Vietnam Veteran News with Mack Payne

Episode 1120 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will focus on two excellent representatives of the reasons why we were fighting in Vietnam. They are two Vietnamese "boat people" who came to this country legally and proved their worth. Both these individuals were recently featured in media stories. One was an article in the nailsmag.com website titled: Ton, Quy "Charlie" and the other was in the Miami Herald titled: She started painting nails in a salon. Now this Vietnam War refugee has a franchise by Oscar Corral.

Before these two former Vietnamese escapees from the communist garden Eden of Vietnam are mentioned it is important to mark the 50th Anniversary of the start of the Tet Offensive fifty years ago on this date February 1, 1968. Rarely in history have the Americans and their allies, the South Vietnamese and others administered such a defeat on an adversary in war and then immediately had it declared a huge defeat by the American news media.

On that day 100,000 NVA and VC fighters came out of their rat holes and attacked all the major cities and military installations across the country. Within three days except for the city of Hue (which took about three weeks), they were beaten back and defeated. The enemy gained no territory and paid a price of 58,000 dead.

The results of the Tet Offensive eventually led to the communists taking over South Vietnam and the creation of conditions that drove hundreds of thousands to flee their once beautiful homeland.

Fortunately for America and the refugees many made it to our shores. Once here those wretched émigrés demonstrated to all why we were fighting in Vietnam they were a wonderful and worth the effort to help that country avoid the nightmare of communism.

Listen to episode 1120 of the podcast and discover more about these two great new Americans.

Episode 1119 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a thrilling story about George Peter Angus, a Vietnam Veteran who served two tours in Vietnam as a US Marine. His story appeared in The New York Times and it was titled: “The Morning of Tet.” He volunteered to serve a second tour in country so that he could make a difference. As he described that night when he was on a night patrol Combined Action Platoon compound situated in An Wa.

He wrote an autobiographical type account of an event he was involved in that occurred the night before the Tet Offensive of 1968. At the time he was assigned to a US Marine program Combined Action Platoon compound in An Wa. That was a small fishing village with a population of 500 people located in Quang Ngai Province about six miles north of The Chu Lai air field.

The Combined Action program would assign a ten man squad of Marines to live in villages with the local Vietnamese and work with the South Vietnamese Popular Force troops. On the night described in the story Angus, one other Marine and two P.F. militia counterparts were on an ambush patrol. Suddenly four unsuspecting enemy soldiers just forty feet away from Angus's position entered the killing zone of their ambush trap.

In the few seconds he had to nervously ponder how he was going to handle the situation his mind begin to flash back to things that happened back home. He had just recently returned from a leave back in the States and he recounted a chance meeting with a high school friend. The two had been college classmates and cross-country teammates when he had attended a year in college.

His friends comments about the war were in his mind as he decided what he was going to do with the four intruders in his kill zone.

Listen to episode 1119 of the podcast and get the entire thrilling story of a brave US Marine who was trying to make a difference in Vietnam.

Episode 1118 of the Vietnam Veteran News will feature a story about the first visit to Vietnam by a US aircraft carrier since the end of the American Vietnam War. A story titled: US to send first aircraft carrier to Vietnam since war from the Associated Press appeared in The New York Post.

The AP story described how the idea of having a US aircraft carrier visit Vietnam was first raised last summer of 2017 when Vietnamese defense chief Ngo Xuan Lich met U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon. It appears the higher ups on both sides approved the visit invitation. It looks like a US aircraft carrier will make a stop at the port of Da Nang in March of 2018 for the first time since 1972. This will be another step in the warming relationship between the former adversaries.

Of course the big concern about the visit is how will China react to this poke in the eye Vietnam is delivering to their big neighbor to the north by inviting an aircraft carrier from the imposing US to come for a visit through the contested South China Sea.

The Chinese will probably do no more than a little black rhino huffing and puffing. They are not stupid. They know the Vietnamese can put a hurt on them a la the 1979 border war they fought together and they know they have become the primary Wall-Mart supplier and they do not want to interrupt that lucrative business deal.

Notice the term "lucrative business deal" being used when talking about China. That is another indication communism in both Vietnam and China is dead but they don't know what to do with the corpse.

Listen to episode 1118 of the podcast and get the whole story about the first US aircraft carrier visit to Vietnam since the end of the American Vietnam War.

Episode 1117 of the Vietnam Veteran News will feature one of the factors that made the Vietnam War unique up to that time in our history. Vietnam was the first televised war in our history. Madie Ward wrote a piece for  the website National Archives - Pieces of History titled: Vietnam: the First Television War. She works at the National Archives and Records Administration which is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives.

In her article she not only describes the phenomenon of the "televisionization" of the Vietnam War but also the effects it had on the American people. She talked about the point raised by Lyndon B. Johnson when on April 1, 1968, the day after he announced that he would not run for reelection. He wondered what effect those vivid scenes have on American opinion.

