations. They were highly successful, but, in some cases, at an
enormous cost to U.S. personnel.

In the process of gathering so much intelligence information, Peters
and his eight-man teams were frequently surrounded by enemy
concentrations. They took plenty of fire, plenty of casualties, and
plenty of hard knocks, often having to stay put in one place for days at
a time without eating, drinking, talking or moving for fear of discovery
by ever-present North Vietnamese army units. They couldn’t move to go
to the bathroom, scratch their mosquito bites, or shift to shield
themselves from the numerous monsoon-type rains that were endemic to
Vietnam. Many times they had to stay put even though they had wounded
teammates in need of medical attention.

Other teams and other officers endured the same kind of hell. Though
the Recon units took a lot of casualties, they inflicted enormous damage
on the North Vietnamese infrastructure in the time between 1969 and
1971, at one point surpassing the number of kills for the entire First
Marine Division stationed in Vietnam.

Their only support came from the skill of spot-on pilots
flying U.S. fighter and bombers and a handful of equally brave chopper
pilots who provided aerial fire support and insert/extraction into the
dangerous landing zones.

Peters told me, “The book is a ’60s story that really debunks the
theory of many college campus anti-Vietnam War types of that decade who
believed that it was merely a civil war. I believed it was a full-blown
invasion by the NVA from the North into the South. I rolled the dice to
find out the truth.

“I think it is time to set the record straight that South Vietnam was
being invaded by a standing army from the north not a bunch of chicken
farmers by day and Viet Cong nationalists by night,” he said. “This was
the faulty premise that the anti-Vietnam War groups pretty much hung
their case on, as I remember from the debates and riots on campus. Maybe
this look into the enemy’s true nature and strength in the jungle base
camp areas will bring some balance into the history of that war.” Indeed
it does.

These men — and thousands like them — do not “fit the mold”
of the stereotypical Vietnam vet — if there ever really was a “mold” in
which to pigeonhole them. Their bravery is unsurpassed, their fighting
skills superb, their professionalism unmatched, and their dedication to
following orders and completing their missions without comparison. They
didn’t use drugs, they didn’t “burn out,” they didn’t reject society
when they rotated back to “the world.” They were then, and they remain,
productive, successful members of American society, and they deserve a
helluva lot better than they’ve gotten — mostly from Clinton types who
either didn’t have to go or tried anything and everything to get out of
going.

Lt. Peters also brilliantly captured the anti-war sentiment on one of
many such campuses before shipping out to Vietnam. As he alluded to
when we spoke, he gives details about hypocrisy of the anti-war leftists
— “professional” students and agitators, I call them, who were more
interested in making some money (and a name for themselves) rather than
remaining wedded to their ideological opposition to the war. Peters
shows how easy it was for them to take their freedoms and lack of
military obligation for granted, while he and others followed orders and
did the best they could despite personal reservations or political
machinations.

That kind of no-holds-barred patriotism is sorely lacking from most
other descriptive accounts of the war and the men that fought it. And
when I met Lt. Peters this summer in Los Angeles, he still exuded the
same kind of professionalism, dedication to duty, and unapologetic
attitude that so credited him during his years of enduring both the heat
of battle (as few have) and the rancid political climate back home.

Words cannot describe the pathetically unequal odds that Peters, his
fellow officers, and their men had to suffer accomplishing a mission few
others wanted (or could have done) in the service of this country in
South Vietnam. But they accepted their duties voluntarily and with
honor, and served this country proudly, with dignity and proficiency.

That any of them survived to tell their story at all is a miracle
that Peters himself attributes to the Almighty. If you want an accurate
accounting of this microcosm of the Vietnam War and the men who had to
face the Beast, then get this book.
You won’t be disappointed and, in fact, you may actually come away from
it with a changed opinion of what you were taught to believe about all
Vietnam vets.