Vietnam Veteran News with Mack Payne

In this episode, number 946, of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast a disturbing topic about alleged war crimes aimed at one of America's staunchest allies in the Vietnam War will be highlighted. Beginning in 1999 reports began to surface about South Korean troops committing atrocities while participating in the Vietnam War. A story in Korea's Hankyoreh English edition website titled: First citizens’ tribunal coming from Vietnam War victims of South Korean soldiers. The story was submitted by Hwang Keum-bi, a staff reporter.

It is claimed by Vietnamese civilians South Korean soldiers murdered numerous civilians in Quang Nam Province in 1968. The South Koreans reported murdered men, women and children for no apparent reason. The majority of the killings took place in the villages of Phong Nhi, Phong Nhat, and Ha My in Quang Nam Province.

The South Korean government has never acknowledged any of the claims as being true. For years victims have been seeking some sort of justice for the alleged crimes from the South Koreans. On June 2 Six attorneys with a MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society task force traveled to Vietnam to investigate the massacres of civilians by South Korean troops. The name "Minbyun" is an abbreviation of Korean words meaning "Lawyers for a Democratic Society" in English.

The MINBYUN attorneys conducted interviews with witnesses and victims of the massacres that were reported to have occurred in the villages of Phong Nhi, Phong Nhat, and Ha My. The attorneys main purpose for the visit was on gathering more survivor and eyewitness accounts and data for the proposed lawsuit.

The MINBYUN task force and Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation plan to hold a tribunal around Apr. 2018. That would which mark the 43rd anniversary of the Vietnam War’s end. The tribunal is to take place in Seoul or Jeju with victims of civilian massacres in Vietnam as plaintiffs.

Get the full story at episode 946 of the Vietnam Veteran News.

In this episode 945 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast tribute will be paid to a former member of the Viet Cong who battled the forces of freedom in the Vietnam War, namely the Americans, South Vietnamese, Anzac soldiers, South Koreans and Thai personnel. Trần Đức Minh fought with the Viet Cong in Quảng Ngãi Province where he spent his entire military service hiding out in the primeval forests around Nhàn Mountain. After the war he continued to live in the forest and has taken up the cause of protecting it from poachers and those who would exploit the forest for its ample timber potential.

Minh and his mission were featured in a story from The Viet Nam News titled: War veteran now fights for his local forest. After spending years hiding out in the forest he was amazed that both he and the forest survived the war. Peace came to his country but not to Minh. As he lived near Nhàn Mountain he was greatly disturbed by the sound of axes chopping down trees and seeing it “bleeding” day by day. Minh was puzzled by the question why “this forest was not damaged by bombs and bullets in the war but was being destroyed during peace”.

Hounded by that thought Minh decided to go to work on the challenge of saving the forest with the same verve and vigor he loosed on the forces of freedom in the War. He began a door to door campaign urging the neighbors to use care in the use of the forest because once it was gone it would take with it their ability to live in the area.

His forty year mission to save the primeval forest of Nhàn Mountain in Quảng Ngãi Province has been a wonderful success. Discover the whole story about this amazing former Viet Cong member and his lifelong mission to save a forest in episode 945 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast.

In this episode number 944 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast the topic of why we had to win the war in Vietnam will be highlighted. The two remaining leaders of Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge 1975-79 regime in Cambodia are on trial in Phnom Penh. The charges are crimes against humanity and genocide in the second case before a U.N.-backed tribunal known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

 

The accused Cambodian genocidists Former president Khieu Samphan, 85, and Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, 90 are bona fide members of the Hall of Shame. They are right up there with Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao tse-tung  and Che Guevara in that terrible collection of human scum. They illustrate why we had to stand up to the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.

There was a Reuters story about the trial titled: Khmer Rouge Leader Denies Mass Murder, Blames Vietnam. It was submitted by Prak Chan Thul. That's right, you heard it right the two Cambodian mass murderers on trial for their lives are blaming it all on the evil Vietnamese. They claim their sworn enemy Vietnam invented the idea of genocide as propaganda.

