thedrifter
11-14-07, 08:38 PM
11/14/2007
Vietnam veterans share insight into 8-year conflict
By Rod Meehan , Staff writer
Anniversary of Tet offensive hits
40-year mark
It can be said that adversity takes the true measure of a man. In the annals of American military history, the men and women who served during, what the powers that be have named the Vietnam Conflict, hold a unique place in that measurement. Likewise in the spirit of Veterans' Day, three Branford Vietnam veterans share their own perspectives of those tumultuous years.
The soldiers' jargon of that war were full of terse, one syllable nouns. The average "grunt" in the frontline infantry served his one-year tour of duty humping or defending jungle hilltops, walking patrols among lethal booby traps or checking out "villes" for an elusive, guerilla enemy.
The majority of U.S. troops were draftees from the under classes, sons of the "Greatest Generation." Too poor to attain college deferments or too honest to circumvent the draft laws, they marched off to serve in what was essentially, "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
Another terse word in the "Nam" vocabulary is "Tet," the name of the communist offensive begun Jan. 31, 1968; the largest battle of the eight-year "conflict." Tet, along with the attendant battle of Khe Sanh, was the climax and turning point of the war.
Jan. 31, 2008, will be the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. Its memory is hard to erase for those who lived through that time.
Nam was the first "television war," brought nightly into the living rooms of America, gratis, the media. On Jan. 21, 1968, America watched spellbound as 5,600 U.S. Marines began defending a forward airbase in the Khe Sanh Valley, located close to the borders of Laos and North Vietnam.
For 77 days the Marines were besieged by a force of guerillas and North Vietnam Army (NVA) regulars, estimated to be as many as 80,000. General Võ Nguyên Giáp, victor of Dien Bien Phu, the 1954 battle that broke the French grip in Southeast Asia, led them.
The parallels to the situation facing the surrounded Marines were inescapable and not lost on President Johnson. NVA artillery rounds began hitting the base, 300 on the first day, killing 18 Marines and wounding 40.
American B-52 bombers dropped an average of 5,000 bombs daily on enemy positions, the most concentrated bombing in the history of warfare. By the 77th day, Khe Sanh had witnessed the equivalent detonation of five Hiroshima-sized bombs. Although Khe Sanh became a wasteland, it remained Marine property. At approximately 2:30 a.m., Jan. 31, 1968, Viet Cong guerillas infiltrated and attacked the U.S. embassy in Saigon. A shocked American public, led to believe that victory was near after three years of bloody sacrifice, watched in disbelief.
Simultaneously, communist forces left their jungle lairs, attacking every important city in South Vietnam. Tet is the Vietnamese New Year - 1968 being the "Year of the Monkey."
History records the venerable newscaster, Walter Cronkite, voiced the disillusionment of Middle America. "What the hell is going on?" Cronkite said off-camera in his CBS newsroom. "I thought we were winning this war."
With these remarks, the political initiative on the homefront began drifting to the anti-war movement. On Feb. 27, Cronkite publicly concluded the war a stalemate, calling for a negotiated settlement. Although the struggle would last five more years, the turning point had been reached.
After America's crusade in Vietnam ended in 1973, that magnificent edifice built by the World War II generation, "The Great Society," was unrecognizable. Returning veterans were shunned or insulted, inflation was rampant and the new "counter-culture" had opened a Pandora's Box of illicit drug abuse, the lid of which has not been closed since.
American Legionnaires Dennis Flanigan, Dana Murphy and Frank Kinney served in that unpopular war. Critics draw parallels to the present Iraqi/Afghan war.
Dennis Flanigan is American Legion Post 83 Commander.
Growing up in New Haven, Dennis bid good-bye to his mother, who drove him to the induction center, to begin his service with the U.S. Navy.
Drafted at age 19, Dennis served from 1965-1968.
"I was a river-rat,' patrolling the Mekong Delta," said Flanigan. "I was a Third-Class Petty Officer, Gunner's Mate. I arrived in-country in '66."
"We were on the river patrol boats," Flanigan said, which made his crew moving targets for on-shore Viet-Cong combatants. "I worked the 50-caliber machine gun.
Suppressing small-arms fire from the shore was our main objective."
