virginiareviewofasianstudies.com · Web view2019/06/04 · William Head is Chief, 78 ABW Office of History, Robins AFB, Georgia. He has been an Air Force Historian since 1984 and

Virginia Review of Asian Studies. 21 (2019): 34-45ISSN: 2169-6306Head: Fall

BERNARD B. FALL: THE WESTERN CONSCIENCE IN INDOCHINA

William Head1 78 ABW OFFICE ROBINS AFB

Over the long history of our nation war correspondents have provided the public with a window into the horrors of war and a gauge as to the relative justice and merit of each conflict. In WW II Ernie Pyle wrote about the hardship of the regular soldiers and in Vietnam reporters like Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer made it a television war--one that eventually led us to question the validity of our very presence in Vietnam. Before these more famous reporters affected public opinion on America’s struggle in Vietnam, there was a man of great integrity who went there to find out for himself why we were there and whether we should be there at all.

Those readers who have read much about the U.S. involvement in the wars of Southeast Asia have heard of Bernard B. Fall (1926-1967). In so many ways his humane writings and reporting both as a scholar and a reporter, made the soldiers he lived with include him as one of their own. His work was not only important during his life time but ever since. His most famous books are Hell in a Very Small Place about the French-Vietminh struggle for Dien Bien Phu and his later work Street Without Joy, which chronicled U.S. struggles in Vietnam during the late 1950s and early 1960s mostly along the main coastal highway north of Da Nang. NEVER WERE BOOK TITLES SO POIGNANT!

While Bernie Fall became one of America’s foremost experts on Indochina, things did not begin that way. He was born in Vienna, Austria on November 19, 1926. Being a Jew, his father Leon and his mother Anna moved the family to France in 1938 following the Nazi annexation of Austria. Following the defeat of France in 1940, his father joined the Resistance. In 1942 his father was captured by the Gestapo and tortured to death. His mother was seized and sent to Auschwitz where she died. Fall also fought with the underground barely escaping death on several occasions. In 1944, he joined the Free French Army and marched into Paris that

1 William Head is Chief, 78 ABW Office of History, Robins AFB, Georgia. He has been an Air Force Historian since 1984 and the Chief of Robins AFB History Office since 1996. He received his Ph.D. in U.S. Diplomatic History from Florida State University in 1980. Dr. Head has published 18 books including Texas A&M University Press’ Night Hunters: A History of the AC-130s and their role in U.S. Air Power (2014). He has authored more than 50 articles in journals like the Journal of American History, Journal of Military History, Virginia Review of Asian Studies, and Air Power History. He has made more than 100 presentations to meetings including: Organization of American Historians, Association of Asian Studies and Society of Military History.

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August. He won the French Liberation Medal. Fittingly, after the war he served as an analyst for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.2

Bernard Fall in the field with his guys along “the street without joy”

After the war, Fall studied at the University of Paris and, later, the University of Munich. Receiving a Fulbright scholarship in 1951, he traveled to the U.S. where he studied political science at the University of Maryland, and two years later, he completed his master’s degree at Syracuse University. He subsequently took courses at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies where he became fascinated with Southeast Asia. In 1953, he went to Vietnam. Being French, he was allowed to accompany French soldiers in their struggle against the Viet Minh. He soon concluded that the French would lose the war due to French callousness toward the Indochinese people.3

In 1955, Fall earned his Ph.D. at Syracuse University. From there he became an assistant professor at American University. He also began teaching classes in international relations across town at Howard University. While he would eventually make full professor at Howard, his most important achievements at this time proved to be the publication of his first book on Indochina entitled Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu. Well received both by the popular media and fellow scholars it provided a vivid description of the arduous and, in 2 Dorothy Fall, with David Halberstam, Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier—Scholar, (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, Inc), pp. 9-44, [hereafter Soldier – Scholar].3 Ibid., pp. 45-82.

