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America Lost A Lot of Good Men In Vietnam:Taking a Hill, Occupying It For A Week, Then Leaving It And Going On To Another! May 30, 2011
By Bernie Weisz
"a historian specializing in the Vietnam War"
If the title of this review doesn't make sense to the reader, or for that matter you don't understand what happened to America or its debacle in Vietnam, Jack Hartzel's "Reflections of My Past" is the perfect remedy. While it delivers only 110 pages, it is literally packed with eye witness information that only a Marine combat veteran can provide. Jack Hartzel spent perhaps one of the tumultuous times in America on the other side of the world, as a Marine in Vietnam during what was called the 1967 "Summer of Love." They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967 This was a social phenomenon that occurred when as many as 100,000 people in the U.S. converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion. Predominately composed of anti war hippies, they were a melting pot of music, psychoactive drugs, sexual freedom, creative expression, and antiwar politics. However, 1967 was the turning point of the war in America, with the "Tet Offensive" of the following year being the icing on the cake. While Hartzel was patrolling "I Corps" near the boundry between North and South Vietnam known as the Demilitarized Zone, domestically in April 400,000 people marched from Central Park to the UN building in New York City to protest the war, where they were addressed by critics such as Benjamin Spock, Martin Luther King. On the same date 100,000 marched in San Francisco. The previous year, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara ignominiously built an electronic "wall" around South Vietnam to remotely track the movement of supplies. This wall was given the name "The McNamara Line" ordered in conjunction with a covert U.S. Air Force electronic warfare operation code named "Igloo White." One particular combat base, Con Thien was intended to be used as a base for this line to prevent NVA infiltration across the DMZ. The firebase was strategically important because it offered unobstructed views for 9 miles east to the coast and north into North Vietnam. It equally vulnerable as it was within range of NVA artillery north of the DMZ which was largely unaffected by counter-battery fire. This multi-billion dollar program involved the implantation and monitoring of remote electronic sensors all along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to track vehicles and human movement through acoustic and seismic signatures. By 1967, McNamara gradually became skeptical about whether the war could be won by deploying more troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam, a claim he would publish in a book years later. Blundering into Diaster He also stated later that his support of the Vietnam War was given out of loyalty to administration policy. In November of 1967, one month before Hartzel came back to "The World," McNamara recommended to freeze troop levels, stop the bombing in North Vietnam and for the US to hand over ground fighting to the South Vietnamese. President Lyndon B. Johnson flat out rejected this and took it as an indictment by McNamara that his Vietnam policy had failed. Consequently, on November 29 of that year, McNamara announced his pending resignation and that he would become President of the World Bank.
It is interesting to note that although there are books that suggest that it is a myth that Vietnam Veterans were spit on upon their return by the more vociferous protesters, a careful study of self published memoirs will show this to be false, Hartzel's included. As 1968 approached, Hartzel returned to the U.S. and reported: "It was like I had arrived in a foreign land. I don't mean there were foreigners walking around. I mean the attitude of my countrymen towards Vietnam Veterans and the Vietnam War in general. They treated us as though we started the war, thus venting their opinions and frustrations about the war in our direction. Hell, most of us just did our jobs and hoped we would make it home alive. Their constant accusations and condemnations concerning the war took a toll on most of our heads." Hartzel painfully describes the damage: "Many of us became withdrawn and talked to no one; others became frustrated and lashed out at perpetrators. A number of Nam Vets denied that they had even been to Vietnam at all." No More Tears for the Dead! Just like law enforcement officers only communicate and trust others of the same profession, Hartzel wrote: "Most of us banded together in close-knit groups and talked of Vietnam only to other Veterans or ourselves. We trusted no one, only Veterans." If you can find one still alive, it is easy to get a W.W. II or Korean War Vet to talk about his wartime experiences. However, a Vietnam Vet is a different story. Hartzel explains the reason for this reticence that persists even today. When he first came back, the first thing Hartzel noticed was: "Nobody wanted to talk to us about Vietnam; they were bored with the subject. If they wanted to hear about Vietnam they could turn on the nightly news, with all its lies and deceit. We needed to talk to someone about Nam and what we had been through, but no one was willing to listen! You can't imagine how we felt. We were called "Baby Killers" and "Drug Addicts." We were asked questions like "How many women and children did you kill while you were over there?" The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam We were even ridiculed by other Veterans. Some W.W. II Vets said we were crybabies because we couldn't take the crap people dished out. It was real easy for them to say that because they came home to parades and treated as heroes."
