April 2013

44 Years Ago…

Remembering The Vietnam War

44 years ago today, April 19, 1969, I flew from Binh Thuy in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta to Tan Son Nhut air base in Saigon to meet with our intelligence officers to discuss their reports of US bombings in the Delta and compare them with my eyewitness reports of what appeared to be the same bombings. Their reports identified dozens and dozens, sometimes hundreds of VC (Viet Cong) dead. My eyewitness reports revealed they were ALL civilians, more than half very small children. They agreed that their reports were very suspicious and thanked me for unraveling the mystery of how their reports could reveal VC units destroyed by bombings one day, then in a couple of days that same VC unit re-appearing in another location. Mystery solved. The bombs were killing inhabited villages, not VC units.

Photo: I stand next to my jeep at Binh Thuy getting ready to board a C-123 for Tan Son Nhut, April 19, 1969. My life hasn’t been the same since. - S. Brian Willson