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retrospect, hopeless struggle by the French Union Army against the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu. The New Yorker called it, “A thorough account of a brave, sanguinary battle that has since turned out to have immense historic importance.”

While Dr. Fall spent most of the remainder of his career as a professor, he also returned to Vietnam five times between 1957 and 1967. He believed and his writings proved that the best research was to see the conflict firsthand. In 1962, while teaching at the Royal Institute of Administration in Cambodia, Bernie Fall was invited to interview Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. He shocked many in the west when he agreed to do so. In the aftermath of this riveting interview with the communist leader, he reported that Ho told him his forces would reunify Vietnam in a little more than a decade because of their dedication and popular support. Fall concluded he was right and that Ho was more of anti-colonial nationalist than a Marxist. At the time this prophetic notion of Dr. Fall’s shocked his colleagues in the West. He concluded that Americans should work with Ho, instead of against him. Instead, of accepting this as sage advice, U.S. leaders cast a jaundiced eye on the “radical” professor and soon included him on a list of individuals to be watched by American intelligence.

Dr. Bernard Fall in Saigon in 1967.

Even though Fall was an academic, he also had an affinity for the average combat soldier. On each occasion he visited Vietnam, he always went into the field with the G.I.s and never stayed at headquarters with the generals. As the war expanded and American involvement expanded, he became a favorite of the guys in the field because he lived with them--facing their fear and boredom. He obtained his data on the war while slogging through the jungles of Vietnam first, with French colonial troops, and later, American infantry and South Vietnamese soldiers. He combined academic analysis of Indochina with a perspective of the war from the soldier’s point of view. Like Ernie Pyle, a generation earlier, in World War II, he became one of them, someone they could explain things to, someone who understood their struggle to survive.

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In the early 1960s, Dr. Fall had fully supported the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam, believing it could stop the country from falling to Communism. However, he grew increasingly critical of U.S. military tactics and America’s puppet, Ngo Dinh Diem. Throughout the 1960s, Bernard Fall grew pessimistic about America’s hopes for victory. He accurately warned that if they did not learn from France’s mistakes, they too would lose. Fall wrote numerous articles and gave lectures expressing his views on the situation in Vietnam. Indeed, he was so well respected that many thinking U.S. diplomats and military leaders used his writings and speeches in the development of their own opinions.

Unfortunately, his opinions, especially that the U.S. was losing, caught the attention of the FBI, which began to monitor his activities. As a result, far too often, his reports never reached the White House or were not seriously regarded. The irony is that most policy makers and scholars since then have come to the conclusion that “Bernie” was probably one of the clearest analysts of the War. In what would later prove to be a supreme irony, in his 1995 autobiography, My American Journey, former General and, later, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared: “I recently reread Bernard Fall’s book on Vietnam, Street without Joy. Fall makes it painfully clear that we had almost no understanding of what we had gotten ourselves into. I cannot help thinking that if President Kennedy or President Johnson had spent a quiet weekend at Camp David reading that perceptive book, they would have returned to the White House Monday morning and immediately started to figure out a way to extricate us from the quicksand of Vietnam.”4 They did not! And, neither did the Bush Administration years later in Iraq.

On February 21, 1967, while with a company of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines during Operation Chinook along the “Street without Joy”, Fall’s jeep detonated a Bouncing Betty land mine. He was killed, along with Gunnery Sergeant Byron G. Highland, a U.S. Marine Corps combat photographer. He was dictating notes into a tape recorder saying, “We’ve reached one of our phase lines after the fire fight and it smells bad-meaning it’s a little bit suspicious, it’s quiet, too quiet... Could be an amb--.” He never finished the sentence. At that moment his jeep detonated a Viet Cong mine. Fall left behind his wife and three daughters.5

Thus, ended the life of the foremost interpreter of the war, a man whose books about Vietnam later evolved into required reading for students, scholars, and soldiers. This tragic moments marked his final trip to the Street Without Joy which began 15 years earlier when the graduate student first arrived in Indochina from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Fall discovered the school offered a course about mainland Southeast Asia. He enrolled because he found the subject interesting. One of his professors, Amry Vandenbosch, off-handedly suggested Fall specialize in Indochina due to his French background. The rest, as they say was history.6

4See, Colin Powell, My American Journey: An Autobiography, (New York: Random House, Inc., 1995), p. 147.

