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A vendor stands by his decorations shop in Hanoi. Vietnam’s economy grew by more than 5 per cent in 2023. AFP

Episode 2681 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a Vietnam Vet’s look at the status of Vietnam as it moves into 2024. As a Vietnam veteran who spent two years in Vietnam, this pod-caster brought home a high opinion of the country of Vietnam and the Vietnamese people.

According to the report shared on this podcast episode titled: How Vietnam turned US-China competition to its advantage, the Vietnamese have lived up to high opinions held by this pod-caster. The report comes from the National News website and was submitted by Richard Javad Heydarian a Manila-based academic, columnist and author.

According to Heydarian’s report; The once-impoverished and war-stricken nation of Vietnam has emerged as a global pivot state, with 2023 being the year in which major investors and superpowers paid more attention to it than ever before.

Vietnam’s diplomatic success has been nothing short of breath-taking. Within a span of few months, it became the only country to serve as a state-visit destination for both US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. While Mr Biden oversaw the elevation of bilateral ties to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, Mr Xi ushered in a “golden era” of bilateral relations with his communist brethren to the south.

Historically, few nations have had as turbulent a history as Vietnam. Throughout the past millennia alone, it has had to grapple with several invading empires, including Mongolians, the Chinese and the French.

Without a doubt, the New Year will be filled with many geopolitical challenges, especially growing tensions between the US and China. But if there is one middle-sized country in East Asia that has shown an ability to hold its own in the face of manifold geopolitical challenges, that’s Vietnam.

Listen to episode 2681 and discover more about the status of Vietnam as we move into 2024.

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Episode 2680 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature Part II of an interview conducted by Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast as he talks with the three authors, Ron Eyerman, Todd Madigan, Magnus Ring, of their book titled, Vietnam, a war not a country.

Vietnam: A War, Not a Country explores the conflicting ways in which the American-Vietnamese War has been collectively remembered and represented from the perspective of the war’s three primary belligerents: the Vietnamese communists, the South Vietnamese, and the Americans.

The book examines how the three different collectives memorialize this traumatizing historical event. Within each of these three groups there exists a number of competing narratives, generating not only a sense of shared meaning and community, but also impassioned social conflict. In order to trace these narratives within each collectivity, the authors develop the concept of arenas of memory, distinct discourses that are tied to specific individuals, organizations, and institutions that advocate specific narratives through specific forms of media.

Their analysis leads them to make the case as to whether each of these societies experienced a cultural trauma as a result of the way in which the war is remembered.

Professor Ron Eyerman (Yale and Lund University) is the author of Is this America? Katrina as Cultural Trauma); Memory, Trauma and Identity; and The Making of White American Identity.

Todd Madigan is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of works on cultural trauma and the role of narrative in social life.

Magnus Ring is a senior lecturer in sociology at Lund University. He has conducted research on social movements and collective protests, concept formation of “social movement”, welfare transition processes and on experiences of becoming “a dependent subject” among elderly in France and Sweden. Recent research is about representations of war and atrocities in public official spaces.

Listen to episode 2680 and discover more about the book Vietnam, a War not a Country and what it means from its three authors.

Order from North America.

Order from the rest of the world.

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Episode 2679 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature Part I of an interview conducted by Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast as he talks with the three authors, Ron Eyerman, Todd Madigan, Magnus Ring, of their book titled, Vietnam, a war not a country.

Vietnam: A War, Not a Country explores the conflicting ways in which the American-Vietnamese War has been collectively remembered and represented from the perspective of the war’s three primary belligerents: the Vietnamese communists, the South Vietnamese, and the Americans.

The book examines how the three different collectives memorialize this traumatizing historical event. Within each of these three groups there exists a number of competing narratives, generating not only a sense of shared meaning and community, but also impassioned social conflict. In order to trace these narratives within each collectivity, the authors develop the concept of arenas of memory, distinct discourses that are tied to specific individuals, organizations, and institutions that advocate specific narratives through specific forms of media.

Their analysis leads them to make the case as to whether each of these societies experienced a cultural trauma as a result of the way in which the war is remembered.

Professor Ron Eyerman (Yale and Lund University) is the author of Is this America? Katrina as Cultural Trauma); Memory, Trauma and Identity; and The Making of White American Identity.

