A separate design for a version of the Medal of Honor for the U.S. Air Force was created in 1956, authorized in 1960, and officially adopted on April 14, 1965. Previously, members of the U.S. Army Air Corps, U.S. Army Air Forces, and the U.S. Air Force received the Army version of the medal. The first person to receive the new U.S. Air Force Medal of Honor was Major Bernie Fisher during the Battle of A Shau Valley in March 1966. He also received a Silver Star during the same battle.
The A Shau Valley is located in Thua Thein Hue Province, 30 miles southwest of the coastal city of Hue, along the border of Laos. The valley runs north and south for twenty-five miles and is a mile-wide flat bottomland covered with tall elephant grass, flanked by two strings of densely forested mountains that vary from three to six thousand feet. Its geography and isolation made it a primary infiltration route for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) into South Vietnam for men and material brought down from the north along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Located just five miles from the border with Laos was A Shau Special Forces camp with the mission of detecting and interdicting enemy forces. Defending the camp were 10 Green Berets from the 5th Special Forces Group and 210 South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG). Out of friendly artillery range, it was supported by Air Commando units equipped with vintage A-1 Skyraiders and AC-47 Spooky gunships.
The camp consisted of some barracks buildings, a triangular fort, and an airstrip made of pierced steel planking just outside the barbed wire perimeter east of the camp. The fort had a mortar bunker at each corner. The walls consisted of steel plate and sandbags.
The camp was routinely harassed by small Vietcong (VC) formations leading up to the battle. Throughout February andMarch, 1966, platoon-sized troops from the camp were sent out to conduct reconnaissance patrols in the surrounding area. On March 5, two North Vietnamese Army (NVA) defectors turned up at the camp. Under interrogation, they indicated that four battalions of the North Vietnamese 325th Division were planning to attack the camp.
Based on that information, night patrols were dispatched to confirm the enemy positions but no sightings were made. However, Air Commandos conducting reconnaissance flights observed large build-ups of NVA troops along with anti-aircraft emplacements. As a result, airstrikes were ordered against enemy positions.
On March 7, Air Force C-123s brought in reinforcements in the form of a MIKE force, increasing the strength of the camp to 17 Green Berets and 368 South Vietnamese irregulars and Chinese Nung mercenaries.
On March 8, the camp was placed on general alert and the camp's defenders had taken up their positions. During the night a small enemy assault was launched but thrown back.
Shortly after midnight on March 9, with the cloud ceiling at 400 feet, an Air Force AC-47D "Spooky 70" from the 4th Air Commando Squadron got through the clouds and flew up the valley at treetop level, strafing the attacking NVA formations. On the gunship's second pass, it was hit hard by ground fire. The right engine was torn from its mounts. Seconds later, the other engine was knocked out, too. The bullet-riddled AC-47 crash-landed on a mountain slope, five miles farther up the valley. All six crewmen survived but were attacked by NVA troops. Three crewmen were killed but the other three were eventually rescued by a U.S. Air Force HH-43 helicopters.
About 2 am, March 9, a second attack began with enemy bombardment emanating from the surrounding hills. Mortars, artillery, and rocket-propelled grenades pounded the camp, killing two Americans and wounding 30. The barrage set buildings and the supply dump afire and reduced defensive positions to rubble. The enemy artillery barrage stopped at dawn.
Early in the morning of March 9, two A-1Es from Pleiku were diverted from other targets and sent to the aid of the fort at A Shau. Leading the A-1E flight was Air Force Maj. Bernard F. Fisher, a 39-year-old fighter pilot from Kuna, Idaho and a devout Mormon who did not drink, smoke, or use strong language. He had been in the Air Force for 15 years.
There weren't many jets in Vietnam in the early part of the war, so Fisher had volunteered to fly the A-1E, which was in use both by the South Vietnamese Air Force and by U.S. Air Commandos. Fisher was initially sent to Bien Hoa, where he trained South Vietnamese pilots to fly combat in the A-1E. He then transferred to the 1st Air Commando Squadron at Pleiku.
Arriving in the area of A Shau Valley, Fisher and his wingman Bruce Wallace found the mountains blanketed by clouds and began probing to find the canyon in which the camp lay.
On his third attempt, he emerged from the overcast and barely missed colliding with a helicopter that had just come from A Shau with wounded aboard. The helicopter pilot directed Fisher toward a saddle in the mountains, where he found an opening in the clouds about five miles northwest of the camp. He and Wallace went through the hole and flew down the valley at very low level. The enemy AAA was intense.
A C-130 airborne command post told Fisher to destroy the crashed AC-47 before the NVA captured the three 7.62 mm Gatling guns, which could fire 6,000 rounds per minute and which were still in working order. Fisher assigned that task to Wallace - who dropped six bombs on the wreckage and obliterated it - while Fisher went to the direct assistance of the fort.
For the next several hours, Fisher and Wallace collected arriving aircraft above the clouds and led them down into the valley. Fisher guided a CH-3C helicopter that came to evacuate the badly wounded. He also led A-1Es in a strike to break up a force that was massing to attack the fort.
Fisher went up again to bring down two Air Force C-123s. The mountains were tight on all sides, and forward visibility was less than half a mile. They began taking fire seven miles north of the camp. Fisher suppressed the ground fire as the transports air-dropped supplies for the fort from an altitude of 50 feet.
Low on fuel, Fisher went through the clouds one more time to help a forward air controller lead two B-57 bombers down the valley. In all, Fisher spent about two hours under the clouds. He made an emergency landing at Da Nang, 20 minutes away, with almost no fuel left in his tank.
