Readers Digest,
John G.Hubbell
The village chief and his wife were distraught. One of their
children, a seven-year-old boy, had been missing for four days. They
were terrified, they explained to Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis W. Walt,
because they believed he had been captured by the Vietcong.
Suddenly, the boy came out of the jungle and ran across the rice
paddies toward the village. He was crying. His mother ran to him and
swept him up in her arms. Both of his hands had been cut off, and
there was a sign around his neck, a message to his father: if he or
any one else in the village dared go to the polls during the
upcoming elections, something worse would happen to the rest of his
children.
The VC delivered a similar warning to the residents of a hamlet not
far from Danang. All were herded before the home of their chief.
While they and the chief’s pregnant wife and four children were
forced to look on, the chief’s tongue was cut out. Then his genital
organs were sliced off and sewn inside his bloody mouth. As he died,
the VC went to work on his wife, slashing open her womb. Then, the
nine-year-old son: a bamboo lance was rammed through one ear and out
the other. Two more of the chief’s children were murdered the same
way. The VC did not harm the five-year-old daughter — not
physically: they simply left her crying, holding her dead mother’s
hand.
General Walt tells of his arrival at a district headquarters the day
after it had been overrun by VC and North Vietnamese army troops.
Those South Vietnamese soldiers not killed in the battle had been
tied up and shot through their mouths or the backs of their heads.
Then their wives and children, including a number of two- and
three-year-olds, had been brought into the street, disrobed,
tortured and finally executed: their throats were cut; they were
shot, beheaded, disemboweled. The mutilated bodies were draped on
fences and hung with signs telling the rest of the community that if
they continued to support the Saigon government and allied forces,
they could look forward to the same fate.
These atrocities are not isolated cases; they are typical. For this
is the enemy’s way of warfare, clearly expressed in his combat
policy in Vietnam. While the naive and anti-American throughout the
world, cued by communist propaganda; have trumpeted against American
“immorality” in the Vietnam war — aerial bombing, the use of napalm,
casualties caused by American combat action — daily and nightly for
years, the communists have systematically authored history’s
grisliest catalogue of barbarism. By the end of 1967, they had
committed at least 100,000 acts of terror against the South
Vietnamese people. The record is an endless litany of tortures,
mutilations and murders that would have been instructive even to
such as Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps because until recently the terrorism has been waged mainly
in remote places, this aspect of the war has received scant
attention from the press. Hence the enemy has largely succeeded in
casting himself in the role of noble revolutionary. It is long past
time for Americans, who are sick and tired of being vilified for
trying to help South Vietnam stay free, to take a hard look at the
nature of this enemy.
Bloodbath Discipline.
The terror had its real beginning when Red dictator Ho Chi Minh
consolidated his power in the North. More than a year before his
1954 victory over the French, he launched a savage campaign against
his own people. In virtually every North Vietnamese village,
strong-arm squads assembled the populace to witness the
“confessions” of landowners. As time went on, businessmen,
intellectuals, school teachers, civic leaders — all who represented
a potential source of future opposition — were also rounded up and
forced to “confess” to “errors of thought.” There followed public
“trials,” conviction and, in many cases, execution. People were
shot, beheaded, beaten to death; some were tied up, thrown into open
graves and covered with stones until they were crushed to death, Ho
has renewed his terror in North Vietnam periodically. Between 50,000
and 100,000 are believed to have died in these blood-baths — in a
coldly calculated effort to discipline the party and the masses. To
be sure, few who escape Ho’s terror now seem likely to tempt his
wrath. During the 1950s, however, he had to quell some sizeable
uprisings in North Vietnam — most notably one that occurred in early
November 1956, in the An province, which included Ho’s birthplace
village of Nam Dan. So heavily had he taxed the region that the
inhabitants finally banded together and refused to meet his price.
Ho sent troops to collect, and then sent in an army division,
shooting. About 6,000 unarmed villagers were killed. The survivors
scattered, some escaping to the South. The slaughter went largely
unnoticed by a world then preoccupied with the Soviet Union’s rape
of Hungary.
