By spring 1965, large swaths of the South Vietnamese countryside had fallen under Vietcong control. Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, a man who prided himself on his analytical skills, wrote in a memorandum dated March 24, 1965, that “The situation in general is bad and deteriorating. The VC have the initiative. Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers – especially those with relatives in rural areas. The Hop Tac [pacification] area around Saigon is making little progress; the Delta stays bad; the country has been severed in the north. GVN control is shrinking to the enclaves, some burdened with refugees.” [Herring, Pentagon Papers, 116] McNaughton’s reference to the demoralization of ARVN troops with relatives in rural areas is instructive. The morale of the ARVN began to plummet because South Vietnamese troops found it increasingly difficult to visit family members in the many hamlets that had recently been lost to the Vietcong. Continue Reading »
In December and January 2006, I visited Vietnam to examine the environmental effects of the conflict known to the Vietnamese as “The American War” and to the citizens of the United States as “The Vietnam War.” I spent six weeks crisscrossing the former country of South Vietnam. I traveled from the soggy Ca Mau Peninsula to the still-denuded DMZ. One day while at the southernmost tip of the Mekong Delta, I rented a motorized sampan and hired a Vietnamese guide to take me into the region of the U Minh forest. I wanted to view firsthand the present state of that forest. On another day, I hiked into the weed-covered and shell-strewn former U.S. Special Forces Base at Plei Mei. 