Fisher was awarded the Silver Star for his role as on-scene commander and Wallace received the Distinguished Flying Cross. However, Fisher had not yet seen the last of the A Shau Valley.
In the afternoon on March 9, supplies of ammunition were flown in by C-123 and CV-2 aircraft, but the resupply drops often landed outside of the camp and could not be retrieved. At the same time, helicopters were called to evacuate the wounded. Because of bad weather, however, reinforcements from Hue and Phu Bai could not be deployed, forcing the camp's defenders to repair as well as they could their defensive wall and dug in for the night.
Sometime between midnight and 3 AM during the night of March 10, the NVA launched yet another attack with mortar and recoilless rifle fire. Two C-123s and an AC-47 dropped flares throughout the night. Before daylight, an enemy assault team penetrated the east wall of the camp, where hand-to-hand combat took place for three hours. By 8 AM, the defenders were pushed into the camp's north wall and the NVA dug in between the airstrip and the camp.
Throughout the day U.S. Marine Corps and Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) aircraft strafed NVA positions around the camp, but as fighting continued the situation deteriorated with ammunition supplies running short.
About 11 AM, the defenders reported that they could hold out no more than another hour and that airdrops to resupply them with ammunition should stop since they could not retrieve the bundles.
Bernie Fisher and his wingman that day, Capt. Francisco "Paco" Vazquez, were en route to provide air support to Army forces near Kontum when they got an emergency radio call to divert to A Shau. Fisher's call sign was "Hobo 51," and Vazquez was "Hobo 52."
By 11:15 AM, Hobo flight had joined numerous other aircraft that were stacked and circling at 8,000 feet and higher above the valley. They had not yet gone to the aid of the fort because of the danger of running into mountain peaks hidden by the cloud cover.
One of the other A-1 flights in the stack was led by Maj. Dafford W. "Jump" Myers from the 602nd Fighter Squadron at Qui Nhon. Myers was "Surf 41," and his wingman, Capt. Hubert King, was "Surf 42."
Myers was an old friend. Fisher had known him back in Air Defense Command. He had been nicknamed "Jump" when he was a soda jerk in high school. Myers was a hard-bitten chain-smoker who once made his living running a billiard parlor.
Myers suggested that there might be an opening to the west. Fisher went to see, found a hole, and called on Myers and King to follow him and Vazquez into the valley.
Fisher told the other A-1 flight to stay in orbit above the clouds. There was not enough room in the valley for six airplanes to operate, so Capt. Jon T. "Luke" Lucas ("Hobo 27") and Capt. Dennis B. Hague ("Hobo 28") continued to circle.
Fisher, Vazquez, Myers, and King flew down the valley in trail formation. It was too tight to go in side by side.
The cloud ceiling in the valley was at 800 feet - better than the previous day - but the visibility also helped the enemy gunners, who were shooting down on the aircraft from the 1,500-foot hillsides. At the besieged camp, the NVA had mounted a ground attack.
With hundreds of NVA in the open surrounding the camp, the A-1s flew three strafing runs, which killed between 300 and 500 of the attackers. The Green Berets later said the attack wiped out a company of the North Vietnamese and took pressure off the fort.
On the first run, King's aircraft was hit in the cockpit canopy, shattering the plexiglass. He had to break off and go to the nearest base, which was Da Nang. On the second pass, Myers' airplane was hit by shells of a heavy caliber. His engine conked out and the cockpit filled with smoke. At 400 feet, he was too low to use a parachute.
"I've been hit and hit hard," Myers radioed. "You're on fire and burning clear back past your tail," Fisher replied. "Rog," Myers said. "I'll have to put her down on the strip."
Myers' cockpit was filled with smoke. He couldn't see, so Fisher talked him down. At the same time, Fisher laid down suppressive fire in front of Myers and gave battle instructions to the other aircraft.
Myers was going too fast to land on the short runway, so he would have to belly slide in. He jettisoned his bombs and retracted his landing gear, but his attempt to release the center line fuel tank failed. The fuel tank exploded on contact with the ground.
Meyers' plane skidded about 800 feet, trailing fire, then veered off the runway on the west side and exploded. Incredibly, Myers survived. Fisher saw him climb out of his airplane and run to a ditch between the airstrip and the fort, where he was screened by a clump of weeds.
Fisher called in Hague and Lucas to lay down suppressive. The A-1s laid down saturated fire, driving back the NVA troops who were trying to get to Myers. As the A-1Es continued their strikes, Fisher called for a rescue helicopter. Ten minutes later, the command post said the helicopter was at least 20 minutes out. Fisher figured that this was probably a guess. Anyway, it wouldn't be much longer before the NVA closed in on Myers and killed him.
Fisher knew it was up to him to rescue Myers. But the odds were not in his favor. Even in the best of conditions, it was almost suicidal to land an aircraft as large and slow as the A-1E while exposed to direct enemy fire that would render it defenseless while sitting on the ground. Fisher also noticed the runway looked short so he radioed the command post and asked the length. It was 3,500 feet, he was told. That would be long enough to make the rescue and climb out ofenemy crossfire.
"I'm going in," Fisher radioed.
The odds of coming out again were not good. He would be landing in a crossfire from 20 anti-aircraft gun positions that lined the valley. The enemy also had hundreds of automatic weapons. The runway was a major hazard. The pierced steel planking was slick, and shards of it - torn by the mortars and bombs - were sticking up and could rip airplane tires to shreds. The runway was cratered and littered with shell casings, pieces of Myers' aircraft, barrels, pieces of tin and metal, and other debris.