With North Vietnam tightly in hand, the central committee of the
North Vietnamese communist party met in Hanoi on March 13, 1959, and
decided it was time to move against South Vietnam. Soon, large
numbers of Ho’s guerrillas were infiltrating to join cadres that had
remained there after the French defeat in 1954. Their mission: to
eliminate South Vietnam’s leadership, including elected officials,
“natural” leaders, anyone and everyone to whom people might turn for
advice. Also to be liquidated were any South Vietnamese who had
relatives in their country’s armed forces, civil, services or
police; any who failed to pay communist taxes promptly; any with
five or more years of education.
A captured VC guerrilla explained how his eight-man team moved
against a particular target village: “The first time we entered the
village, we arrested and executed on the spot four men who had been
pointed out to us by the party’s district headquarters as our most
dangerous opponents. One, who had fought in the war against the
French was now a known supporter of the South Vietnamese government.
Another had been seen fraternizing with government troops. These two
were shot. The others, the village’s principal landowners, were
beheaded.”
General Walt tells of the “revolutionary purity” of Vietcong who
came home to two other villages. In one case, a 15-year-old girl who
had given Walt’s Marines information on VC activities was taken into
the jungle and tortured for hours, then beheaded. As a warning to
other villagers, her head was placed on a pole in front of her home.
Her murderers were her brother and two of his VC comrades. In the
other case, when a VC learned that his wife and two young children
had cooperated with Marines who had befriended them, he himself cut
out their tongues.
Genocide.
In such fashion did the storm of terror break over South Vietnam. In
1960, some 1,500 South Vietnamese civilians were killed and 700
abducted. By early 1965, the communists’ Radio Hanoi and Radio
Liberation were able to boast that the VC had destroyed 7,559 South
Vietnamese hamlets. By the end of last year, 15,138 South Vietnamese
civilians had been killed, 45,929 kidnaped. Few of the kidnaped are
ever seen again.
Ho’s assault on South Vietnam’s leadership class has, in fact, been
a form of genocide — and all too efficient. Thus, if South Vietnam
survives in freedom, it will take the country a generation to fully
replace this vital element of its society. But the grand design of
terror involves other objectives, too. It hopes to force the
attacked government into excessively repressive anti-terrorist
actions, which tend to earn the government the contempt and hatred
of the people. It also seeks valuable propaganda in the form of
well-publicized counter-atrocities certain to occur at the
individual level — for South Vietnamese soldiers whose families have
suffered at communists’ hands are not likely to deal gently with
captured VC and North Vietnamese troops.
Dr. A. W. Wylie, an Australian physician serving in a Mekong Delta
hospital, points out that a hamlet or village need not cooperate
with the Saigon government or allied forces to mark itself for
butchery; it need only be neutral, a political condition not
acceptable to the communists. After a place has been worked over,
its people of responsibility are always identifiable by the
particularly hideous nature of their wounds. He cites some cases he
has seen:
— When the VC finished with one pregnant woman, both of her legs
were dangling by ribbons of flesh and had to be amputated. Her
husband, a hamlet chief, had just been strangled before her eyes,
and she also had seen her three-year-old child machine-gunned to
death. Four hours after her legs were amputated, she aborted the
child she was carrying. But perhaps the worst thing that happened to
her that day was that she survived.
— A village policeman was held in place while a VC gunman shot off
his nose and fired bullets through his cheekbones so close to his
eyes that they were reduced to bloody shreds. He later died from
uncontrollable hemorrhages.
— A 20-year-old schoolteacher had knelt in a corner trying to
protect herself with her arms while a VC flailed at her with a
machete. She had been unsuccessful; the back of her head was cut so
deeply that the brain was exposed. She died from brain damage and
loss of blood.
Flamethrowers at Work.
Last December 5, communists perpetrated what must rank among
history’s most monstrous blasphemies at Dak Son, a central highlands
village of some 2,000. Montagnards — a tribe of gentle but fiercely
independent mountain people. They had moved away from their old
village in VC-controlled territory, ignored several VC orders to
return and refused to furnish male recruits to the VC.
Two VC battalions struck in the earliest hours, when the village was
asleep. Quickly killing the sentries, the communists swarmed among
the rows of tidy, thatch-roofed homes, putting the torch to them.