It is very hard to find information like this in official works of history or scholarly treatments. The true historian must dig deep down to find the real dope on the mistreatment of those brave men and women that answered the call. Jack Hartzel goes further and answers passionately as to the consequences of this egregious disrespect: "Most of us held it inside or went to the bottle to forget. Many of us like myself retreated into drugs and alcohol to kill the pain. Many times we would get drunk and sit there and literally cry in our booze. I cannot tell you how many fistfights and arguments I got into over the subject of Vietnam. I usually ended up beating the crap out of some stupid jerk that didn't know what he was talking about. I had a true hatred and distrust toward my government and all of the anti-war morons." Sometimes this antipathy never leaves. However, in "Reflections of My Past" Hartzel asserts: "I stayed medicated almost 16 years after I was discharged from the Marine Corps." Eventually entering a alcohol and drug rehabilitation center in May of 1986, Hartzel fortunately sought out sobriety and sanity, and although he has had a few relapses, today he enjoys an ongoing abstinence. Soldier's Heart: Close-up Today with PTSD in Vietnam Veterans (Praeger Security International) The amazing part of this memoir is that Jack Hartzel didn't even need to go to Vietnam. Although he was convinced during his entire tour that he would never make it home alive, he explained: "I'm a sole surviving son and an only child. I was exempt from combat service. I volunteered to go! I was one of those patriotic fools like my father and his father. I didn't run like all those cowards that ran to Sweden or Canada." Even more incredible, when Hartzel landed in Da Nang in December of 1966, he was assigned to a Marine Air Base Security unit. There is an old adage of "never volunteer for anything." By reading this book, you will discover the zany way Hartzel actually put himself in the thick of combat, particularly at Con Thien, during the worst part of the fighting where 200 rounds of North Vietnamese Army artillery shelling and rocket attacks was the norm. Even more implausible, despite being told during training that seven seconds after a firefight starts a Machine Gunner should be dead, he volunteered just for that! In fact, it was only after he accepted the position that Hartzel discovered that the vacancy occurred in his unit because the previous gunner had been killed the day before by a sniper.
In 1967 the most hotly contested area where the highest degree of combat occurred aside from Dak To and the Central Highlands, was at Con Thien, about 1.8 miles from North Vietnam. It was where most of this memoir takes place and was the site of fierce fighting from when Hartzel arrived through February 1968, two months after his tour ended. Con Thien: The Hill of Angels Assigned to "Echo Company, 2/9 Marines, Hartzel offered: "We would run patrols and ambushes every day to keep the NVA on the move. We wanted to make certain they couldn't build fixed positions in and around the area. It was a hard job. We would destroy a bunker complex one day; and, a couple days later, it would be rebuilt. We actually found bunkers as close as 1500 meters to Con Thien. There was not much we could do about the NVA in the area, though. We were very short-handed and had such a large area to patrol that the NVA could move around freely without much chance of detection. We would patrol an area, and they would return as soon as we were gone." Why was the author so upset about America's indifference to what he had been subjected to during the summer of 1967? His description of his experience at the "Hill of the Angels" is a rhetorical answer: "We had a couple nicknames for Con Thien. We called it "Our Turn in the Barrel" or "The meat grinder." Almost daily, we would receive at least 200 rounds of NVA incoming. I don't remember a day in which we didn't get hit with incoming rounds of some sort. We also suffered something that was almost unheard of elsewhere in South Vietnam. It was called "shell shock," and it was not unusual. The constant pounding every day could make you go Nuts. You would sit there on edge, wondering if the next round that came in would have your name on it. We caught more than our share of incoming because, every time a chopper or a truck arrived, they would shell the hell out of us. In the month of September 1967, from the 19th to the 27th, we received over 3,000 rounds of incoming."
It is not hard to understand Jack Hartzel's indignation about being taunted by a draft dodger upon his return when as a 20 year old he had to witness what he described as follows: The thing about September 25th that really sticks in my mind is a picture of a Marine sitting in a puddle of blood and battle dressings, on a poncho, with his legs blown off from the waist down! He was numb from morphine and in shock from loss of blood. He was smoking a cigarette very calmly, as if nothing had even happened! He was waiting for a Medevac! He probably died in the chopper ride back! Our platoon arrived at Con Thien with 45 men; when we left, we only had 12! Now you know why we called it, "The Meatgrinder!" Marines Under Fire: Alpha 1/1 in Vietnam: From Con Thien to Hue to Khe Sanh However, there is more to the author's recounting of the battles of Con Thien. According to Hartzel, his recounting of "Operation Kingfisher" dictates that the official history of American KIA's (23) and WIA's (251) is incorrect, with many more casualties than reported. This operation was a U.S. sweep into the southern half of the DMZ to show, as Hartzel describes as follows: "a spoiling attack into the DMZ. Our leaders thought we would march up to the Ben Hai River, flex our muscles, and return to the South-no problem! it is rumored that LBJ and his cronies sent us up there to show that we could, hopefully bolstering his failing administration. The NVA had other ideas." Aside from Hartzel's horrific description of American death and carnage, there were far more casualties than was actually reported. As the reader will discover by reading Hartzel's account, you will understand the meaning of Hartzel's final comments of "Operation Kingfisher": "I believe Marines died and were wounded because of poor reconnaissance and overzealous commanders." Hartzel also shows the reader the utter barbarity and reasons why the NVA were so contemptible in his description of how the NVA, knowing Americans never leave anyone behind, would use slaughtered POW's as "ambush bait" to lure unsuspecting Marines. Disturbingly, Hartzel wrote: "We could hear an Echo Company platoon leader, a lieutenant on his radio who was caught inside the ambush telling us not to resupply them anymore. His Marines were fighting so fierce he said, "they'll go to Hanoi."