Fisher counted on the other A-1s to provide him fire support. He approached the airstrip from the north, which would give him the advantage of landing into the wind, helping him to slow down. Unfortunately, the wind was also blowing thick smoke from fires ignited by the bombs and napalm in his direction, obscuring his vision. When he broke out of the smoke, he saw that he was over the runway but too far along it to stop the airplane in the distance remaining. As he passed by at low level, he caught a glimpse of Myers.
He powered up, holding the aircraft a few feet above the ground to avoid ground fire, made an S-turn, and approached the runway from the opposite direction of his first attempt.
The other three A-1s put down saturated fire, driving back the NVA troops who were trying to get to Myers. The Green Berets later said the attack wiped out a company of the North Vietnamese and took pressure off the fort.
As the A-1Es continued their strikes, Fisher called for a rescue helicopter. Ten minutes later, the command post said the helicopter was at least 20 minutes out. Fisher figured that this was probably a guess. Anyway, it wouldn't be much longer before the NVA closed in on Myers and killed him.
A moment before Fisher landed, Vazquez went "Winchester" (out of ammo). After three more passes, the other two ran out of ammunition, too. "I'm also Winchester," Hague declared. "So am I," said Lucas, adding "Let's keep making passes, though. Maybe they don't know it."
Fisher touched down at the very end of the field, stood on the brakes, and skidded down the runway. His brakes began fading from heat at 2,000 feet. Turns out Fisher had been told wrong about the length of the runway. It was 2,500 feet, not 3,500. It was too short for an A-1 under any circumstances.
He overran the runway onto some grass and crossed a small embankment, which slowed him down a little. As he swung the aircraft around, he slid into a fuel storage area. His wings passed over the tops of some 55-gallon drums, although he hit several of them with the tail of the airplane.
Fisher taxied 1,800 feet back along the runway in full view of the enemy. He saw Myers waving his arms as he passed by. It took Fisher about 100 feet to stop. He couldn't see Myers, who was running behind the airplane, off to the right side, with bullets following him along. Myers later said it was the fastest dash an old man of 46 ever made. Fisher expected Myers to climb into the cockpit momentarily. When he didn't, Fisher figured Myers must have been hit. He unbuckled and set the brake to go looking for him.
As Fisher began climbed out on the right side of the airplane, he "saw two little red beady eyes trying to crawl up the back of the wing." It was Myers, his clothes burned and muddy and his eyes reddened by smoke.
Fisher had left the engine running fairly fast, ready for a quick getaway, and the airflow from the big four-bladed propeller was blowing Myers back as he tried to reach the cockpit. Fisher cut power to idle, risking a stall. As bullets continued to strike the aircraft, he pulled Myers into the cockpit head first.
Myers' first words were: "You dumb son of a bitch, now neither of us will get out of here." He drank some water from Fisher's canteen and asked for a cigarette. Fisher, a non-smoker, did not have any.
As Fisher pulled Myers aboard, Lucas - who had taken a severe hit in his hydraulic system - led Hague and Vazquez in a dry pass over the camp one more time. The three Spads went dashing down at low level. It was enough to hold the NVA back momentarily.
Fisher saw that he had less than two-thirds of an already too short airstrip ahead of him so he applied power and worked his way through wreckage and debris, gaining enough speed to lift off at the overrun. Flying just above the ground at insufficient airspeed to climb, he gradually built up speed, still under intense hostile fire, and began a climb into the 800-foot overcast above the valley.
According to one report, the defenders in the fort cheered as Fisher's A-1 roared down the strip and rose into the air.
Fisher and Myers flew to Pleiku, where the medics met them at the flight line. Myers was not badly hurt, although he was singed and covered in soot and "smelled awful," according to Fisher.
Fisher's airplane had 19 holes in it. There were 23 in Vazquez's.
The Special Forces camp in the A Shau Valley fell to the NVA late that afternoon. Air strikes suppressed the attack long enough for rescue helicopters to pick up survivors.
During the battle, the U.S. Special Forces team suffered five killed and twelve wounded (100% casualties). The numbers of South Vietnamese soldiers present at the camp or how many casualties they suffered varies. According to one account, 172 out of 368 Nung and Vietnamese irregulars were flown out, with the others listed as missing, although many of them surfaced later. Another report stated 231 out of 417 irregulars were lost.
The NVA paid a heavy price for its victory. It lost 500 troops to air strikes and another 300 to ground fire.
Two hundred and one air strikes were flown in support of the fort on March 10. Of these, 103 were by the Marine Corps, 67 by the Air Force, 19 by the Navy, and 12 by the South Vietnamese Air Force. Including Myers' A-1E and the gunship, six Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft were shot down in the effort.
It was two years before allied forces retook the valley. The NVA established its own camp at A Shau, ringed the valley with anti-aircraft batteries and used it as a staging area and a supply dump. In January 1968, the Tet attacks on the Northern provinces were launched from A Shau.
Fisher was the first person to receive the new U.S. Air Force Medal of Honor. It was presented by President Johnson at the White House, Jan. 19, 1967. His wife, Realla, and their five sons were present for the ceremony.
Myers and Lucas were awarded the Silver Star. Hague and Vazquez received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The aircraft Fisher flew in the A Shau Valley later crashed and burned at Pleiku as it was returning from a mission. However, it was recovered and restored. In 1967, it was flown by none other than Jump Myers from California to the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, where it can be seen today.