Todd Madigan is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of works on cultural trauma and the role of narrative in social life.

Magnus Ring is a senior lecturer in sociology at Lund University. He has conducted research on social movements and collective protests, concept formation of “social movement”, welfare transition processes and on experiences of becoming “a dependent subject” among elderly in France and Sweden. Recent research is about representations of war and atrocities in public official spaces.

Listen to episode 2679 and discover more about the book Vietnam, a War not a Country and what it means from its three authors.

Order from North America.

Order from the rest of the world.

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Episode 2678 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an interview with Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast as he talks with Canadian Bob Waller. In the interview, Waller describes how American deserters were treated by  Canada during the Vietnam War years. The book Unguarded Border by Donald W. Maxwell established the basis for the discussion.

It seems that numerous yellow belly America pussies that were too cowardly to serve their country in Vietnam hid behind their skirts of false idealism and ran off to Canada to avoid serving. The official policy of the Canadian government was to accept all American émigrés who wanted to avoid service in the American military.

A fly in the ointment arose when it was discovered the Canadian border guards were returning American military deserters. This was against official Canadian government policy. In this interview Waller describes the situation in depth because he became personally involved in an attempt to expose the wrongdoings of the Canadian border guards,

Listen to episode 2678 and discover more about what Canadian, Bob Waller had to say about how Canada dealt with American deserters during the Vietnam War.

A description of Unguarded Border by Donald W. Maxwell includes this:

The United States is accustomed to accepting waves of migrants who are fleeing oppressive conditions and political persecution in their home countries. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the flow of migration reversed as over fifty thousand Americans fled across the border to Canada to resist military service during the Vietnam War or to escape their homeland’s hawkish society.

Unguarded Border tells their stories and, in the process, describes a migrant experience that does not fit the usual paradigms. Rather than treating these American refugees as unwelcome foreigners, Canada embraced them, refusing to extradite draft resisters or military deserters and not even requiring passports for the border crossing. And instead of forming close-knit migrant communities, most of these émigrés sought to integrate themselves within Canadian society.

Historian Donald W. Maxwell explores how these Americans in exile forged cosmopolitan identities, coming to regard themselves as global citizens, a status complicated by the Canadian government’s attempts to claim them and the U.S. government’s eventual efforts to reclaim them. Unguarded Border offers a new perspective on a movement that permanently changed perceptions of compulsory military service, migration, and national identity.

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Episode 2677 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an interview with author Marv Truhe about his new book, Against All Tides.  Marv will be introduced by Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast, and interviewed by fellow author Dave Almond.

Marv Truhe served as a Navy JAG lawyer and military judge during the Vietnam War. Following his military service, he was an Assistant Attorney General for South Dakota before entering private practice. He defended six of the Black sailors charged with rioting and assaults in the USS Kitty Hawk incident. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Book Overview

Simmering racial tensions inflamed by discriminatory punitive measures sparked a violent confrontation aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while it was engaged in air strikes off the coast of North Vietnam.

The US Navy charged Black sailors with rioting and assaults on White sailors in an incident referred to as a race riot, while totally ignoring violent unprovoked assaults committed by White sailors and Marines.

Author Marv Truhe was a Navy JAG defense lawyer seeking justice for the accused Black sailors. Truhe possesses one of the most complete collections, personal or institutional, of original source documents of the Kitty Hawk incident and its legal aftermath—trial transcripts, investigation reports, hundreds of sworn statements and medical reports, federal court pleadings, and case files and witness interviews.

How could virtually all official and unofficial accounts of the incident have placed blame for the incident solely on twenty-three Black sailors? How could they have been subjected to blatant racial injustices without their story being told until now?

It is time to reveal the uncomfortable answers to these questions and expose the injustices perpetrated against these twenty-three young men.

Listen to episode 2677 and discover more about Marv Truhe’s new book Against All Tides that describes the  revolt on the Kitty Hawk.