The first knowledge that many of the villagers had of the attack was
when VC troops turned flamethrowers on them in their beds. Some
families awoke in time to escape into nearby jungle. Some men stood
and fought, giving their wives and children time to crawl into
trenches dug beneath their homes as protection against mortar and
rifle fire. But when every building was ablaze, the communists took
their flamethrowers to the mouth of each trench and poured in a
long, searing hell of fire — and, for good measure, tossed grenades
into many. Methodical and thorough, they stayed at it until
daybreak, then left in the direction of the Cambodian border.
Morning revealed a scene of unbelievable horror. The village now was
only a smoldering, corpse-littered patch on the lush green
countryside. The bodies of 252 people, mostly mothers and children,
lay blistered, charred, burned to the bone. Survivors, many of them
horribly burned, wandered aimlessly about or stayed close to the
incinerated bodies of loved ones, crying. Some 500 were missing;
scores were later found in the jungle, dead of burns and other
wounds; many have not been found.
The massacre at Dak Son was a warning to other Montagnard
Settlements to cooperate. But many of the tribesmen now fight with
the allies.
If the communists’ “persuasion” techniques spawn deep and enduring
hatred, Ho could not care less; the first necessity is the utter,
subjugation, of the people. Ho was disturbed by the rapid expansion
of South Vietnam’s educational system: between 1954 and 1959, the
number of schools had tripled and the number of students had
quadrupled. An educated populace, especially one educated to
democratic ideals, does not fit into the communist scheme. Hence,
the country’s school system was one of Ho’s first targets. So
efficiently did he move against it that the World Confederation of
Organizations of the Teaching Profession soon sent a commission,
chaired by India’s Shri S. Natarajan, to investigate.
Typical of the commission’s findings is what happened in the jungle
province of An Xuyen. During the 1954-55 academic year, 3,096
children attended 32 schools in the province; by the end of the
1960-61 school year, 27,953 were attending 189 schools. Then the
communists moved in. Parents were advised not to send their children
to school.
Teachers were warned to stop providing civic education, and to stop
teaching children to honor their country, flag and president.
Teachers who failed to comply were shot or beheaded or had their
throats cut, and the reasons for the executions were pinned or
nailed to their bodies.
The Natarajan commission reported how the VC stopped one school bus
and told the children not to attend school anymore. When the
children continued for another week, the communists stopped the bus
again, selected a six-year-old passenger and cut off her fingers.
The other children were told, “This is what will happen to you if
you continue to go to that school.” The school closed.
In one year, in An Xuyen province alone, Ho’s agents closed 150
schools, killed or kidnapped more than five dozen teachers, and cut
school enrollment by nearly 20,000. By the end of the 1961-62 school
year, 636 South Vietnamese schools were closed, and enrollment had
decreased by nearly 80,000.
But, in the face of this attack, South Vietnam’s education system
has staged a strong comeback. Schools destroyed by the communists
have been rebuilt, destroyed, and rebuilt again. Many teachers have
given up their own homes and move each night into a different
student’s home so the communists can’t find them, or commute from
nearby cities, where they leave their families.
Against such determination, the size of Ho’s failure can be
measured: in 1954, there were approximately 400,000 pupils in school
in North and South Vietnam together; today South Vietnam alone has
some two million in school. About 35,000 — four times as many as in
1962 — now attend five South Vietnamese universities, while 42,000
more attend night college.
A South Vietnamese government official explains: “A war shatters
many traditional values. But the idea of education has an absolute
hold on our people’s imagination.”
Bar of Justice.
The pitch of communist terrorism keeps rising. After the Tet carnage
at Hue early this year, 19 mass graves yielded more than 1,000
bodies, mostly civilians — old men and women, young girls,
schoolboys, priests, nuns, doctors (including three Germans who had
been medical-school faculty members at Hue University). About half
had been buried alive, and many were found bound together with
barbed wire, with dirt or cloth stuffed into their mouths and
throats, and their eyes wide open. The communists came to Hue with a
long list of names for liquidation — people who worked for the South
Vietnamese or for the US government, or who had relatives who did.