Bernie Fisher stayed in the Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 1974. Myers died in 1992, but Fisher kept in touch with the others. At a presentation in the Pentagon honoring Fisher in 1999, the attendees included Paco Vazquez, Denny Hague, and Luke Lucas, as well as Gene Deatrick, who was commander of the 1st Air Commando Squadron at Pleiku.
After retirement, he went back to Kuna Idaho and became a farmer, raising seed corn, sugar beets, wheat, and alfalfa. He still lives on the farm but rents most of it out to another farmer. He died Aug. 16, 2014, and was buried at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery.
Fisher wasn't the only hero from the battle. Bennie Adkins of Opelika, Alabama was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC). Then a 32-year-old sergeant first class, Adkins was among a handful of Americans working with troops of the South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Group at Camp A Shau when the camp was attacked by a large North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. force on March 9, 1966.
According to his DSC citation, Adkins rushed through intense enemy fire and manned a mortar position defending the camp. He continued to mount a defense even while incurring wounds from several direct hits from enemy mortars. Upon learning that several soldiers were wounded near the center of camp, he temporarily turned the mortar over to another soldier, ran through exploding mortar rounds and dragged several comrades to safety. As the hostile fire subsided, Adkins exposed himself to sporadic sniper fire and carried his wounded comrades to a more secure position.
Later, under enemy fire, some of it coming from South Vietnamese allies who had defected to the North during the battle, Adkins took wounded troops to an airstrip outside the camp for evacuation and drew enemy fire away from the evacuation aircraft. He went outside the camp again to retrieve supplies from an airdrop that fell into a minefield. And that was just day one.
The fighting, and Adkins' heroism, continued in the early morning of March 10 when the North Vietnamese hit the camp with their main attack.
Within two hours, Adkins was the only defender firing a mortar weapon. When all mortar rounds were expended, Adkins began placing effective rifle fire upon the enemy as they infiltrated the camp perimeter and assaulted his position. Despite receiving additional wounds from enemy rounds exploding on his position, Adkins fought off relentless waves of attacking North Vietnamese soldiers.
After falling back to a smaller bunker in Camp A Shau, Adkins killed more enemy troops with small arms fire, destroyed equipment and classified documents to prevent them from getting into North Vietnamese hands, and led a group of soldiers in digging their way out of the rear of the bunker and escaping the besieged camp.
But Adkins' ordeal was not over. Because he was carrying a wounded comrade, he and his small group couldn't get to the evacuation helicopters sent to pick up the battle's survivors, forcing them into the jungle, avoiding their North Vietnamese pursuers for 48 hours.
Helicopters rescued Adkins and the rest of his group on March 12.
Atkins killed 135 to 175 enemy soldiers and suffered 18 wounds during the 86-hour ordeal.
A much later review by the Army's award branch of retired Sgt. Major Adkins' Distinguished Service Cross resulted in an upgrade to the Medal of Honor for his actions in defense of the camp. The award was presented by President Barack Obama in September 2014.
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Pham Xuan An was a brilliant journalist and an ever better spy. A friend to all the legendary reporters who covered the Vietnam War, he was an invaluable source of news and a fountain of wisdom on all things Vietnamese. He was also a masterful double agent, an inspired shape-shifter who kept his cover in place until the 1980s, when he was honored in his homeland as a national hero and revealed to have the rank of Colonel. He ranks as one of the greatest spies of the twentieth century.
As a reporter for Reuters, The Christian Science Monitor and Time magazine, An covered American and South Vietnamese military and diplomatic events and was one of a handful of reporters admitted to off-the-record briefings by American authorities. In appreciation for his dedicated work, Time made him a full staff correspondent, the only Vietnamese to be given that distinction by a major American news organization.
An seemed to do his best work swapping stories with colleagues in Givral's café, on the old Rue Catinat. Here he presided every afternoon as the best news source in Saigon. He was called "Dean of the Vietnamese Press Corps" and "Voice of Radio Catinat" - the rumor mill. With self-deprecating humor, he preferred other titles for himself, such as "docteur de sexologie," "professeur coup d'état," "Commander of Military Dog Training" (a reference to the German shepherd that always accompanied him), "Ph.D. in Revolutions," or, simply, General Givral.
At the same time, An was delivering a steady stream of secret military documents and messages written in invisible ink to North Vietnamese Politburo authorities in Hanoi, using an ingenious series of dead-letter drops. He was also using a Hermes typewriter bought specially for him by the North Vietnamese intelligence service to write dispatches, some as long as a hundred pages, at night. Photographed and transported as undeveloped rolls of film disguised as egg rolls hidden inside rotting fish, his typewritten reports were run by courier out to the Cu Chi tunnel network that served as the Communists' underground headquarters. From Cu Chi, An's dispatches were hustled under armed guard to Mt. Ba Den, on the Cambodian border, driven to Phnom Penh, flown to Guangzhou (Canton), in southern China, and then rushed to the Politburo in North Vietnam. In addition, every few weeks beginning in 1952, An would leave his Saigon office, drive twenty miles northwest to the Ho Bo woods, and descend into the tunnels to plan Communist strategy.
An's role was so precarious that of the 45 couriers and agents responsible for getting his intelligence to the Communists, 27 of them were captured and/or killed. His writing was so lively and detailed that General Giap and Ho Chi Minh are reported to have rubbed their hands with glee on getting these dispatches from Tran Van Trung - An's code name. "We are now in the United States' war room!" they exclaimed, according to members of the Vietnamese Politburo.
Pham Xuan An was born in 1927 just north-east of Saigon in BinhTruoc in what was then French Indochina. As the firstborn son of a government surveyor establishing property lines and tax rolls in Vietnam's southern frontier,An had the rare honor of receiving a French colonial birth certificate.