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Cpl Charles Patchin, 23, a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, searching a Viet Cong tunnel. Photo: Bettmann Archive

An Israeli soldier secures a tunnel beneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza city. Reuters

Episode 2676 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about the parallels between tunnel warfare in Vietnam and the Gaza Strip. The featured story appeared on The National News website and was titled: As Israel floods Gaza tunnels, lessons from Vietnam war point to long underground struggle. It was submitted by Robert Tollast. He joined The National as Assistant Foreign Editor in 2020. Prior to this, he worked as a political and security risk analyst with NAMEA Group, focused on the Middle East, and with the Iraq Energy Institute think tank. Since 2011 he has written about Iraq for a variety of publications including Foreign Affairs and USA Today.

In his story, the author discusses the differences and similarities of tunnel warfare in the American Vietnam War and the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip against Hama subhuman fighters. He reported that Israel is pumping thousands litres of Mediterranean seawater into Hamas tunnels in Gaza, sparking concerns that hostages who may be held underground could be at risk.

According to Hamas, 500km of warren-like structures – known as the “Gaza metro” – have been built. Other estimates put the length of the complex at about 250km.

It is not the first time the tunnels have been partly flooded. Egypt used the tactic in 2015 to destroy tunnels used for smuggling on its border.

More than 50 years ago, the Vietnam war included a gruesome struggle by the US and allies against tunnel complexes spanning hundreds of kilometres used by Viet Cong fighters.

Like Israel has in Gaza, US forces in Vietnam used bombs with delayed fuses that burrowed into earth, creating shockwaves to crush the structures. But the tunnels continued to frustrate US offensives.

Listen to episode 2676 and discover more about the parallels between tunnel warfare in Vietnam and the Gaza Strip.

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Episode 2675 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an interview with Robert J. Thompson about his new book Clear, Hold and Destroy. Andy Pham, a good friend of this podcast, has procured not only the author but two of his associate academics, Samantha Taylor and Kevin Boylan to come on the podcast and discuss this important new book about the American Vietnam War. The most profound idea coming from the book is that no one could provide an acceptable definition of “Pacification.”

A native of Alexandria, Virginia, Dr. Thompson’s current work as a historian with the Army University Press film team includes researching, writing and directing documentaries to educate viewers on U.S. Army history and doctrine. Clear, Hold and Destroy began as his dissertation at USM.

The book description includes this: By the end of the American War in Vietnam, the coastal province of Phú Yên was one of the least-secure provinces in the Republic of Vietnam. It was also a prominent target of the American strategy of pacification—an effort, purportedly separate and distinct from conventional warfare, to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. In Robert J. Thompson III’s analysis, the consistent, and consistently unsuccessful, struggle to place Phú Yên under Saigon’s banner makes the province particularly fertile ground for studying how the Americans advanced pacification and why this effort ultimately failed.

In March 1970 a disastrous military engagement began in Phú Yên, revealing the enemy’s continued presence after more than three years of pacification. Clear, Hold, and Destroy provides a fresh perspective on the war across multiple levels, from those making and implementing policy to those affected by it. Most pointedly, Thompson contends that pacification, far from existing apart from conventional warfare, actually depended on conventional military forces for its application.

A sharply focused, fine-grained analysis of one critical province during the Vietnam War, Thompson’s work demonstrates how pacification is better understood as the foundation of U.S. fighting in Vietnam.

Listen to episode 2675 and discover more about Robert J. Thompson’s new book Clear, Hold and Destroy.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) shakes hands with Vietnam’s Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong in Hanoi on Dec. 12, 2023. [VNA/Kyodo]

Episode 2674 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about the recent visit by China’s President Xi Jinping to Vietnam. The featured story comes from the Kyodo News and is titled: China’s Xi Jinping vows to deepen partnership with Vietnam. KYODO NEWS, founded in November 1945 as a nonprofit cooperative organization, is the leading news agency in Japan. Kyodo covers accurately and promptly the ever-changing developments in Japan and the rest of the world, distributing news around the clock to domestic and overseas news media as well as international organizations and institutions. Most Japanese newspapers and broadcasting stations subscribe to Kyodo. It is headquartered Tokyo, Japan.

For centuries the area in Southeast Asia known as Vietnam was a vassal state of China. In recent times, the former lowly vassal state has become a strong independent nation. Unfortunately its former slave master is still causing problems.

China is trying to reestablish its hegemony over Vietnam, its former client state. In recent years, China has attempted to take control of the entire South China Sea, much to the detriment of Vietnam and other Southeast Asian neighbors.