"When I was over there, it was sporadic, until Tet in 1968," recalls Flanigan. He also remembers the crisis in morale while a divided nation debated the war. "When I was serving, it was difficult hearing the rumblings of people not supporting the war."
"The issue was, we were over there serving our country," he says. "58,000 died in Vietnam and we didn't accomplish our mission."
Flanigan feels that civilians looked down on the returning Nam vets.
"We did get the support eventually, but it was well into the '80s when we got it."
He fears that may be the fate of the current, "thin red line," fighting while the nation largely remains personally disconnected from the conflict.
"We should support the troops all the way," Flanigan says. "They are putting their lives on the line. The most disheartening thing is to serve in a foreign country without support from home."
Dana Murphy is a naval veteran of the Vietnam era as well, although he was fortunate to have never served "in-country," meaning Vietnam. Murphy ranked as an E-4 Petty Officer in the "brown shoe navy," the naval air-arm.
Also born in New Haven, Dana served between 1959 and 1963.
"They started counting Vietnam casualties in 1961," says Murphy, who was stationed first in Iceland and eventually in Sicily.
"I was aviation ordinance man on an air crew," he said. Murphy's function was anti-submarine warfare, serving on 56-ton bombers, P2V-Neptune Airedales.
"War protests hadn't really started, but it was becoming a blue-collar war," Murphy says of the time. Nevertheless, he felt the effects of the disgraceful way military personnel were regarded as the Vietnam War progressed.
"The Vietnam guys were scorned and spat upon," says Murphy, who likewise worries about the new veterans returning stateside, men who are also fighting an army of irregulars.
"Fifteen percent are being shot and 65 percent are being blown up," Murphy says of the War on Terror troopers. While the draft may be defunct, many serving today are National Guardsmen, whose ranks are largely culled from the working class; history repeated.
Hollywood has often portrayed Vietnam vets as scarred misfits, somehow unable to fit into "normal" American society. Hollywood never met Branford native Frank Kinney.
Kinney's impressive list of accomplishments includes serving on the Branford RTM, the Board of Education and as Sheriff of New Haven County. He currently works as a Court Planner, auditing courthouse's security statewide.
In 1965, age 19, Kinney was an undergraduate at Marquette University. Upon joining the ROTC, he saw the Vietnam crusade as, "the event of my generation and I wanted to be part of it."
Kinney enlisted that year in the Marine Corp; served until 1969, attaining the rank of corporal. A self-motivated volunteer, he did well in a service branch that concentrates on building well-rounded, motivated warriors: Semper Fi!
"They give you a battery of tests and I kept doing well," Kinney said. After infantry training ("Everyone in the Marines is trained as an infantryman"), he was assigned to I-Corp in the far north of Vietnam, not far from Khe Sanh.
The Marines were tasked to secure the border with North Vietnam, often engaging NVA regular forces. "They assigned me to a machine gun bunker, very near the DMZ," says Kinney. "My MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was launch & recovery."
"We'd get attacked by these rockets and they got pretty good with them," he says. Eventually, Kinney was attached to the First Marine Division and assigned to Da Nang, a major American base.
After serving the mandatory 13-month tour in Nam, Kinney signed up for an additional six-months. In exchange, he was awarded a 30-day leave, which he spent in Australia with visiting family members.
Upon returning stateside, Kinney had minimal difficulty readjusting and reentered college. Anti-war sentiment meant little to him personally. "We felt probably the same as the guys do today; that we were doing the right thing," he says.
Besides, Corporal Kinney received a warm welcome where it counts, his hometown. Not surprisingly, because, as a regional National Guard base, Branford has a history of sending forth to battle cohesive units of friends, townsmen and family members-dating back to the Civil War.
It is true that the halcyon days of the Eisenhower/Kennedy years of confidence were a casualty of the Vietnam War. Moreover, Nam vets were denied the conclusive victory their fathers experienced in 1945.
Notwithstanding, the 2.5 million veterans of Vietnam were never defeated militarily, including the Tet offensive. It was on the political front, the faltering will of the nation to persevere, that the conflict was decided.
In April 1975, when communist tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace, taking Saigon, Vietnam's long, bloody tragedy ended. Since then, the unified communist state of Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries on earth. Perhaps Hanoi did not win politically after all.