But as their military situation grew increasingly desperate, they
began grabbing people at random, out of their homes and off the
streets, condemned them at drumhead courts as “reactionaries” or for
“opposing the revolution” and killed them.
“The Tet offensive represented a drastic change in tactics,” says
General Walt. “This is a war to take over the South Vietnamese
people. Ho launched the Tet offensive because he knew he was losing
the people. But his troops didn’t know it; they were told that they
didn’t need any withdrawal plans because the people would rise and
fight with them to drive out the Americans. What happened was just
the opposite. Many fought against them like tigers.” Some of the Tet
offensive’s explosion of atrocities probably can be attributed to
sheer vengeful frustration on the part of Ho’s terror squads — which
Ho may well have foreseen, and counted on.
The full record of communist barbarism in Vietnam would fill
volumes. If South Vietnam falls to the communists, millions more are
certain to die, large numbers of them at the hands of Ho’s
imaginative tortures. That is a primary reason why, at election
times, more than 80 percent of eligible South Vietnamese defy every
communist threat and go to the polls, and why, after mortar attacks,
voting lines always form anew. It is why the South Vietnamese pray
that their allies will stick the fight through with them. It is why
the vast majority of American troops in Vietnam are convinced that
the war is worth fighting. It is why those who prance about even in
our own country — waving Vietcong flags and decrying our “unjust”
and “immoral” war should be paid the contempt they deserve.
Finally, it is why the communists should be driven once and for all
from South Vietnam — and why, if possible, the monsters who
presently rule North Vietnam should be brought before the bar of
justice.
________________________________________________________________________________
Bàn tay nhuốm máu của Hồ Chí Minh
Lời người Viết : Bài tŕnh bày dưới đây đă được Hubbell viết và
đăng trên tạp chí Reader’s Digest số tháng 11/1968 cùng với lời giới
thiệu của Trung Tướng TQLC Lewis W Walt , Quân Đoàn I , Nam Việt Nam
( 1966-1967 )
Trung Tướng Walt viết :
« Bài tường thuật nầy đă diễn tả một cách trung thực bản chất thực
sự của kẻ thù tại Nam Việt Nam . Tôi đă chứng kiến cảnh một em bé
trai 2 tay bị chặt đứt . Tôi đă nh́n những chiếc đầu người bị bêu
trên đầu cọc và những thân h́nh bụng bị mổ toang ra . Trong 2 năm
phục vụ tại Nam Việt Nam, cùng sát cánh chiến đấu và làm việc với
lực lượng của miền Nam , tôi học hỏi được rằng các sự khủng bố của
cộng sản trong bài nầy không phải là các biến cố tai nạn chiến tranh
lẻ tẻ mà là do một chương tŕnh tàn sát có chủ định sẵn , và đó là
lư do khiến chúng tôi đă đáp ứng lại lời kêu gọi trợ giúp của Nam
Việt Nam mà chúng tôi tin những nổ lực cứu giúp quốc gia nầy của
chúng tôi rất đáng giá , cần thiết , và chủ yếu » .
***
Viên Xă Trưởng cùng với bà vợ như người điên cuồng , một trong các
đứa con của 2 người , một bé trai mới 7 tuổi , đă bị mất tích từ 4
ngày , họ t́m đến Trung Tướng Lewis W Walt để cầu cứu v́ tin rằng
đứa bé đă bị Việt Cộng bắt cóc , rồi th́ đột nhiên , thằng bé thoát
ra khỏi rừng , chạy băng qua các đồng lúa để trở về làng . Thằng bé
vừa chạy vừa khóc . Mẹ nó chạy vội ra , ôm lấy nó vào ḷng . Cả 2
bàn tay đứa nhỏ bị chặt đứt và trên cổ có đeo một cái bảng có ghi
những ḍng chữ cảnh cáo cho cha nó . Nếu ông ta hay bất kỳ người nào
trong làng cả gan đi bỏ phiếu trong kỳ bầu cử tới sẻ chịu những điều
tệ hại hơn nữa cho các đứa con c̣n lại của ông ta .