For instance he asked what would have happened if cameras had been on the scene when American and allied forces were pushed back to the Pusan perimeter in the Korean War; or in the Battle of the Bulge when the Americans were being overrun by Germans forces or when our Air Force was shot down that day in June 1942 off Australia. Would American public opinion demand we get out of those wars?

It is an interesting point to ponder. Maybe we should consider the old truism: you should not watch sausage being made when it comes to televising the horrors of war. In the Vietnam War public opinion turned against the war after the in-depth coverage of the Tet Offensive even though it was a tremendous defeat of the enemy forces.

Listen to episode 1117 and discover more about Vietnam being the first televised war and the effects of that coverage.

Here are two examples of war news coverage. The first is from World War II the second is from the Vietnam War.

CLICK HERE for a sample of news coverage in World War II.

CLICK HERE  for a sample of news coverage of the Vietnam War.

Episode 1116 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an event that was recently held in Shreveport, Louisiana that provided a refreshed look at the outcome of the Vietnam War. The purpose of the event was to commemorate the  Vietnam War Operation Linebacker II. Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Elder and Gary Joiner, contributed to an op-ed in The Shreveport Times titled: Revisiting lessons from the Vietnam Conflict that covered the event and its proclamation.

The event took place at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport so it is looked at through the eyes of Air Force Vietnam Veterans. The participants discussed how the War was resolved with the Paris Peace Accords. It was pointed out that the Vietnam War developments occurring at the time were crowded off the news headlines by the Watergate investigation and its ramifications for President Nixon.

They pointed out how critical the use of air power was in tipping the scales just in the nick of time to save the day. In December of 1971 peace talks in Paris between the major combatants were going on at a lukewarm pace. On Dec. 13 the North Vietnamese walked out of the talks. President Nixon was desperate to find a way out of the War with "peace and honor."

He was desperate because the war-weary Congress was going to cut off all funding for the War when they returned from their Christmas break. To speed things up with the North Vietnamese he loosed the dogs on the north. He let the military do what was necessary.

The US Air Force initiated Operation Linebacker II. It lasted for eleven days starting on December 18. B-52 bombers flew 729 sorties, and U.S. Navy and Air Force fighter-bombers flew 1,000 sorties. They dropped 20,370 tons of bombs on North Vietnam and the results were jaw dropping.

Listen to episode 1116 of the podcast and discover what those results were and the whole refreshed look at the outcome of the Vietnam War.

Episode 1115 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will highlight a story about a Vietnam Veteran, Thomas Cone, who got through his time in country with the help of a strong sense of humor. Skip Vaughn wrote the story titled: Alabama native walked point for infantry unit about this Vietnam Vet for the Redstone Stone Rocket where he is the editor. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Cone's story is the 153rd in a series of articles Vaughn is writing about Vietnam Veterans as part of the DoD's 50 Year Anniversary Commemoration of the Vietnam War. Vaughn is the author of the book Vietnam Revisited.

Cone enlisted in the Army in 1966 as the draft was looming over his budding civilian career after his graduation from the Columbia Military Academy, in Columbia, Tennessee. Before he knew it he was walking point with the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam. His first tour in Vietnam included the Tet Offensive. Cone recalled the attacks in the offensive as “Sometimes daytime (attacks), sometimes just at night, very sporadic. But when it happened, it was ferocious.”

Cone made this remark about that assignment: “Walking point was where your life expectancy is 12 seconds. And I did that for a whole year.” That statement epitomized his take on life. He used that attitude toward life throughout his military career which lasted twenty years, two months, 17 days,” according to his wife. He stated this when asked about his length of service: “Not that I counted. My wife did. Wives know all that stuff.”

He served in the Military Police for the balance of his career after his time in Vietnam.

Listen to the episode number 1115 and get the whole story about Thomas Cone and how he used humor to get through his time in Vietnam performing one of the most dangerous jobs in the War.

Episode 1114 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about the Tet Offensive of 1968 and the critical role played by the F-100D Super Sabre in that eruption of violence and killing. Alice L. George, Ph.D., an independent historian with a special interest in America during the 1960s wrote the story for The Smithsonian website titled: This Fighter Jet Turned the Tide During Vietnam’s Decisive Tet Offensive.

She included mention of a F-100D Super Sabre that is curated at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia that was a participant in the Offensive. She went on to describe how the Super Sabres became primarily a ground support aircraft as it eschewed its original design purpose of tactical nuclear fighter jet. It was the first jet used by the US in Southeast Asia and was used in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1970. It

flew more sorties than any aircraft during the war.

Dr. George used a description of the Super Sabres as an introduction to her story's look at the Tet Offensive and its results. The 50th anniversary of the Offensive is rapidly. Her story byline tells the whole story. It reads: Fifty years ago, America won this huge battle, but lost the war.

