"Cherries" A Vietnam War Novel

Written by Bernie Weisz/Historian-Vietnam War Pembroke Pines, Florida U.S.A. contact e mail: BernWei1@aol.com Title of Review: The Price of War: Wondering One Time Or Another If You Would Ever Make It Home Alive And In One Piece! I am not quite sure where to start with John Podlaski's blockbuster book "Cherries", a fictionalized account of his 1970 to 1971 tour as a foot soldier in South Vietnam. As an avid reader of many historical memoirs, both fiction and autobiographical, rarely have I found one as in depth and revealing as Mr. Podlaski's work. Thirty years in the making, it was originally written in a first person format. "Cherries" was started in 1979 and ground to a frustrating halt ten years later. It sat dormant until 2009, where Mr. Podlaski, with renewed verve, finally took it to task to complete it. At the advice of his publisher to change the story to a third person fictional approach, and the technical computer dexterity of his daughter, Nicole, the writing was first converted from carbon paper to Atari floppy disks and finally to Microsoft Word. "Cherries" is now available to the public. Regardless of the format, Mr. Podlaski takes the reader, through the protagonist of John Podlaski, of his personal tour conveying his impressions of a war America currently prefers to forget. This historical gem will not let this happen. Through an incredible, larger than life manuscript, Mr. Podlaski reminds us that the jungle warfare against huge communist forces in Vietnam was a deadly and unique challenge to our U.S. forces. It is made clear in "Cherries" that the limited American forces faced an unlimited number of Communist troops who had the incomparable advantage of a sanctuary for their replacements beyond the 18th parallel. With the memory of the 1950-1953 Korean War debacle, the U.S. government granted this sanctuary fearing that any military action beyond it would cause reprisals by Communist China. In South Vietnam, our troops could not distinguish enemy from friendly Vietnamese. Within the storyline, the reader finds that a village could be friendly by day, and enemy by night. It was a battlefield without boundaries. A secret supply route in Laos, known as the "Ho Chi Minh Trail," funneled a constant arms supply to the enemy. The jungle provided the perfect cover for the Communists, constantly posing ambushes from the rear and flanks of our troops. Bayonet and gun butt, hand to hand fighting was frequent. Capture by the enemy could mean torture and a communist prison camp. The constant unbearable heat, with high humidity, enervated our troops. Prior to John Podlaski's arrival in South Vietnam, the U.S. had become involved in the S.E. Asian conflict under dubious circumstances. The alleged August, 1964 attack of two U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the South China Sea brought on the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" giving then President Lyndon B. Johnson a free hand to commit American troops to defend South Vietnam's fledgling democracy. However, the South Vietnamese political situation crippled their war efforts. Bitterly opposed political factions of Buddhists verses Catholics caused the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem by a military coup, whose leaders then could not unify the country. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the drumbeat of communist propaganda split the citizens of this country, especially our youth. Mr. Podlaski brings this point to light at the beginning of his story. He describes that when a soldier would begin his trek to South Vietnam from the Overseas Processing Terminal in Oakland, California. There, masses of hippies and former soldiers picketed against the war. They would plead with Vietnam bound soldiers to quit the military and refuse to fight this war. Despite all these odds, U.S. forces had practically knocked out the North Vietnamese in South Vietnam by mid 1966 when new and highly trained North Vietnamese Communist forces poured into South Vietnam. Such was the situation when the January, 1968 Tet Offensive occurred. A cease-fire began on January 30, 1968 for the Vietnamese new year of Tet, which falls on the first new moon of January. On January 31, 1968 the Viet Cong broke their cease-fire and attacked many cities and provinces throughout South Vietnam. In Saigon, a small number of Viet Cong troops were able to reach the American Embassy grounds, but did not gain entry into the embassy itself. In the Northern part of South Vietnam, the city of Hue was taken over by the V. C. and executions of city officials and their families took place. The initial reporting indicated the number of people executed was in the thousands (2,300 persons executed in and around Hue during the Tet Offensive). Saigon was the center for most if not all of the news agencies that were covering the war in South Vietnam. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was the first time, during the war, that actual street fighting took place in the major cities. Rear support personnel and MP's did the initial fighting by American troops until support from infantry and armor could arrive. These men did an outstanding job in defending the cities, airfields and bases along with the embassy. This is incredible considering the fact that over 2.5 million U.S. men and women served in Vietnam during the entire war (1959 to 1975) but only 10% of that were in the infantry and actually, as Podlaski put's it "humped the boonies." The American news media captured this street fighting on tape in addition to the attack on the American Embassy. This new offensive was immediately brought into the homes of American families through reporting by television and the press. The sensationalism of this reporting brought forth a misrepresentation of the actual facts that took place during the Tet Offensive of 1968. The reports led the American people to the false perception that we were losing the war in Vietnam and that the Tet Offensive was a major victory for North Vietnam. This was not the case. The reality was that the VC suffered high casualties and were no longer considered a fighting force. Their ranks had to be replaced by North Vietnamese regulars. The civilian population of South Vietnam was indifferent to both the current regime of president Nguyen Van Thieu in South Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The civilian population, for the most part, did not join with the VC during the Tet Offensive. Bui Tin, who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnamese Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, gave the Wall Street Journal an interview following the Tet Offensive. During this interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy", referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. Furthermore, he stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement." Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin asserted that: "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Mr. Tin further declared that General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commanding general of the North Vietnamese Army, had advised him the 1968 Tet Offensive had been a tremendous defeat. After the 1968 Tet offensive, the military defeat of North Vietnam ironically became a political victory for North Vietnam because of U.S. anti-war demonstrations and the sensationalism of the news media. The North Vietnamese interpreted the U.S. reaction to these events as the weakening of America's resolve to win the war. The North Vietnamese believed that victory could be theirs, if they stayed their course. From 1969 until the end of the war, over 20,000 American soldiers lost their lives in a war that the U.S. no longer had the resolve to win. The sensationalism by the American news media and the anti-war protests following the 1968 Tet Offensive gave hope to Communist North Vietnamese, strengthening their belief that their will to succeed was greater than ours. Surreptitiously avoiding a successful resolution at the January, 1972 Paris Peace Conference following the disastrous defeat of the 1968 Tet Offensive, they used stalling tactics as another tool to inflame U.S. politics. This delaying tactic once again ignited further anti-war demonstrations. Militarily, America won the war on the battlefield but lost it back home on the college campuses and in the city streets. John Podlaski's story started in 1970, where America was in the process of what President Nixon called "Vietnamization." This was the President's policy of gradually returning the primary responsibility for conducting the war to the South Vietnamese. As US troops withdrew, South Vietnamese forces were increased in size and received additional training and equipment, with the ultimate goal being complete U.S. departure of the war. The South Vietnamese would be left to stand alone in their civil war with the Communists. John Podlaski's emphasis was on the soldiers who recently arrived in South Vietnam, that fought in triple canopy jungles of Vietnam. They were naive young recruits, just graduating from high school within the past year. Dubbed "F.N.G's or "Cherries" by the veterans, these men found themselves in the middle of a situation never imagined in their wildest dreams. As Podlaski emphatically stated in the book: "I guess you really had to be there to understand." As opposed to the ticker tape parades that U.S. servicemen were given upon their return from the W.W. II battlefields of the Far East and Europe, his terse remark in his epilogue spoke volumes upon his protagonist's return from the war: "There were no speeches or parades. One night you're getting shot at and looking at the bodies of your dead friends, and then two days later, you're sitting on your front porch, watching the kids play in the street and the cars drive by. There was no transition period." Throughout Podlaski's book, the general theme is for no U.S. grunt to be the last American to die in a war not sought for a victorious conclusion. The facts of American conduct of the war in 1970 to 1971 are interesting. As stated earlier, severe communist losses during the Tet Offensive allowed President Nixon to begin troop withdrawals. His Vietnamization plan, also known as the "Nixon Doctrine," was to build up the South Vietnamese Army (known as " ARVN") so that they could take over the defense of South Vietnam on their own. At the end of 1969, Nixon went on national TV and announced the following: "I am tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year. This will bring a total reduction of 265,500 men in our armed forces in Vietnam below the level that existed when we took office 15 months ago." On October 10, 1969, Nixon ordered a squadron of 18 B-52's armed with nuclear bombs to fly to the border of Soviet airspace in an attempt to convince the Soviet Union, North Vietnam's main supporter along with Communist China, that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War. Nixon also pursued negotiations and ordered General Creighton Abrams, who replaced William Westmoreland, to shift to smaller operations, aimed at communist logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. The former tactic of "Search and Destroy" was abandoned. Détente with the Soviet Union the Republic of China was also pursued. Easing global tensions, détente resulted in nuclear arms reduction on the part of both superpowers. Regardless, Nixon was snubbed as the Soviet Union and Red China continued to covertly supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy-nine. Nixon appealed to the "silent majority" of Americans to support the war. With revelations in the media of the "My Lai Massacre," where a U.S. Army platoon commanded by Lt. William Calley raped and killed civilians, and the 1969 "Green Beret Affair" where eight Special Forces soldiers, including the 5th Special Forces Group Commander were arrested for the murder of a suspected double agent, national and international outrage was provoked and the American anti war movement gained strength. Starting in 1970, American troops were being taken away from South Vietnamese border areas where much more killing took place, and instead positioned along the coast and interior, which is one reason why casualties in 1970 were less than half of 1969's total casualties. In Cambodia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, this nation's leader, had proclaimed Cambodian neutral since 1955. This was a lie, as the Communists used Cambodian soil as a base and Sihanouk tolerated their presence to avoid being drawn into a wider regional conflict. Under pressure from Washington, however, he changed this policy in 1969. The Vietnamese communists were no longer welcome. President Nixon took the opportunity to launch a massive secret bombing campaign, called Operation Menu, against their sanctuaries along the Cambodia/Vietnam border. This violated a long succession of pronouncements from Washington supporting Cambodian neutrality. In 1970, Podlaski first set foot in South Vietnam., and in Cambodia Prince Sihanouk was deposed by his pro-American prime minister Lon Nol. Cambodia's borders were closed, and both U.S. and ARVN forces launched joint incursions into Cambodia to attack North Vietnamese/Viet Cong bases and buy time for South Vietnam. The invasion of Cambodia sparked massive nationwide U.S. outcry and protests. Public outrage peaked in the U.S. when 4 students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University during an anti war rally in Ohio. The Nixon administration reacted indifferently to this, and was publicly viewed as callous and uncaring, providing additional impetus for the anti-war movement. In 1971 the "Pentagon Papers" were leaked to The New York Times. The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions. The Supreme Court ruled that its publication was legal. Although not mentioned in "Cherries", with U.S. support, The ARVN launched "Operation Lam Son 719" in February 1971, designed to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. Similar to the sham of Cambodian neutrality, ""supposedly" neutral Laos had long been the scene of a secret war. After meeting resistance, ARVN forces retreated in a headlong, confused rout. Shamefully, they fled along roads littered with their own dead. When they ran out of fuel, South Vietnamese soldie