Tại một xă khác không cách xa Đà Nẵng là bao , Việt Cộng cũng đưa ra
lời cảnh cáo tương tự . Tất cả những người dân được tập trung lại
trước nhà viên Xă Trưởng , kể cả người vợ của ông ta đang bụng mang
dạ chửa và 4 đứa con để chứng kiến cảnh khủng bố dă man của bọn
chúng . Lưỡi ông Xă trưởng bị cắt , và hạ bộ cũa ông ta cũng bị
thiến rời ra , đem nhét vào trong mồm trầy trụa máu rồi khâu lại .
Trong khi ông ta chết , bọn VC xoay ra hành hạ bà vợ bằng cách dùng
dao rạch bụng bà ta ra . Đứa trẻ 9 tuổi bị chúng dùng một que nhọn
xuyên qua từ tai bên này sang tai bên kia . Hai đứa kia cũng bị giết
chết một cách tương tự . Chỉ c̣n đứa bé gái 5 tuổi được bọn chúng
cho thoát chết , rồi nó chỉ c̣n biết cầm tay người mẹ đă chết mà gào
khóc .
Trung Tướng Walt đă đến trụ sở một quận lỵ , một ngày sau khi quận
này bị VC và bộ đội miền Bắc tràn ngập . Một số binh sĩ VNCH không
bị chết trên chiến trường đă bị bắt . Chúng trói những binh sĩ này
lại rồi bắn vào mồm hay vào sau gáy họ . Vợ con của họ và trẻ em mới
2 hay 3 tuổi , bị bọn chúng đưa đi diễu hành trên đường phố trần
truồng trước khi bị chúng đưa ra hành quyết . Có người cổ họng bị
cắt đứt , có người bị chặt đầu hay bị mổ bụng , xác họ được đem bêu
trên các hàng rào kèm theo với những tấm bảng cảnh cáo dân làng ,
nếu tiếp tục ủng hộ chính quyền Sài G̣n , cũng sẽ bị chung một số
phận tương tự . Những hành động khủng bố như vậy không phải là những
hành động lẻ tẻ mà là do một chính sách có chủ định sẵn của chúng .
Trong khi đó , có những người thơ ngây và chống đối Hoa Kỳ trên khắp
thế giới , v́ bị mê hoặc bởi những luận điệu tuyên truyền của Cộng
Sản , nên đă đánh trống khua chiêng , rêu rao chống lại cái họ gọi
là tính chất vô luân của Hoa Kỳ trong cuộc chiến tại Nam Việt Nam
như oanh tạc bằng không quân hay xử dụng tới bom Napalm ( thực ra
rất hạn chế cho những truờng hợp thật cần thiết mà thôi ) gây ra
nhiều thiệt hại cho dân chúng , ngày cũng như đêm , trong nhiều năm
chinh chiến . Cộng Sản đă chỉ nêu nhiều hành động mà chúng cho là
tàn bạo , dă man của miền Nam Việt Nam nhưng đă quên rằng chính
chúng đă phạm vào những tội ác kinh tởm ghê gớm . Tính tới cuối năm
1967 , chúng đă phạm vào khoảng 100 ngàn trường hợp khủng bố , chống
lại người dân miền Nam Việt Nam qua những chuỗi dài hành động bạo
tàn vô tận như tra tấn , sát hại chẳng khác ǵ dưới thời đại của Đức
Quốc Xă .
Những hành động khủng bố được bắt đầu từ khi lănh tụ độc tài Hồ Chí
Minh củng cố được quyền lực tại miền Bắc , trước ngày lịch sử 1954
chiến thắng Pháp tại Điện Biên Phủ , Hồ đă cho thi hành một chiến
dịch tàn bạo đối với chính nhân dân của y .
Hầu hết tại các làng mạc miền Bắc , những đoàn cán bộ vơ trang điều
động dân chúng tới để chứng kiến những vụ tự thú của các địa chủ mà
chúng cho là cường hào ác bá . Rồi th́ tới lượt các nhà trí thức ,
các giáo viên , nói tóm lại tất cả những ai có thể là nguồn chống
đối mai sau này , cũng được chúng gom lại để làm bản tự thú về những
tư tưởng lầm lẫn trong quá khứ .
