WORLD James Baldwin Defends i OUTLOOK Stokely Carmichael
Vol. 6, No. 10 March 15, 1968 How the City of Hue Was ‘Saved’
Battles for ‘Student Power’ in Italy
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HOW THE CITY OF HUE WAS "SAVED"
More and more details of the "liberation" of Hue are filtering into the press. With each new item, the picture becomes grimmer.
Two dispatches in the March 4 and March 5 issues of The Christian Science Monitor (Boston), sent by Beverly Deepe from the scene in Hue, provide stomachturning items about the "looting, vandalism and souvenir hunting by Vietnamese Government troops and American marines" during the 26-day battle.
"What the fighting did not destroy in the city, the plundering did," one informed source told her.
"The looting was bad," according to a "reliable source" whom Miss Deepe does not identify. "Even the American houses were stripped bare. I wouldn't point my finger at who did it, but I'd certainly like to know. There was guilt on a lot of sides. The enemy was driven back from the American houses on the south side, and then all the clothes were taken -- and things like shaving material, razors. It was just incredible."
"T can understand if the troops were cold in the damp, drizzly weather, they'd take some booze from the cupboard, or a:blanket, but TV sets, cameras, typewriters, no. Just amazing things disappeared."
It is to be noted that this reliable source did not accuse "the enemy" of plundering and looting in this fashion. He specified his own boozing troops and allies, representing the "free world." His amazement, however, is not quite un~ derstandable. After all, the troops were merely expressing the spirit of free enterprise which U.S. imperialism is defending and trying to advance on the Asian mainland.
On the south side of the Perfume River, which runs through Hue, the looting during the early days of the fighting proceeded quite systematically. An American marine told Miss Deepe: "The ARVN [Army, Republic of Vietnam] would follow the marines as they cleared an area and would ask if a house or building had been secured. If it had, they'd go in and take everything they could carry. If it wasn't -- they'd sit down and wait for us to clear out the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] and then they'd go in and loot it."
At first, reports Miss Deepe, the Saigon command was "reluctant to use artillery against its own properties" which had been taken by the fighters of the National Liberation Front. Later, perhaps under pressure from the American command, although Miss Deepe does not indicate this, "the Army officers called in the heavy fire power on their own homes and offices." The troops under their command, after the positions had been taken, "meandered around looting and plundering the homes of their own top command and senior governmental employees." This occurred sometimes in the presence of officers.
"Even in front of television cameras and their own officers ARVN troopers drove up two half-ton military trucks and began loading them with their war booty, including refrigerators, tables and chairs, sofas, television sets, and great bundles of clothes and kitchenware. Even before the former Imperial Palace had been swept clean of North Vietnamese troops, ARVN soldiers, ten blocks away, began breaking down the huge steel-grill doors of the shops along the main street of the north side. Goods from camera shops, the city's main movie house, small grocery stores, tailor shops, and stationery stores were heaped onto Vietnamese Army trucks, or the backs of bicycles, Cyclos, and Hondas commandeered by the soldiers.
"Much of the activity of the marines, which seemed less blatant and widespread than that of Vietnamese Government troopers, involved making immediate use of bedding, mattresses, water, food, liquor, and kitchenware -- and then ‘leaving the home looking like a pigpen,' as one source explained."
Being looted was not all that the people of Hue had to pay for being "liberated" by the forces of the Pentagon. Their city was smashed to rubble.
"Some compared the battle ruins of Hue to the photographs of Stalingrad, Warsaw, and Berlin in World War II," reports Miss Deepe.
"Some described sections of this once-imperial capital as 'a Hollywood version of the Alamo.'
"Some said the spotty damage to the turrets, ramparts, and moat bridges of the once palatial citadel fortress evoked an image of medieval warfare not witnessed by the world since the Dark Ages. And some American marine veterans said Hue was the worst city destruction they had seen in three major wars spanning a quarter of a century.
"'TJhe damage to Seoul in the Korean war was less than and different from that of Hue,' one veteran sergeant explained. 'In Seoul, armies of both sides retreated or advanced through the city, but didn't fight within it like in Hue.
"'Even the destruction to the cities of Okinawa during World War II was different -- because they were smaller and more scattered,' he said. ‘But, if you put all the cities of Okinawa together, the damage in World War II would look something like Hue today."
As the fighting increased in fury in Hue, Miss Deepe continues, the people fled the city or holed up in makeshift refugee camps.
"With peopleless streets, the city took on an eerie day-time appearance of one vast cemetery. At night when illumination flares were popped for defensive lighting, the city took on an even more macabre, shadow semblance of a weird science-fiction world of charred homes, hit-and-run graves near cabbage patches, and bombed-out citadel turrets....
"Virtually every home, office, shop in the city, if not devastated by heavy Communist and allied weaponry, was subsequently ravaged by plundering, looting, and vandalism. At the peak of the battle, the whole population of 113,000 was at one time or another classified as refugees and sought dole-outs of meager food from the Vietnamese Army."
Even in the American military conmand, certain individuals expressed shock at what happened in Hue.
Miss Deepe quotes an American officer as explaining: "More and more, when you see the cost of this war for the Vietnamese, you wonder if it is really worth it."
And an American major, standing on the jet-length airstrip of Phu Bai outside of Hue, as combat aircraft landed and took off every 27 minutes with rice supplies for Hue and ammunition for Khe Sanh, shook his head and explained:
"You should see the civilian cas-
ualties coming in here -- old women and
little kids. These are really touching
sights. I stood here and watched the
Vietnamese troops unload rice for the
refugees in Hue, and they break two or
three sacks each planeload so they can
steal it for themselves. I don't know
what can be done about Vietnam now."
Not all the U.S. troops acted in
the traditional style of imperialist
locusts. A marine, surveying the battle
damage while Communist mortars exploded
into villas 75 meters from him, said,
according to Miss Deepe: "What a pity.
It's such a pretty city. I didn't think
such rich people lived in Vietnam."
As for the balance sheet in mili-
tary and political terms, Miss Deepe is
of the opinion that the National Liber-
ation Front lost heavily but the Saigon
forces "lost also, and may well become
the chief victim of the campaign in the
long run."
"More important," she continues,
"the Vietnamese Army, despite individual
acts of heroism, seemed to lose what it
had sought to be for the last 15 years --
simply an army. Militarily, it had not
secured the city. In a few places, North
Vietnamese units marched four abreast in
company formation into the city. Reliable
sources report the government forces
barely succeeded in securing its own di-
vision headquarters in the citadel.
"Politically, the Vietnamese armed
forces in Hue manifested the most glaring,
constant contradiction of the war -- it
helped reconquer the city and then pro-
ceeded to damage it further by looting
and plundering. Their armed forces had,
in effect, nullified its prime political
mission -- to reestablish law and order --
and instead simply added to the anarchy
and destruction."
VIETNAMESE FREEDOM FIGHTERS SET UP REVOLUTIONARY