The Tet Offensive kicked off in a big way in late January of 1968. The Viet Cong and NVA attacked all the provincial capitals of the country including all the large cities and many US military facilities. What started out as a well coordinated nationwide assault quickly turned into a military defeat of great proportions.

Listen to episode 1114 and discover more about what Dr. Alice George has to say about the Tet Offensive and the role played by F-100 jets in the melee.

Episode 1113 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will focus on the activities of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis during his visit to Vietnam. Also covered will be  recent events occurring in the developing positive relationship between the former combatants in the American Vietnam War. A story by AP National Security Writer Robert Burns recently appeared in The Wichita Eagle titled: 50 years after key Vietnam battles, Mattis seeks closer ties.

Burns stated in his article that "Secretary Jim Mattis is visiting the former enemy in search of a different kind of win: incremental progress as partners in a part of the world the Pentagon has identified as vital for the United States to compete with China and Russia."

Whenever an American official visits Vietnam to discuss how to deal with the growing menace of China pushing its weight around the South East Asia area it is difficult to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room specifically, The American Vietnam War.

Ironically Secretary Mattis will be in Vietnam during the 50th anniversary of the infamous Tet Offensive. That event is credited with finally turning a majority of America public opinion against the effort in Vietnam to stem the tide of communism in Southeast Asia.

It was a military defeat of Biblical proportions for the North Vietnamese. All their military objectives failed. They lost over 50,000 KIA, other than Hue, they held no city or town more than two days and the infrastructure of the underground Viet Cong was destroyed.

Despite the military failure for the North Vietnamese, the American media turned it into a defeat for the Americans.

The consequences of the Tet Offensive and other Vietnam War related issues haunts any meeting of American and Vietnamese officials.

Listen to episode 1113 of the podcast for more on what Secretary Jim Mattis is doing in Vietnam and how the relationship between the two nations is developing.

Episode 1111 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about John Meyer of Oceanside, California who will be the keynote speaker at the Fifth Annual Florida Fun Shoot to be held in Sarasota, Florida on February 15, 2018.  The event is a sporting clays event held in the Sarasota / Bradenton Florida area in late winter each year. Over $250,000 has been raised over the past four years in support of our veterans.

Lee Williams, the topic editor of The Herald-Tribune in Sarasota wrote a story about the happening titled: A secret warrior’s secret war in Laos. In it he described John Meyer's background as a member of the Spike Team Idaho for 19 months. The team was assigned to  the highly classified Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observations Group, which was better known as MACV-SOG or simply SOG.  The SOG was classified top secret until the 1980s.

Meyer was as a team leader in the SOG and served in the “secret war” in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam from 1968 through 1970. It was a hazardous line of work and they left a lasting impression on the enemy with their 158:1 kill ratio. The team’s missions consisted of wiretapping enemy communication lines, blowing up fuel lines, installing electronic ground sensors, other intelligence gathering and “POW snatches” — capturing an enemy soldier and bringing him back for interrogation.

After the War Meyer spent a career in the newspaper business and remains very active in veterans’ affairs.

CLICK HERE for more information about Operation Patriot Support's Fifth Annual Florida Fun Shoot.

CLICK HERE for more information about the Florida Fun shoot on February 15. 2018 where John Meyer will be the featured speaker.

Listen to episode 1111 and get the full story about John Meyer. his speaking event in Sarasota and his adventures with the SOG.

Episode 1112 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will highlight what Khe Sanh veterans are doing to commemorate the 77 day battle that took place 50 years ago. There was a story about their plans in The Military.com website titled: Khe Sanh Veterans Mark 50th Anniversary of Vietnam Battle.

Individual commemoration events are happening across the country while a national remembrance is being planned to held in Washington DC this coming August. The battle started on January 21, 1968 and ended on July 9, 1968. According to historians 6,000 US Marines went up against 100,000 NVA fighters.

The NVA had a twofold mission when they attacked the Khe Sanh Combat Base located in an isolated plateau in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam on that January 21. Their first aim was to create another Bien Dien Phu for the Americans. Bien Dien Phu was the climactic battle in 1954 where the Viet Minh defeated an isolated French outpost. The resulted in the French pulling out of Indo-China and the creation of North and South Vietnam.

That mission was a failure. The US did not leave Vietnam until 1972 after the Paris Peace Accords were agreed to by the warring sides. The second mission of the NVA at Khe Sanh in 1968 was to create a diversion for the Tet Offensive that began on February 1. That turned out to be a big failure for the NVA. The Tet Offensive was a catastrophe for the North Vietnamese militarily. It turned out to be a huge public relations coop for the North.

A heavy price was paid by the North in the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive. Some estimates put their losses at 100,000 KIA.

The Marines have every right to be proud of their performance at the Battle of Khe Sanh.

Listen to episode 1112 of the podcast to get the full story about the Khe Sanh veterans plans to commemorate the 77 day battle.