The accepted truth is that Pol Pot and his henchmen wanted to turn Cambodia back to "year zero" in its quest for a peasant utopia. Stacks of human bones attest to their efforts to achieve that goal by eliminating  all Cambodians who were not of the peasant class.

The examples of acts by the Khmer Rouge and other well meaning communists are the reason we stood and fought in Vietnam. America has been the land of liberty for over two hundred years. We live in a rough world and someone has to stand up for those who would be threatened by tyrant philosophies like communism.

We won in Vietnam. There is no more USSR and Communist China has become a Wal-Mart supplier.

Here is a little information about episode number 943 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast where another method of dealing with the ravages of PTSD will be featured. The Help Heal Veterans program was covered in a story coming from Corpus Christi, Texas. It was on the kristv.com website and was titled: Help Heal Vets helping vets manage PTSD through crafts. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be treated with various methods.

One very effective method has been featured on previous episodes of this podcast. It is Dave and C.J. Dunklee's Healing Box Project. Dave is a retired music teacher and has set up shop at the Truman VA Hospital in Columbia, Missouri where he is successfully helping veterans with music. His program is unique in that he has a 100% success rate. Each new member of his help group is given a brand new quality grade guitar. Then Dave proceeds to use his exclusive music teaching method and show the veteran how to play his new guitar within five minutes. This has an astoundingly positive effect and it always helps the student cope with PTSD.

CLICK HERE for more information about the Healing Box Project.

The Help Heal Veterans program has found another effective way to treat PTSD sufferers. Their treatment method utilizes crafts. Help Hospitalized Vets began in 1971 as a non-profit support group helping hospitalized Vietnam veterans deal with the scars of war no one could see at the time. As the times changed, the group shifted focus to helping ALL veterans adjust back to some kind of normalcy. Veterans say it's helped them to stay calm instead of being anxious. The program is designed to occupy the parts of the mind veterans struggle with turning off. Doing crafts engenders stimulation which discourage things like drinking and doing other harmful things.

Get the whole story at episode 943 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast.

CLICK HERE for more information about the Help Heal Veterans program.

Episode number 942 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will delve into the heavy burden a US Marine Corps officer is carrying in relation to the cruel Agent Orange saga. Kris E. Roberts is that Marine and he made a statement about a discovery he made while serving on the island of Okinawa in 1981. His statement appeared in The Japan Times and it was titled: Deafening silence from U.S. government as Okinawa defoliants quietly destroy children’s futures. 

In 1981, Lt. Col. Kris E. Roberts, then head of maintenance at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa discovered a cache fifty five gallon drums buried on the air station. The barrels contained a suspicious chemical feared to be the dreaded Agent Orange defoliant widely used in the Vietnam War.

He stated his feelings about being a Marine officer in this quote: "As a young officer I was taught that effective leadership means doing the right thing at the right time. You do that by asking three important questions: “Is it legal, is it moral and is it ethical?” If any of the answers is “No,” you do not do it."

Roberts was a high principled young Marine officer at the time and was mortified when he became aware that at least three senior officers engaged in a cover-up and decided to place their careers over the welfare of the men and women he was responsible for.

Today he is willing to whatever he can to help in the investigation of the prescience of Agent Orange on Okinawa. He stated with regret: I know that no matter how much help I can provide, I have to admit to myself I failed to protect the men and women who placed their trust in me.

In addition to harming many with physical ailments, Agent Orange also apparently caused many to compromise their sacred honor. They did this by engaging in cover ups to protect careers to the detriment of those harmed by the misguided policy of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and other places. That is the ugly backside of the Agent Orange story.

Here more about Kris Roberts' Agent Orange conundrum at episode 942 of the podcast Vietnam Veteran News.

In this 941st episode of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast a story will be highlighted that tells the inside story of what it was like to be an infantryman in the Vietnam delta during that war. The story to be shared comes from the Opinion Page of The New York Times titled: Brotherhood and Loss in the Mekong. The story was authored by Bill Reynolds, a Vietnam veteran and director of veterans’ affairs for the Santa Clarita Valley Signal in Santa Clarita, California. His combat experience with Charlie Company, Fourth Battalion, 47th Infantry, Ninth Infantry Division is featured in the documentary “Brothers in War” and the book “The Boys of ’67,” by Andrew Wiest and is the basis of this podcast episode.