At the beginning of World War II, France was swiftly conquered by Nazi Germany and the governing of France and the colonial French Indochina passed to the Vichy French government, a Puppet state of Nazi Germany. At the same time, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. The Vichy government relinquished control of Hanoi and Saigon to Japan, and by 1941, Japan extended its control over the whole of French Indochina.
In 1941, Ho Chi Minh returned home from China and founded the Viet Minh - a communist-dominated independence movement - to fight both the Japanese occupiers and the Vichy French. Assisting him in his guerrilla warfare was his most trusted and devoted Lieutenants; General Vo Nguyen Giap, a brilliant military strategists, and Pham Van Dong.
During the Japanese occupation, An dropped out of school at the age of 16 to become a courier for the Viet Minh. He also participated in several battles against the Japanese before training as a French customs inspector.
In April 1945, Ho Chi Minh met with members of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and offered to provide intelligence to the allies provided that he could have "a line of communication with the allies." The OSS agreed to this and later sent a military team to train Ho's men tactics for fighting jungle warfare.
With the Allied defeat of Germany and Japan ending World War II in 1945, the occupation of Vietnam by the Japanese also came to an end. With their departure, the French restored colonial control over Indochina in 1946. But the desire for independence from French domination had taken over the country and Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh launched a long and bloody guerrilla war against French colonial forces that lasted for eight years.
In 1952, An became an undercover spy for the Communist Party of Vietnam working as a censor for the French colonial government. One of his first tasks was to black out Graham Greene's journalistic dispatches: the French authorities were convinced that Greene worked for British intelligence - which, indeed, he sometimes did.
On May 22, 1954, the French rule over Vietnam came to a dramatic and bloody end at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Under the skilled leadership of General Vo Nguyen Giap, Viet Minh forces overwhelmingly defeated the French, thus ending 67 years of French colonial occupation of French Indochina.
At the International Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, the French government and the Viet Minh made an agreement that effectively gave Communist-domination in North Vietnam above the 17th parallel and a U.S. supported government of South Vietnam below the 17th parallel. For one year, South Vietnam was ruled by Emperor Bao Dai until his prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, created the Republic of Vietnam. Soon an insurgency, backed by the North, developed against Diem's government. The conflict gradually escalated into the Vietnam War.
An could not avoid being drafted into the South Vietnamese Army, but using family connections, he got himself assigned as an aide to Col. Edward Lansdale (who later retired as a U.S. Army Major General), the famous American counter-insurgency officer and former member of the OSS who played an instrumental role in early U.S. support for the fledgling anti-communist regime in Saigon in the late 1950s. It was working with Lansdale and his collogues where An learned the spycraft he would employ in his next twenty years as a Communist spy.
In 1957, the Communists secretly decided to pay An's passage to America to study and train to be a journalist to cover for future spying. For two years he studied journalism at Orange County College in Costa Mesa, California. Upon graduating, he served an internship at the Sacramento Bee newspaper. He adored the United States and almost didn't return to Vietnam, especially after his case officer was arrested and tortured. Once he had returned, he contacted another family friend, Tran Kin Tuyen, who was the intelligence chief of South Vietnam under President Ngo Dinh Diem.
Tran Kin Tuyen put him in charge of the Vietnamese intelligence officers who were working for a government news agency, but he quickly moved on to Reuters, The Christian Science Monitor and then, in the mid-1960s, Time Magazine, where he stayed until April 1975 and the fall of Saigon.
As the American presence in the Vietnam War became more involved, An befriended everyone who was anyone based in Saigon, including such noted journalists as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA's William Colby, Charlie Mohr, Frank McCulloch, David Greenway, Richard Clurman, Bob Shaplen, and other highly respected war journalists, plus the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and Army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi.
An spent two years assisting Viet Cong scouts in targeting key sites to attack during the surprise 1968 Tet Offensive. He advised the Communists to ignore the Treasury, where only cash salaries were dispersed and instead urged them to focus on the Court House, which had a huge stash of gold bars captured from numerous smugglers and stored there for their frequent trials. The Renault car they used to crisscross Saigon is now on display in the Museum of Military Intelligence in Hanoi. It later emerged that the two people who were awarded North Vietnam's highest military award were the commander at the battle of Ap Bac in 1963, and Pham Xuan An for his role in the Tet Offensive in 1968, the two most pivotal turning points in the protracted war in Indochina.
With Communists forces moving toward Saigon in1975, An persuaded American officials to fly several Vietnamese friends out of the country, saying they would be punished by the Communists if they were left behind. His wife and four children were also taken to the United States, but he remained behind to care for his sick mother.
"Here is Pham Xuan An now," he cabled Time magazine's New York headquarters on April 29, 1975, as their last reporter in Vietnam. "All American correspondents evacuated because of emergency. The office of Time is now manned by Pham Xuan An." An filed three more reports from Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on the city. Then the line went dead.
Shortly after the fall of Saigon, An was interrogated by the communists and put under house arrest to ensure he had no further contact with Westerners. Although he was treated with some suspicion by members of the Politburo, the intelligence services regretted that he had not gone to the U.S., where it was thought he could have alerted the new government to any counter-revolutionary moves by America. But, as he was suspected of being "corrupted" by capitalism after decades of living in South Vietnam as a spy in close contact with the Americans, the Viet Cong sentenced him to a year-long imprisonment in a "soft" re-education camp near Hanoi.