Tiếp theo là những toà án nhân dân được thiết lập để xét xử họ . Có
nhiều trường hợp các nạn nhân đă bị hành quyết , bị chặt đầu hay bị
hành hạ , trói tay , trói chân thẩy xuống các hố tập thể và vùi đất
, đá lên cho tới chết .
Hồ lại c̣n tái diễn những hành động khủng bố này từng định kỳ một .
Có khoảng từ 50 ngàn và 100 ngàn người được coi như đă bị giết chết
một cách tàn nhẫn trong các cuộc tắm máu như vừa kể trên . Trong
thập niên 1950 , Hồ cũng đă dẹp tan những cuộc nổi dậy tại Bắc Việt
Nam , đặc biệt nhất là vụ nổi dậy của nhân dân Quỳnh Lưu , tỉnh Nghệ
An tháng 11/1956 , và ngay cả tại Nam Đàn là nơi sinh quán của họ Hồ
. V́ dân chúng nổi lên chống lại sưu cao thuế nặng , nên Hồ phải đưa
quân đội tới đàn áp . Khoảng 6 ngàn nông dân , không vơ trang , đă
bị tàn sát .
Sau khi đă củng cố được Miền Bắc rồi , Trung Ương đảng Bộ Đảng Cộng
Sản Việt Nam họp tại Hà nội ngày 13/03/1959 đưa ra quyết định phải
có hành động chống lại Miền Nam Việt Nam , hợp lực với những cán
binh nằm vùng đă ở lại Miền Nam sau khi Pháp thất trận năm 1954 .
Nhiệm vụ loại bỏ các nhà lănh đạo tại Miền Nam , thanh toán tất cả
những ai có thân nhân phục vụ , trong quân lực VNCH , các nhân viên
dân chính , cảnh sát , hoặc tất cả những ai không chịu đóng thuế cho
chúng .
Một du kích quân VC bị bắt đă cho biết các hoạt động của nhóm 8
người của y tại các làng mạc miền Nam như sau : Lần đầu tiên chúng
tôi vào làng này , chúng tôi đă hạ sát 4 người đàn ông mà huyện uỷ
của chúng tôi nói họ là những phần tử phản động rất nguy hiểm đối
với chúng tôi . Một người đă theo Pháp , tham gia vào trận chiến
chống lại chúng tôi và rồi bây giờ lại ủng hộ chính quyền miền Nam .
Một người khác đă có cảm t́nh với quân đội chính phủ và 2 người khác
là địa chủ và họ đă bị chặt đầu .
Trung Tướng Walt cũng cho biết về chính sách cách mạng của Việt Cộng
khi chúng vào 2 ngôi làng khác . Trong một trường hợp , một em bé
gái 15 tuổi đă cung cấp tin tức của Việt Cộng cho toán TQLC của
Tướng Walt , em đó sau này bị VC bắt cóc đem vào rừng , hành hạ ,
tra tấn trước khi chặt đầu em , như để cảnh cáo cho những người khác
trong làng . Những kẻ sát nhân kia không ai khác là người anh ruột
của em bé gái nạn nhân , cùng với 2 đồng chí của y .
John Hubbell & Nguyễn Hữu Nguyên
Life story of a former Vietnamese boat people refugee
Letter to my
children and grandchildren
What now, Mama?
Wicked maneuvers of political games by Ho Chi Minh and the CPV
The Battle of Kontum
The Soul of Vietnam - Audio
Ever since you came
Night of the Flowered
Lanterns
The Passionate
Heart of a Father
I have already gone..
Soldier Excellence Award
Tomorrow I will go...
Trip to Vietnam Revives Hatred of Communism
Colonel NGUYỄN MẠNH TƯỜNG
The true about the Vietnam war
Letter to Descendants
Conical leaf hat
Touched by an Angel
Portland photographer behind viral Ferguson rally 'hug photo' knew
'this kid was special'
Cherries – A Vietnam War novel
The Blood-Red Hands of Ho Chi Minh
Carl Vinson Officer Receives Writing Award
Remembering the fallen
History of South Vietnam Marine Corps
Captain James Van Thach