Bill Reynolds was another of those young men who answered the call of his country during the Vietnam War. He was drafted into the US Army in the spring of 1966. The good life he had been living in the Van Nuys area was turned upside down when he reported to the induction station in Los Angeles. After a week of Army indoctrination at Fort Bliss, Texas and six months of infantry training at Fort Riley, Kansas he found himself at Camp Bearcat in Vietnam.

He survived a year of routine patrols, dodging snipers, booby traps and brief firefights interspersed around two major engagements with the Viet Cong. Unfortunately many of his friends did not live through a year in country. Bill recounted on poignant memory of loss in the story when he wrote the following:  "Months after returning home, my mom told me about the phone call she got in mid-July 1967 from my buddy Phil’s mother, Helen Ferro. She said: 'Marie, the Army officers just left. My son has been killed, but your boy is O.K.'

Hear Bill's story at episode 941 at the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast.

In this episode number 940 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast the wonderful Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will be featured. Specifically we will be talking about its Wall of Faces Project. There are 58,315 names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. The VVMF has taken on the mission of finding a picture of every person whose name is on the Memorial Wall. All those pictures will be on display in the soon to be constructed Vietnam War Education Center below ground next to the Wall.

The people of northwestern Illinois are doing their part to help locate pictures of fallen Vietnam Veterans from their area. There was an editorial in The Dispatch-Argus-QCOnline.com titled: Local Vietnam heroes found, but too many still missing that provided an update on their progress in Mercer, Henry, Whiteside and Rock Island counties. The editorial stated that thanks to the efforts of our community, remarkable progress has been made to find missing photos of the Quad-Cities soldiers who died in the Vietnam War.

The Illinois Press Association has provided a great deal of assistance to local papers across the state in publicizing the project. The success in finding missing pictures in the Quad-Cities area has been greatly aided by the Association's help in finding missing pictures. All the pictures of lost Vietnam Veterans from Henry and Mercer Counties have been recently found as a result of the newspaper program.

The editorial said this about the project: "All are victories worth celebrating in the quest to put a face to every one of 58,000 names on the Vietnam Wall. But the battle won’t be won until every single one of the photos of our missing heroes join the wall. Timing also matters. We need to do so quickly if the laudable goal to fill in all of the faces by Veterans Day 2017 is to be realized."

The remaining missing local heroes are:

Rock Island County

-- Rock Island: Mark A. Foster, Kenneth J. Knoeferl, Wayne M. Lenderman.

-- East Moline: James D. Raychel

-- Moline: Leroy A. Rost, Leroy F. Schyska, and Rolleen C. Sorim

Whiteside County

-- Morrison: Lawrence E. Howard

-- Sterling: Hans L. Mills, Jack E. Searing.

-- Albany: John M. Smith

Any information about these individuals that might lead to the acquisition of their photo would be greatly appreciated.

Contact the Argus-Dispatch about the project at [email protected].

CLICK HERE to go directly to the VVMF website to submit pictures or get more information about the program.

In this episode 939 of the Vietnam Veteran News a lost chance for peace in that war will be the featured topic. That still born opportunity for peace occurred in the summer of 1967. It was described in an opinion piece in The New York Times titled: A Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam. The piece was submitted by Robert K. Brigham a professor of history and international relations at Vassar College located at Poughkeepsie, NY.

Most all Vietnam Veterans remember the summer of 1967. Fighting was raging in the war. Back home the country was being racked by opposition to the war. President Johnson who was the architect of that terrible overseas contingency was desperate to end it so he could continue with the building of his "Great Society" back home.

Despite drilling many dry holes in the search for a gusher of solutions for the war, the president at the urging of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reluctantly decided to try a solution from an unlikely source - Henry Kissinger. At the time Mr. Kissinger was a professor at Harvard and had a friend in France, Raymond Aubrac, who just happened to be a good friend of Ho Chi Minh.