Hartzel was in for a frightening discovery: "The next morning at daylight we moved out heading north tracing our route from the day before. The lieutenant whom we had heard on the radio and several of his men had been caught in the open and were captured. The NVA hog-tied them with communication wire and bayoneted them and eventually murdered them in their attempt to draw Corpsman and Marines into their killing zone. Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War When memoirs like this are read, it makes it even more difficult to forgive the actions of Jane Fonda, who visited the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in July, 1972. Among other pro North statements, she was photographed seated on an anti-aircraft battery. During this visit she also visited American POW's and brought back messages from them to their families. When cases of torture began to emerge among POWs returning to the U.S., Fonda called the returning POWs "hypocrites and liars." Fonda further stated that the POWs were "military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to the law." One simply has to juxtapose Fonda's sympathies with Hartzel's description of discovering the aftermath of an NVA ambush of Green Berets only 24 hours after they walked out of his encampment: "The next day we took a Company sized patrol in the direction they had headed. We walked about 3000 meters (1 3/4 miles) and found them, should I say what was left of them! The NVA had caught them out in the open and slaughtered them. They killed some of them immediately and hog tied the rest of them. They cut some of their genitals off and sewed them into their mouths with communication wire. They slashed others stomach's so that their intestines were hanging out. They poked the eyes out of others. Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) (Culture, Politics & the Cold War) They left most of them there to die slowly." Any consideration of compassion for Jane Fonda's cause went out the window with that description which is substantiated by countless others!
Hartzel's recollection of the deadly impact of a B-52 air strike can only be found in individual memoirs. The true lethality of war rears its ugly head in Hartzel's following recollection: "Well before we approached the area we could smell the sickening sweet smell of death filling our nostrils. The smell of rotting flesh! There were at least 50 dead NVA soldiers in various forms of carnage.. In the intense heat rigor mortis had begun and some of the bodies had begun to swell. There were chunks of human flesh and body parts everywhere! There were bodies half burned in churned up mounds of dirt. There wasn't a tree left standing in the entire area. The B-52 bombardment had literally rearranged the terrain." Juxtapose this with Bud Yost's account in his book "Hard Core" and you can see the parallels: The company withdrew several clicks and called for a B-52 air strike to prevent the NVA's escape. The strike was devastating. All night long the ground trembled from the impact of the bombs and the sky was lit up red. from the explosions. Even from the several thousand meters away the noise was horrendous. At first light the battalion was sent into the strike area to search for survivors. The bombs cleared an area of probably 10 square miles of all foliage. Nothing remained of the area except splintered stumps, the area was saturated with bomb craters and nothing remained but dirt. It was hot, dusty and miserable. Body parts were scattered throughout the area. In that any NVA survived is beyond any comprehension, but some did. They were dazed, in shock and would walk right up to us and surrender. Blood running from their ears, noses, mouths, and every other orifice of their bodies. How many were killed would be impossible to determine. One thing that did seem to survive were the red ants. These ants were everywhere and ferocious." Hard Core Obviously, there is no exaggerating on Hartzel's part, and one can only expect that witnessing this will result in some form of future mental trauma.
The aforementioned gives testimony as to why Jack Hartzel reacted so vehemently when he was condemned by hippies and peaceniks upon returning, no less being called a crybaby by W.W. II Veterans. Our troops answered the call when the trumpets summoned them, and with the horrors they witnessed and took part in, they are to be given their acclaim, accolades and compensation, not condemnation. One really understands the horrors Hartzel reluctantly witnessed while at the Da Nang Children's Hospital early in his tour being an eyewitness to the following: "We got to see kids in every state of carnage known to man. Trouble is, these kids were still alive. These were kids that were burnt by napalm and parts of their bodies were burnt off. There were kids with no legs and crawling around on the dirt floor with their hands." Jack Hartzel also explains the insanity of the war, as with the NVA and the VC all dressing alike, it was all but impossible to distinguish friend from foe aside from when the enemy wore pith helmets and waved the NVA flag. Part of the frustrating "Rules of Engagement" were areas where U.S. troops regardless of sightings could not fire unless given permission by superiors. Reflecting, Hartzel wrote: "Our last operation had been a "No Fire Zone" which was frustrating. You really didn't know who the bad guys were and if you did know, you couldn't shoot at them anyway." Hartzel also comments on the absurd military emphasis on enemy attrition, body counts, conquering land with American loss of life only to relinquish territorial gains, and even adds his frustration at how early in the war, malfunctioning M-16's cost U.S. lives in the heat of mortal combat. In terms of the rash of Vietnam movies during the last two decades, Hartzel laments: "The Hollywood producers fail to mention or recognize the less glorious details of war." In terms of the carnage, death and destruction Hartzel witnessed, he concludes: "This was the real "blood and guts" of the war! It was a nasty job, but somebody has to do it." The author makes his peace with himself, other Veterans and America at the conclusion of this incredible memoir, ironically at the site of the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, the 1986 Vietnam Veteran's Parade in Grant Park, Chicago. There are no history books even remotely as accurate and telling as Jack Hartzel's memoir. It is the only way to find out what really happened in America's most painful war!
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