Ellie
Vietnam veterans share insight into 8-year conflict
By Rod Meehan , Staff writer
Anniversary of Tet offensive hits
40-year mark
It can be said that adversity takes the true measure of a man. In the annals of American military history, the men and women who served during, what the powers that be have named the Vietnam Conflict, hold a unique place in that measurement. Likewise in the spirit of Veterans' Day, three Branford Vietnam veterans share their own perspectives of those tumultuous years.
The soldiers' jargon of that war were full of terse, one syllable nouns. The average "grunt" in the frontline infantry served his one-year tour of duty humping or defending jungle hilltops, walking patrols among lethal booby traps or checking out "villes" for an elusive, guerilla enemy.
The majority of U.S. troops were draftees from the under classes, sons of the "Greatest Generation." Too poor to attain college deferments or too honest to circumvent the draft laws, they marched off to serve in what was essentially, "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
Another terse word in the "Nam" vocabulary is "Tet," the name of the communist offensive begun Jan. 31, 1968; the largest battle of the eight-year "conflict." Tet, along with the attendant battle of Khe Sanh, was the climax and turning point of the war.
Jan. 31, 2008, will be the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. Its memory is hard to erase for those who lived through that time.
Nam was the first "television war," brought nightly into the living rooms of America, gratis, the media. On Jan. 21, 1968, America watched spellbound as 5,600 U.S. Marines began defending a forward airbase in the Khe Sanh Valley, located close to the borders of Laos and North Vietnam.
For 77 days the Marines were besieged by a force of guerillas and North Vietnam Army (NVA) regulars, estimated to be as many as 80,000. General Võ Nguyên Giáp, victor of Dien Bien Phu, the 1954 battle that broke the French grip in Southeast Asia, led them.
The parallels to the situation facing the surrounded Marines were inescapable and not lost on President Johnson. NVA artillery rounds began hitting the base, 300 on the first day, killing 18 Marines and wounding 40.
American B-52 bombers dropped an average of 5,000 bombs daily on enemy positions, the most concentrated bombing in the history of warfare. By the 77th day, Khe Sanh had witnessed the equivalent detonation of five Hiroshima-sized bombs. Although Khe Sanh became a wasteland, it remained Marine property. At approximately 2:30 a.m., Jan. 31, 1968, Viet Cong guerillas infiltrated and attacked the U.S. embassy in Saigon. A shocked American public, led to believe that victory was near after three years of bloody sacrifice, watched in disbelief.
Simultaneously, communist forces left their jungle lairs, attacking every important city in South Vietnam. Tet is the Vietnamese New Year - 1968 being the "Year of the Monkey."
History records the venerable newscaster, Walter Cronkite, voiced the disillusionment of Middle America. "What the hell is going on?" Cronkite said off-camera in his CBS newsroom. "I thought we were winning this war."
With these remarks, the political initiative on the homefront began drifting to the anti-war movement. On Feb. 27, Cronkite publicly concluded the war a stalemate, calling for a negotiated settlement. Although the struggle would last five more years, the turning point had been reached.
After America's crusade in Vietnam ended in 1973, that magnificent edifice built by the World War II generation, "The Great Society," was unrecognizable. Returning veterans were shunned or insulted, inflation was rampant and the new "counter-culture" had opened a Pandora's Box of illicit drug abuse, the lid of which has not been closed since.
American Legionnaires Dennis Flanigan, Dana Murphy and Frank Kinney served in that unpopular war. Critics draw parallels to the present Iraqi/Afghan war.
Dennis Flanigan is American Legion Post 83 Commander.
Growing up in New Haven, Dennis bid good-bye to his mother, who drove him to the induction center, to begin his service with the U.S. Navy.
Drafted at age 19, Dennis served from 1965-1968.
"I was a river-rat,' patrolling the Mekong Delta," said Flanigan. "I was a Third-Class Petty Officer, Gunner's Mate. I arrived in-country in '66."
"We were on the river patrol boats," Flanigan said, which made his crew moving targets for on-shore Viet-Cong combatants. "I worked the 50-caliber machine gun.
Suppressing small-arms fire from the shore was our main objective."