It was only after the war that correspondents like Frank McCulloch of Time, David Halberstam of The New York Times and Morley Safer of CBS News learned that their colleague had been a colonel in the North Vietnamese Army. What's perhaps just as striking in the story of Pham Xuan An is the good will his former colleagues still feel toward him.
"He was among the best-connected journalists in the country," Safer wrote in "Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam," in which he devoted an entire chapter to An. "It was alwaysAn who would brief new correspondents; it wasAn who even the competition sought when trying to unravel the hopelessly complicated threads of Vietnamese political loyalties."
"He felt it was doing his patriotic duty by being an agent," Stanley Karnow, An's friend and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a reporter for The Washington Post, "but we were his friends, and he had great admiration for the United States." An also told Karnow that his years in America "were the best years of my life." An, Karnow said, admired the communists as nationalists, "but their ignorance and arrogance have only given us misery."
Frank McCulloch, the Saigon bureau chief for Time during the war, said: "It tore him up. If circumstances had been reversed, if hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese had occupied my land, I probably would have done the same thing."
David Greenway, who worked for the Time during the period, was a close friend and would regularly bring An exotic songbirds from Hong Kong and Bangkok markets for his large collection. Greenway recalled him as a shy, affectionate and kind man who was very smart.
"He was an intellectual, dog-lover, bird-lover, a chain-smoker, super smart guy, and we thought a great reporter," said Peter Ross Range, who was Time's Saigon Bureau Chief in 1975. "ButAn was also a little strange. He would disappear for days at a time and nobody had any idea where he was. Now, of course, we know where he was at least part of that time." That would, of course, be his trips to meet with the Politburo in North Vietnam.
Though his four children and wife evacuated to the United States at the end of the war, he soon summoned them to come home, something An told his friend Stanley Karnow "was the stupidest thing I ever did. Around that time, suspicions began to arise among his American friends. By the 1980s, those suspicions had been publicly confirmed: An was honored in his homeland as a national hero.
An never told a lie, so he was able to keep his own story straight. He was also able to maintain the respect of his colleagues. Many of his Time friends met with him on return trips to Vietnam, and several - including Stanley Cloud - later helped raise $30,000 from An's friends to send his son to study in the U.S., but An himself was denied a visa to attend a conference in 1997 in New York.
"He was a great man. A great man," Cloud, said, reflecting on that period. "When I found out, I was surprised but I wasn't astonished, if you know what I mean."
"I don't think he ever purposely gave us misinformation. That's how he survived. He'd have been killed if he did," echoes Roy Rowan, a long-time Time and Life staffer who worked in Saigon for the magazine at the end of the war. Rowan recalls a three-hour-long, highly emotional conversation during which he tried to convinceAn to save his own life by evacuating with the rest of the staff.An declined, insisting he was staying behind to care for his ailing mother.
His biographers have also been unable to find evidence that he spread falsehoods. "I was hoping to find evidence that the stories had been slanted, but I couldn't find it," says Larry Berman, author of the biography "Perfect Spy" - a book aboutAn's life adventures - said that it's not surprising that, 40 years later, the story of Pham Xuan An is not seen by former friends as a tale of betrayal. "An loved America, appreciated the free press, was respected by his colleagues - but he loved his own country more, and wanted it to be independent," Berman said. Today, Berman believes most Americans see the war the way that An did, agreeing with him that it would have been better for the Americans to go home.
"An thought, naively, that when the war was over it would be just like the end of the American Civil war, where Lincoln said "with malice toward none,'" Berman said. "People hold onto him as a symbol of war, but really he's a symbol of peace."
In fact, it seems more likely that having a spy on the staff helped Time cover the war more accurately. Cloud recalls a time during the Paris Peace Accord negotiations when Newsweek's Saigon bureau chief bragged about having the details of the peace plan; Time asked An to see what he could find so that the magazine wouldn't get scooped. An brought back the outline of the plan. The story that Time ran that week, Cloud recalls, was more accurate than Newsweek's.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that even though An appeared to have been careful not to endanger his colleagues - he intervened in at least one case to keep a Time correspondent safe - the information he was able to provide to the North was not without military value. "Could his information have led directly to the deaths of American soldiers? And if so, should we be rethinking our love for Pham Xuan An?" asks Peter Range. "Personally, he was a great guy - but he's out creating situations which could have killed young men from our side and of course that's what he was supposed to do. And if that's what he was doing, you need to think about that."
Still Range stands by An. When he learned the truth about his former colleague, he felt "disbelief, shock, but not anger," he says. "Everything was upside-down. So the fact that this turned out to be upside-down seemed like another one of the strange anomalies of the time."
His family returned to live with him in Vietnam in the late Seventies, although his daughter lives in the U.S. He was certainly loyal to many non-Communist friends. Robert Sam Anson, a former Time journalist and now a writer, discovered that it was through An's anonymous intervention that he was released from captivity after being taken by North Vietnamese soldiers while on a story during the 1970 Cambodian invasion.
An was given the rank of Colonel when first revealed to the world as a spy, later promoted to brigadier general, and then to major-general. He never lost his belief in the justice of the Communist cause but was torn between his love of the U.S. and the totalitarian nature of the Vietnamese Communist Party. He was convinced in 2002 that he was only kept in service so that Vietnamese intelligence could keep an eye on him.
An had no regrets about his double life during the war. "The truth? Which truth?" he said in his interview with Morley Safer. "One truth is that for 10 years I was a staff correspondent for Time magazine, and before that Reuters. The other truth is that I joined the movement in 1944 and in one way or another have been part of it ever since. Two truths - both truths are true."