5Fredrik Logevall, “Bernard Fall: the Man who knew the war,” New York Times, 21 February 2017.

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Of course, the most famous book by Fall was Street Without Joy which chronicled the ground war from an up close and personal point of view. In what is today recognized as a “masterpiece” “Doc” Fall tried to paint for American public a clear picture of where the U.S. policies had gone wrong and how to fix them. In the book he warned U.S. leaders to learn from past mistakes in order not to end up like the French. Published in 1962, three years before the beginning of the U.S. build-up, Fall provided his readers with an exceptionally strong historical and political analysis of the region, its people and their leaders.7

Of greatest impact on current foreign affairs were the basic lessons that Fall wanted America leaders to learn. He wanted America to be very slow to go to war and risk the flower of our youth. Once committed, he wanted them to have a plan and vision for victory that would bring the U.S. to an end game. In short, from the outset America needed an exit strategy that kicked in as quickly and conclusively as possible. He hoped that once in place this strategy would become part of America’s basic foreign policy. In the end, it seems that the Washington elite, then and now, disregarded the quality of the material and the skill of the messenger as they barged head-long into what was at the time the longest and most divisive war in U.S. history. It was one that would ultimately cause America to question itself and the honesty and integrity of her leaders.

Fall did not condemn or condone the French or the Americans for trying to stem the tide of Communism. Instead, he warned against the apparent arrogance of our leaders. He truly believed that if the French defeat was borne of ignorance; America’s came from a hubris that many years later plunged America into yet another protracted engagement, this one in Central Asia. And, it has now lasted eight years longer than Vietnam, with American forces still in Afghanistan at the writing of this work.

George Santayana said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.” If this is true, then before policy makers send America men and women into foreign lands, they need to adapt their tactical schemes by learning the lesson taught by people like Bernard Fall. You would think that U.S. leaders would never again allow U.S. troops to walk down any, “street without joy.” But they have because as Fall declared in his last book Last Reflections on a War, not learning from past mistakes can be deadly!8 There are 94,581 white French crosses all over Indochina that bear witness to poor French strategic and tactical leadership. The 58,000 American names on, “The Wall,” silently attest to the folly of conceit as do the 9,000 allied soldiers who have paid the supreme sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To honor Fall and remind us all what the cost of war is, Paul La Forest wrote a poem entitled “Street Without Joy.” It is worth reading again here.

6History.Net, “Bernard B. Fall: Vietnam War Author,” 1 September 2006, http://www. historynet.com/bernard-b-fall-vietnam-war-author.htm. Original article by Charles E. Kirkpatrick in the January 1989 issue of Vietnam Magazine. 7See, Bernard Fall, Street without Joy. Indochina at war, 1946-54 (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Stockpole Co., 1962, rev. ed. 1964); reprint Schocken, New York, 1972; reissue as Street without Joy by Stockpole Books, Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania, 1994).8See, Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1967).

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Along the Street without Joy, A young Vietnamese boy, rides bareback, in the rice paddy fields;

A boy on a water buffalo in Vietnam. Was it in the 1950s or 1960s? It was along some street without joy.

(Where French troops took the bait, repeatedly lured to their fate, Today time and the jungle conceals.

Oh the Street without Joy, as the highway to Hanoi, ‘twas a symbol, clearly echoed elsewhere;

And the victorious Viet Minh sucked those French forces in, consumed in this guerrilla warfare.

From the DMZ, down to Hue, where entombed emperors lay, the Street without Joy, runs north of Tourane; and this place ‘twas so called, since French troops there were mauled, by enemy ambushes, time and again.

