Vietnam, Max Hastings and Curious Absences

Max Hastings' latest book must have been a challenge to write, as so many books have been written about the Vietnam War already. Hastings has a reputation as a right-winger - Private Eye calls him "Hitler" - yet he has tried very hard to produce an even-handed account of the conflict, and how it affected all the nations involved. This is creditworthy of itself, as, like he says of French and American historians of the subject, they:

"...write as if it was their own nation's story. Yet this was predominantly an Asian tragedy...around forty Vietnamese died for every American".
 Instead of a bare chronology, Hastings sets out to answer the question: "What was the war like?" And in this, he succeeds very well.

Digressing somewhat, I need to provide some personal reflections. I spent the Vietnam war years in the comparative safety of Southport, Lancashire, and, in a sense, aged along with the conflict. I was 25 when Hastings, on his own admission, lost his nerve and joined the ignominious helicopter- borne evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon in 1975. Like most of my contemporaries, I was affected by the music, art and culture of the late 60s and early 70s, and when the Vietnam War ended, I felt as if something integral to my life had vanished. Even with my nascent political consciousness, I recognised that to be a merciful thing.

Not everyone felt like that. In the late 70s, I asked a merchant seaman ("Jack"), whom I knew had sailed to Viet Nam many times during the war, what he thought of it all. His answer startled me:
"I loved it!".

In brief, Jack had done very well out of the war, making money hand over fist, delivering cargoes to the South Vietnamese regime. Living in New Zealand at the time, he had, he claimed, beaten up many anti-war students, whom he saw as trying to end his lucrative lifestyle. He nurtured an abiding rancour for opponents of the war:

 "Peaceniks and reporters - they ruined a good war!"

I leave the reader to form his or her own opinion of the underlying morality (or lack of it) of Jack's views, but we'll hear from him again later.

Returning to the book, Hastings begins with the inescapable fact that the history of the Vietnamese people has not been a happy one. They have known occupation by the Chinese (1000+years; finally kicked out 1426), the French (1883 - 1953), and numerous Emperors and warlords before the USA arrived to "help" defend South Vietnam against communist aggression. The USA might have noticed that this was a people who would not take kindly to foreign interference. Some voices in the US administrations recognised this, but were ignored.

One noticeable absence from the impressively comprehensive list of authors at the end of the book is that of John Pilger. This is surprising, as Pilger was a frequent commentator on Vietnam, during and after the war. In fact, Pilger was evacuated from the US Saigon embassy in 1975 at the same time as Hastings. Pilger has written much about the war and its aftermath, and it is curious how Hastings nowhere quotes him. Nonetheless, John Pilger is a conspicuous absence in Hastings' book, perhaps because he is less "objective".