In 2005, the New Yorker published a nearly10,000 word profile of An, in which he remarked that he was not yet ready to die: "There's nowhere for me to go. Hell is reserved for crooks, but there are so many of them in Vietnam, it's full."
Pham Xuan An - a Lucky Strike chain smoker - died from emphysema at a military hospital in Ho Chi Minh City in 2006 at the age of 79. He was given a hero's funeral.
The War of 1812 is a relatively little-known war in American history, but it is also one of its most important. It lasted from June 1812 to February 1815, and was fought between the United States of America and the United Kingdom, its North American colonies, and its Native American allies. It also defined the presidency of James Madison, known as the "Father of the Constitution." Despite its complicated causes and inconclusive outcome, the conflict helped establish the credibility of the young United States internationally. It also fostered a strong sense of pride among the American people that is reflected and preserved in one of the fledgling nation's most famous patriotic songs, the U.S. national anthem.
Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy's forced impressment of as many as 10,000 American merchant sailors, and America's desire to expand its territory. The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812, including the capture and burning of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in August 1814.
Nonetheless, American troops were able to repulse British invasions in New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans, boosting national confidence and fostering a new spirit of patriotism. The ratification of the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815, ended the war but left many of the most contentious questions unresolved. Nonetheless, many in the United States celebrated the War of 1812 as a "second war of independence," beginning a new era of partisan agreement and national pride.
At the outset of the 19th century, Great Britain was locked in a long and bitter conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte's France. In an attempt to cut off supplies from reaching the enemy, both sides attempted to block the United States from trading with the other. In 1807, Britain passed a series of decrees called the Orders in Council, which required neutral countries to obtain a license from British authorities before trading with France or its colonies, outraging many neutral trading partners. In 1809, the U.S. Congress repealed Thomas Jefferson's unpopular Embargo Act, which, by restricting trade, had hurt Americans more than either Britain or France. Its replacement, the Non-Intercourse Act, specifically prohibited trade with Britain and France. It also proved ineffective, and in turn was replaced with a May 1810 bill stating that if either power dropped trade restrictions against the United States, Congress would in turn resume non-intercourse (blocking trade) with the opposing power. As a result, that November, after Napoleon hinted he would drop restrictions, President James Madison blocked all trade with Britain, contributing to already-tense relations between the two countries. This maintained a natural alliance between the U.S. and France against Great Britain that began during the Revolutionary War just a few decades prior.
Meanwhile, new members of Congress elected that year - led by two popular statesmen, the famous orator and future Speaker of the House and Secretary of State Henry Clay, and political theorist and future Vice President John C. Calhoun - had begun to agitate for war, based on their indignation over British violations of maritime rights as well as Britain's encouragement of Native American hostility against American expansion in the West, allying the British with a confederation of native American forces led by Shawnee chief Tecumseh.
Lacking artillery and strength of numbers, these Indian allies of the British avoided pitched battles and head-to-head conflicts that could potentially result in heavy losses. They sought only to fight under favorable conditions, relying on mostly irregular warfare, including raids and ambushes. Their weapons were mostly primitive, including a mixture of tomahawks, clubs, knives, and arrows. But British-supplied swords, rifles and muskets gave them the ability to effectively conduct asymmetric warfare. Indian warriors were brave, but being outnumbered led to tactics that favored a more defensive approach to fighting, risking little and only striking when they had the advantage.
In the fall of 1811, Indiana's territorial governor William Henry Harrison led U.S. troops to victory over the native confederacy in the Battle of Tippecanoe, earning him a reputation that eventually carried him to the White House. The defeat convinced many Indians in the Northwest Territory that they needed, even more, British support to prevent American settlers from pushing them further out of their lands. Americans on the western frontier demanded an end to this British intervention and support of the native confederacy, adding to the tensions.
By late 1811 the so-called "War Hawks" in Congress were putting more and more pressure on Madison, and on June 18, 1812, the president finally signed a declaration of war against Britain. Though Congress ultimately voted for war, both the House and the Senate were bitterly divided on the issue. Most Western and Southern congressmen supported the war, while Federalists (especially New Englanders who relied heavily on trade with Britain) accused war advocates of using the maritime rights issue to promote their expansionist agenda.
In order to strike at Great Britain, U.S. forces almost immediately attacked Canada, then a British colony. The British government believed it to have been an opportunistic ploy by President James Madison to annex Canada while Britain was fighting a ruinous war with France. The view was shared in much of New England and for that reason, the war was widely referred to there as Mr. Madison's War. As a result, the primary British war goal was to defend their North American colonies. However, some historians believe that the U.S. only intended to capture Canada in order to cut off food supplies for Britain's West Indian colonies and prevent the British from continuing to arm the Indians, as well as creating a bargaining chip to force Britain to back down on the maritime issues.
American officials were overly optimistic about the invasion's success, especially given how underprepared U.S. troops were at the time. On the other side, they faced a well-managed defense coordinated by Sir Isaac Brock, the British soldier and administrator in charge in Upper Canada (modern Ontario). On August 16, 1812, the United States suffered a humiliating defeat after Brock and Tecumseh's forces chased the forces of Michigan's William Hull across the Canadian border, scaring Hull into surrendering Fort Detroit without firing a shot.