Aubrac was a Jewish member of the French Communist Party. During World War II he had been pursued and persecuted by Klaus Barbie, a leader of the Gestapo in Lyon, France. Fast forward to the summer1967, he offered his services as a go between the US and his old friend Ho.

It sounded too good to be true after Aubrac and his fellow scientist associate Herbert Marcovitch traveled to Hanoi and met with Ho Chi Minh himself along with Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. The proposal was accepted in principle. Unfortunately subsequent events doomed it to failure.

Discover what doomed the peace proposal in episode 939 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast.

In this episode number 938 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast one of the most amazing stories of friendship and patriotism ever to come out of the Vietnam War will be featured. It comes from the website Menshealth.como and is titled: This Hero Went on the Greatest Beer Run Ever, Bringing Brews to Friends in Vietnam War. It was provided by John "Chick" Donohue.

The story is about a young man from Inwood, New York, a community on the northern tip of Manhattan Island. On the spur of the moment he decided to go to Vietnam and visit guys from the neighborhood to show his appreciation for their service to their country.

It all started In November of 1967, when John “Chick” Donohue, a former Marine was at an Inwood local bar named Doc Fiddlers. The Vietnam War was raging at the time. George Lynch, the bartender was complaining about the rise of the anti-war protestors and how they had turned against the soldiers, sailors and airmen serving in Vietnam. Being a veteran himself Donohue, then 26, thought the protesters calling GIs "baby killers" were akin to thumbing your nose at those who were serving .our nation.

Out of the clear blue, bartender Lynch threw out a crazy idea. He said someone should bring those good old boys fighting for the U.S. of A. a beer. Let them know the fellows back home were still thinking about them, still grateful for their sacrifices. Donohue didn’t hesitate. He volunteered to go to Vietnam and bring some suds for the troops.

Donohue actually did take up the challenge. He was a merchant seaman at the time. With his seaman's card he hopped a freighter that was enroute the Vietnam with a rucksack full of beer cans. He did make it to Vietnam and succeeded in tracking down all the GIs from his neighborhood on his list.

The Pabst Blue Ribbon Company was able to recently get Donohue together with the GIs he met in the country for a reunion in the neighborhood bar that engendered the idea. You can hear the conversation with the old friends on the podcast.

Donohue wrote a book about his adventure titled: The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A True Story of Friendship Stronger Than War.

Hear a firsthand account of this amazing story at episode 938 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast.

Recommended Reading:

Click here for more information.

The Vietnam Veteran News Podcast is happy to announce another brave Vietnam Veteran will receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. In episode 937 the story about James McCloughan, a 71-year-old resident of South Haven, Michigan receiving the award at the White House on July 31 will be covered. The announcement of the award appeared in several publications including The Army Times, The Irish Times website and The Detroit Free Press. The Detroit Free Press story titled: Michigan Vietnam vet to receive Medal of Honor from Trump that was submitted by: Todd Spangler of the Detroit Free Press will be featured on the podcast.

There are several noteworthy aspects surrounding this event. First, it is about fifty years late.  It was finally authorized by an act of Congress. It is written that a CMoH must be awarded within five years of the qualifying action. At the insistence of then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Congress passed a defense authorization bill in December 2016 with a rider attached that exempted McCloughan from the five year stipulation.

Another aspect of this story is that James is an American of Irish descent which is notable to all Americans who can claim they are from the "Old Sod." Irish Americans have played an important role in the making of this country from the beginning and are rightly proud of their contributions to America including those of James McCloughan.

Another noteworthy aspect of this story is that it will be the first Congressional Medal of Honor award presided over by President Trump.

James McCloughan is another outstanding representative of the great Vietnam Veteran Generation. He served his country with distinction in the Vietnam War and then came home to South Haven and continued serving. For more than forty years he taught psychology, sociology and geography at South Haven High School and coached football, wrestling and baseball. He is a member of the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame.

Hear his story at episode 937 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast.

Recommended Reading:

Click here for More Info.