"When I was over there, it was sporadic, until Tet in 1968," recalls Flanigan. He also remembers the crisis in morale while a divided nation debated the war. "When I was serving, it was difficult hearing the rumblings of people not supporting the war."
"The issue was, we were over there serving our country," he says. "58,000 died in Vietnam and we didn't accomplish our mission."
Flanigan feels that civilians looked down on the returning Nam vets.
"We did get the support eventually, but it was well into the '80s when we got it."
He fears that may be the fate of the current, "thin red line," fighting while the nation largely remains personally disconnected from the conflict.
"We should support the troops all the way," Flanigan says. "They are putting their lives on the line. The most disheartening thing is to serve in a foreign country without support from home."
Dana Murphy is a naval veteran of the Vietnam era as well, although he was fortunate to have never served "in-country," meaning Vietnam. Murphy ranked as an E-4 Petty Officer in the "brown shoe navy," the naval air-arm.
Also born in New Haven, Dana served between 1959 and 1963.
"They started counting Vietnam casualties in 1961," says Murphy, who was stationed first in Iceland and eventually in Sicily.
"I was aviation ordinance man on an air crew," he said. Murphy's function was anti-submarine warfare, serving on 56-ton bombers, P2V-Neptune Airedales.
"War protests hadn't really started, but it was becoming a blue-collar war," Murphy says of the time. Nevertheless, he felt the effects of the disgraceful way military personnel were regarded as the Vietnam War progressed.
"The Vietnam guys were scorned and spat upon," says Murphy, who likewise worries about the new veterans returning stateside, men who are also fighting an army of irregulars.
"Fifteen percent are being shot and 65 percent are being blown up," Murphy says of the War on Terror troopers. While the draft may be defunct, many serving today are National Guardsmen, whose ranks are largely culled from the working class; history repeated.
Hollywood has often portrayed Vietnam vets as scarred misfits, somehow unable to fit into "normal" American society. Hollywood never met Branford native Frank Kinney.
Kinney's impressive list of accomplishments includes serving on the Branford RTM, the Board of Education and as Sheriff of New Haven County. He currently works as a Court Planner, auditing courthouse's security statewide.
In 1965, age 19, Kinney was an undergraduate at Marquette University. Upon joining the ROTC, he saw the Vietnam crusade as, "the event of my generation and I wanted to be part of it."
Kinney enlisted that year in the Marine Corp; served until 1969, attaining the rank of corporal. A self-motivated volunteer, he did well in a service branch that concentrates on building well-rounded, motivated warriors: Semper Fi!
"They give you a battery of tests and I kept doing well," Kinney said. After infantry training ("Everyone in the Marines is trained as an infantryman"), he was assigned to I-Corp in the far north of Vietnam, not far from Khe Sanh.
The Marines were tasked to secure the border with North Vietnam, often engaging NVA regular forces. "They assigned me to a machine gun bunker, very near the DMZ," says Kinney. "My MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was launch & recovery."
"We'd get attacked by these rockets and they got pretty good with them," he says. Eventually, Kinney was attached to the First Marine Division and assigned to Da Nang, a major American base.
After serving the mandatory 13-month tour in Nam, Kinney signed up for an additional six-months. In exchange, he was awarded a 30-day leave, which he spent in Australia with visiting family members.
Upon returning stateside, Kinney had minimal difficulty readjusting and reentered college. Anti-war sentiment meant little to him personally. "We felt probably the same as the guys do today; that we were doing the right thing," he says.
Besides, Corporal Kinney received a warm welcome where it counts, his hometown. Not surprisingly, because, as a regional National Guard base, Branford has a history of sending forth to battle cohesive units of friends, townsmen and family members-dating back to the Civil War.
It is true that the halcyon days of the Eisenhower/Kennedy years of confidence were a casualty of the Vietnam War. Moreover, Nam vets were denied the conclusive victory their fathers experienced in 1945.
Notwithstanding, the 2.5 million veterans of Vietnam were never defeated militarily, including the Tet offensive. It was on the political front, the faltering will of the nation to persevere, that the conflict was decided.
In April 1975, when communist tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace, taking Saigon, Vietnam's long, bloody tragedy ended. Since then, the unified communist state of Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries on earth. Perhaps Hanoi did not win politically after all.
Ellie