Things looked better for the United States in the Northwest Territory, as Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's brilliant success against the Royal Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813 placed the territory firmly under American control. Harrison was subsequently able to retake Detroit in October 1813, with a victory in the Battle of Thames, in which Tecumseh was killed. Tecumseh's passing weakened the native resistance to American expansionism and forced them to retreat westward. But Tecumseh subsequently became an iconic folk hero in American, Aboriginal, and Canadian history, being the subject of books, movies, documentaries, and a yearly outdoor theater drama in Chillicothe, OH that recreates his powerful speech to the leaders and warriors of his tribal confederacy from atop a large rock, prior to the raid that helped the British capture Fort Detroit.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy had been able to score several victories over the British Royal Navy in the early months of the war. With the defeat of Napoleon's armies in April 1814, however, Britain was able to turn its full attention to the war effort in North America and began mobilizing its forces against the United States. As large numbers of troops arrived, British forces raided the Chesapeake Bay and moved in on the U.S. capital, capturing Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1814, and burning government buildings, including the Capitol and the White House.
On September 13, 1814, Baltimore's Fort McHenry withstood 25 hours of bombardment by the British Navy. The following morning, the fort's soldiers hoisted an enormous American flag, a sight that inspired Francis Scott Key, imprisoned on a Royal Navy ship and witness to the battle, to write a poem he titled "Defence of Fort McHenry." Later set to the tune of an old English drinking song, the poem became the lyrics for "The Star-Spangled Banner" which was adopted as the U.S. national anthem. The Battle of Baltimore resulted in American forces repulsing sea and land invasions of the busy port city of Baltimore, Maryland, and the death of the commander of the invading British forces. British forces subsequently left the Chesapeake Bay area and began gathering their efforts for a campaign against New Orleans.
By that time, peace talks had already begun at Ghent (modern Belgium), and Britain moved for an armistice after the failure of the assault on Baltimore. In the negotiations that followed, the United States gave up its demands to end impressment, while Britain promised to leave Canada's borders unchanged and abandon efforts to create an Indian state in the Northwest. On December 24, 1814, commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent, which would be ratified the following February. On January 8, 1815, unaware that peace had been concluded, British forces mounted a major attack on New Orleans, only to meet with defeat at the hands of future U.S. president Andrew Jackson's army. News of the battle boosted sagging U.S. morale and left Americans with the taste of victory, despite the fact that the country had achieved none of its pre-war objectives.
Though the War of 1812 is remembered as a relatively minor conflict in the United States and Britain, it looms large for Canadians, who see it as vindication for maintaining their national boundaries, and for Native Americans, who see it as a decisive turning point in their losing struggle to govern themselves. In fact, the war had a far-reaching impact in the United States, as the Treaty of Ghent ended decades of bitter partisan infighting in the U.S. government and ushered in the so-called "Era of Good Feelings." The war also marked the demise of the Federalist Party, which had been accused of being unpatriotic for its antiwar stance, and reinforced a tradition of Anglophobia that had begun during the Revolutionary War. It birthed a new generation of great American generals and helped propel 4 men to the presidency: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe and William Henry Harrison. Perhaps most importantly, the war's outcome boosted national self-confidence and encouraged the growing spirit of American expansionism that would shape the better part of the 19th century.
The Korean War Veterans Association (KWVA) and the Korean War Memorial Foundation (KWMFB) have been trying for some time to get Congress to enact legislation that would allow The Wall of Remembrance (WOR) to be constructed at the site of the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D. C. The Wall of Remembrance (WOR) would have the names of the 37,000 plus Korean War KIA's/MIA's engraved in it, much like the Viet Nam Wall
The enacted legislation states that "no federal funds can be used in the construction of The Wall of Remembrance. The Foothills Chapter #301 of The Korean War Veterans Association located in Greenville, SC passed a resolution and named a "Fund-Raising" committee to raise the money for the 547 plus South Carolinians who paid the ultimate price to stop the spread of communism in Asia and to keep South Korea a free nation. South Korea, in a relatively short time, became one of the largest economies in the world, and instead of being a receiver of foreign aid became a provider of foreign aid.
The Korean War was first dubbed a "Police Action." It was not covered very much by the news media and became known as "The Forgotten War." But since the founding of the Korean War Veterans Association in the mid-1980's, it has been working hard to make America knowledgeable of the Korean War, and they are having much success.
Instead of being thought of as "The Forgotten War," it is now being billed as "The Forgotten Victory." Just contrast North Korea to South Korea today and it's easy to understand why it should be billed as "The Forgotten Victory." While South Korea is wildly successful, North Korea can't feed their own people or even keep their lights on.
For that, and many other reasons, we not only need to but we "MUST" build this wall to honor America's the 37,000 plus heroes who sacrificed their lives in this now "The Forgotten Victory." And we MUST do it now if we want any Korean War Veterans to be around to attend the dedication of the Wall.
The average age of Korean War Veterans today is eighty- five years. The average of men (a few women) fighting in the "Korean War" was nineteen (19) years. If the average age was nineteen (19), there must have been many sixteen (16), seventeen (17), and eighteen (18) year olds on the frontline. The draft had ended after WW II so all of the military in the first few months of the hostilities were volunteers. And yes, they were heroes, every single one of them. All who served in Korea, in my view, were heroes.
As I said, we are raising money for the South Carolina KIA's/POW's. But let me hasten to say, every name will be on the Wall, no matter where the money comes from. We are requesting that contributors from South Carolina make checks payable to: KWVA Foothills Chapter #301. In the "FOR" area write "Wall of Remembrance."
Mail them to: Lewis Vaughn, 623 Ashley Commons Ct., Greer, SC 29651.
If the contributor is not from South Carolina, go to the KWVMF website to make a contribution. Of course, we in South Carolina will accept and appreciate contributions originating anywhere in or outside the U.S.
Thank you!