In the past, China has used the hammer to the head approach to foreign policy. This practice has stiffened the resolve of the effected nations. Recognizing this development, it appears the Chinese are going to adopt the carrot and honey approach.

This appears to be the case according to the featured story from Kyodo News where it was reported that China’s President Xi Jinping said Tuesday in his talks with Vietnam’s Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong that Beijing is ready to deepen the bilateral partnership and build a “community with a shared future,” according to the Chinese media.

China regards its relations with Vietnam as “a priority” in its neighborhood diplomacy, Xi told the leader as he visited the country for the first time since 2017, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Listen to episode 2674 and discover more about the recent visit by China’s President Xi Jinping to Vietnam.

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Theresa Kusche, left, is about to present the National Society Daughters of the Revolution Medal of Honor and and Catherine Knauer presents a plaque to retired Army Lt. Col. John Brownrigg. [Ray Pausen]

Episode 2673 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about the service rendered to his country by Vietnam Vet John Brownrigg during the Vietnam War and after he came home after three tours in country and the award he received from the DAR. The featured story appeared in the Times Union of Albany, New York and was titled: Duty Calls: Sand Lake veteran earns top NSDAR Medal of Honor.  It was submitted by Terry Brown.

Retired LTC John Brownrigg of Sand Lake, New York is another tremendous representative of the Vietnam Veteran Generation – one of the greatest that ever heeded the call of duty from our country. He served three tours in Vietnam with distinction and continued serving his country when he came home.

In the story, Brown reported: Retired Army Col. John Brownrigg of Sand Lake, a Vietnam War veteran and veterans organizations leader, has received the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution Medal of Honor.

Theresa Kusche presented the medal to Brownrigg during a ceremony at a Gen. Peter Gansevoort Chapter of the NSDAR awards luncheon at the Century House in Latham. The medal is the organization’s highest award for extraordinary military and community service as well as outstanding contributions our nation.

After the war, he continued his military career in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. As a civilian, he was a petroleum salesman, distributor and sales manager before retirement. He now is an environmental and real estate consultant. The Sand Lake Kiwanis Club member had served as club president, a distinguished lieutenant governor and district chairman. He leads several veterans’ organizations, including Sand Lake Veterans organization. He often performs community service via his veterans’ organizations and volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House in Albany.

Listen to episode 2673 and discover more about the service rendered to his country by Vietnam Vet John Brownrigg during the Vietnam War and after he came home after three tours in country and the award he received from the DAR.

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OV-10 in action [Photo: US Navy | Wikimedia Commons.]

Episode 2672 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about the OV-Bronco and its contributions during the American War in Vietnam. The featured story appeared on the Simple Flying website and was titled: Versatile Military Turboprop: The Story Of The North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco. It was submitted by Mark Finlay. He is an experienced travel journalist having published work in the industry for more than seven years. His enthusiasm for aviation news and wealth of experience lends itself to some excellent insight, with his work cited in Forbes amongst other publications. He is based in Alicante, Spain.

According to the Simple Flying website, it is the leading independent voice for aviation news and insight. It continues with this, Simple Flying was launched in June 2018. their goal is to provide a one-stop hub for all the key stories on commercial aviation, sharing the news in a simple, accessible way. they cover all regions, and all aspects of commercial aviation. They are digital first, and all of Their content is free to read and access.

In his story Finlay reports that the versatile Rockwell OV-10 Bronco was a twin-engine, multipurpose aircraft designed for counter-insurgency, observation, and attack for the United States military. In the early 1960s, the United States Marine Corps wanted a rugged, close air support aircraft that could be used to support ground operations. As for the United States Air Force (USAF), they were busy working on America’s nuclear deterrent and had no desire for what would become the Rockwell OV-10 Bronco.

The Marine Corps envisaged a plane that could operate on roads as runways close to its forward bases of operations. How fast the plane could fly was not such a concern, but what was needed was an aircraft that could loiter in the air without refueling longer than a comparable jet. It was decided that turboprop engines would be better than piston engines and that self-loading recoilless rifles for weapons would be more suitable than cannons and rockets.

Listen to episode 2672 and discover more about the OV-10 Bronco and its contributions during the American War in Vietnam.