Patrols to search and destroy, along the Street without Joy, in the jungles, deltas and hills of Annam; Similar strategies employed, sweet success thus enjoyed, up and down and right across Vietnam.

North, south, or west from the coast, each isolated military post, ‘twas overrun, with consummate ease;

From My Tho to Nha Trang, from Pleiku to Da Nang, such attacks finally brought France to her knees. One last fortress in rubble burst this imploding rice bubble, Troop withdrawals and elections to follow;

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Peace conditions decided by Great Powers who presided, solid promises that proved to be hollow.

Marching the French POWs out of Dien Bien Phu from a very small place that resembled “Hell!”

Around a decade’s delay, and then a second re-play, with new players lined up in each team; under a ‘60s new name, playing the same kind of game, ten years of denting the American Dream.

Although past tactics found flawed, all those old lessons ignored, thousands of French troops, each died in vain;

Children fleeing napalm attacks down another “street without joy!”

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So new ambushes laid, ‘Hit n’ run’ battle games played, The Street without Joy fell in darkness again.

In city markets, shops and bars, in hotels, streets and bazaars, Acquiescence again masked, a disguise;

Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of MACV testifies before Congress assuring them that victory is at hand. After all, Americans never

lose wars.And any success in the field, Researchers later revealed, ‘twas imagined or quite often just lies.

Tet saw the Embassy raided, many key towns invaded, Khe Sanh, another lure, a ploy;

Eddie Adams's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Gen. Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém, a VC intelligence officer.

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And when Hue’s citadel fell, again the gates opened to Hell, an inferno on the Street without Joy.

As the “body-count” rose, to a level nobody knows, the Paris Peace Talks continued to stall;

The Siege of Khe Sanh. Unlike Dien Bien Phu the Americans won the battle. However, they still lost the war.

“Vietnamization,” a sham, excuse to exit Vietnam, no more names for that black granite wall.

And an author who spoke, of this place when he wrote, ironically, returned and joined the long line;

Oh, this tragic Street without Joy, His life too, ‘twould destroy, when Bernard Fall stepped out onto a mine.

Dominoes fell one by one, Up until there were none, Chaos contagious during the siege of Saigon; As palace gates crashed to the ground, The Street Without Joy was closed down, Since the West had deserted and gone.

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The People’s Army of Viet Nam (PAVN) take over Saigon. Was the sacrifice worth it?

Today, just like a ghost, by that road on the coast, riding a buffalo, ubiquitous, ‘tis a boy;

Boy on another buffalo in 2001.

Yet there’s no signs either side, of the thousands who died, Just memories, on the Street without Joy.

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No Joy Here!

Many years later, at one of the myriad of conferences on Vietnam I attended, Paul assured his audience that he could not conceive that America would ever make such a terrible mistake again and challenged the next generation of Americans to keep faith with those who died in Vietnam. At this moment we have spent 18 years in Afghanistan fighting another war we cannot win. We have lost 4,500 in killed Iraq and more than 2,800 Americans killed in Afghanistan for another pair of questionable causes. And we are still in Afghanistan with still no final and complete exist date. I fear we have broken faith with the dead whose names are on the black-grey wall in Washington.

May I echo Bernard Fall’s lessons and Paul La Forest’s challenge to all who read this piece! Please keep faith with all the fallen in the Vietnam disaster and never allow any leader to waste our youth again on yet another street without joy!

LEST WE FORGET! Statistics: 58,000 Americans, 200,000 Laotians and Cambodians, 500,000 South Vietnamese and 2 million North Vietnamese. Was it worth it? Did America alter the outcome? Didn’t that hat label read: “Made in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam?”Oh, I guess we did forget the lesson! Allied Casualties: 9,000 KIA and 54,000 Wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan!

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virginiareviewofasianstudies.com · Web view2019/06/04 · William Head is Chief, 78 ABW Office of History, Robins AFB, Georgia. He has been an Air Force Historian since 1984 and