Not that Hastings is any the less scathing about American "assistance" to South Viet Nam than Pilger. He acknowledges that the US intervention was justified by what would now be called "fake news" - the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, where North Vietnamese torpedo boats had supposedly attacked a US spy ship (they hadn't) and that the "helpful" landing of US Marines at Da Nang in 1964 happened without the prior knowledge of the South Vietnamese government. Pilger describes this as an "invasion", but then, this is not about him.
Where Hastings excels is in his depiction of combat, both on the ground and in the air and in relating his descriptions to the overall strategy of both sides. He recognises that both sides fought well at times and disastrously badly at others. The North Vietnamese supremo is recognised as Lee Duan (not the then elderly Ho Chi Minh), an implacable and utterly ruthless member of the Politburo who authorised the 1968 Tet Offensive, which was a military disaster for the Viet Cong, if a political victory for the North Vietnamese cause. Nor does Hastings spare US commanders who, in his words, often:"...exhibited folly of Crimean proportions". Hastings makes it clear that both sides were pitiless in their destruction of the environment and its impact upon civilians. The NVA and NLF pillaged villages for food supplies; the Americans destroyed whole areas of jungle and crop growing land with Agent Orange.
Hastings is scrupulously fair when it comes to the atrocities that were committed by both sides. The Viet Cong were merciless in their treatment of civilians they considered traitors, but, says Hastings, their atrocities were not featured in the Western press, whereas US and South Vietnamese atrocities were. Anyone who took an interest in the war remembers the naked little girl scorched by napalm, the Viet Cong soldier shot in the head by Saigon's police chief during the Tet Offensive and the ongoing atrocity that the US administration never realised caused them the most international and domestic opprobrium: the bombing of North Viet Nam. The poet, Adrian Mitchell, summed up this (largely ineffective but expensive and murderous) campaign in his classic poem "To Whom it May Concern":
"You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about".
Adrian Mitchell, along with the legion of poets, writers and musicians who opposed the war in Vietnam, is another curious absence from the book. I can appreciate that Hastings wanted to write a strictly political and military history, but, as I know myself, the reaction to the war led to a huge surge in what was called the "60s counter-culture", with the appearance of the hippie movement in western countries and great numbers of anti-war demonstrations. The war influenced the writing of poems and lyrics which were often masterly in their attacks on the war. Who can forget the lines in the song by Country Joe Macdonald? :
"Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box"
When Joan Baez sang "We Shall Overcome" in the 60s, it was a protest against the war in Vietnam as well as part of the struggle for Civil Rights in the USA. Hastings would probably say (rightly, if not relevantly) that such dissent would not have been tolerated in North Viet-Nam, but the poems, songs and protests gave focus and encouragement to all who opposed the war. As Jonathan Steele comments, in his Guardian review of Hastings' book:
"Most of those who protested against the war from the start saw it for what it was: an imperial effort to control the destiny of a small and distant country that was no threat to Americans, even if it “went communist” or came under Russian or Chinese control."
Relating to the question of Viet Cong atrocities, I recall Tariq Ali being questioned about them after the so-called Battle of Grosvenor Square, in 1968. He said this by way of reply, as far as I can remember:
"We dismiss them (VC atrocities) as irrelevant. The French Resistance committed what may have been thought atrocities, but it was the cause that mattered"
He had a point. As any Marxist would say: there is a difference between the violence of the oppressed and that of the oppressor. And Herbert Marcuse did say that there is a difference between Red Terror and White Terror; between defending an old order with violence and the overthrowing of that order. In the case of Viet Nam, I believe the whole issue to be irrelevant; the war itself was an atrocity that could have been avoided. John Pilger has said that had the US not intervened, Vietnam would have become an independent Marxist non-aligned state, as was Yugoslavia; Hastings says this is a mistaken view, as the North Vietnamese leadership were committed Stalinists; I say that anything would have been better than this horrible conflict.
The American justification for this disaster was that they were "helping" the South Vietnamese defeat Communism. When US troops went into action, post-1964, they came to form a generally low opinion of the ARVN (South Vietnamese troops). The bulk of the fighting fell upon the American soldiers and marines, and they referred to their allies as "dinks" and "gooks" - the same words they used for their VC and NVA enemies.. They forgot that they, the US troops, would serve a fixed-term tour of duty and then go home, back to "The World" on "The Great Big Bird to Paradise". And let's not forget: the Viet Nam War ended for the US military on March 29, 1973, when the last combat troops left altogether.The ARVN, on the other hand, however much they suffered and fought, had nothing to look forward to but more fighting, as long as the US continued to support the South Vietnamese regime. No incentive there. But it is remarkable how some ARVN formations continued to fight well after the American withdrawal, as Hastings, to his credit, makes clear. Even when things fell apart in 1975 and the PAVN (People's Army Of Viet Nam) drove on Saigon, some South Vietnamese formations fought with the utmost gallantry, while most ARVN units disintegrated alongside them. It has taken a right-of-centre Englishman to publicly acknowledge their doomed bravery.
There are villains in this book a-plenty: Richard Nixon, who kept American troops in Viet Nam, even when he knew the war was lost. 21 000 troops were killed while he procrastinated about their withdrawal. Lee Duan, who drove his people to suffer and to be slaughtered for the cause in which many did not believe. While young North-Vietnamese died in their thousands fighting in the south, Lee Duan's children were safely attending university in Moscow. The driving force behind the NVA/Viet Cong war effort owed more to nationalist motives than international Communism. As one ex-PAVN soldier said recently on TV: "We weren't fighting for Karl Marx, but to drive out all foreigners". But, thankfully, there are heroes and humanitarians: the North Vietnamese prison guard who lost two relatives in an American bombing raid on Hanoi, yet still shook hands and wished well to US prisoners of war who were released two days later. The boxer, Muhammad Ali (not mentioned in the book), who refused military service and risked imprisonment for his stand - "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger". And the unbelievably courageous helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, who rescued Vietnamese civilians at risk of being murdered during the My Lai massacre, 1968, and who "raised hell" for years afterwards about this crime committed by Charlie Company.
This is a long, powerful and disturbing book, which I recommend to anyone interested in post-WW2 history. it provides insight and information into the actions and motives of the prime movers in the conflict. My only (mild) criticism is that I would have liked to see further insight into the motivation of the fighters on both sides, and what underlying factors drove the NLF and NVA in particular on to so many sacrifices. I think I can provide some insight here, with another anecdote from Jack the sailor, mentioned above.
Again in the late 1970s, Jack was talking about an incident during one of many US "search and destroy" missions in Viet Nam. A group of GIs happened upon  an old drinks vendor and demanded coke to drink. The old man refused, presumably because he wanted payment. One GI raised his rifle and gave the old man "two in the chest". Jack was smiling as he told me this, and he clearly approved of the GI's action. He saw no problem with this killing, as, said Jack, the GIs were fighting for the freedom of the old man's country. The contradictions and immorality of this view were completely lost on Jack. Anyone seeking to understand how the United States alienated so many Vietnamese can learn something from Jack's brief anecdote.
Was anything learned from the US debacle in Viet Nam? The USSR learned nothing, as the world saw when they invaded Afghanistan. The resulting war, and eventual withdrawal, became known as "Russia's Viet Nam". We British, of course, beat many imperial retreats post-WW2. None, happily, were as bloody and destructive as Viet Nam and Afghanistan - although every bit as inglorious. As for the USA, let's fast forward to the early noughties. After the invasion of Iraq, I clearly remember seeing on TV a black GI haranguing a group of Iraqi women:
 "We are here for your f-----g freedom!"
Plus ca change.

The Armistice, Remembrance and Me

The Hounslow War Memorial

I must own up: I have no personal connection to the Armistice of 1918. As far as I know, no forebears of mine died in the conflict. In fact, I don't even know of any who served in the armed forces in WW1. Nevertheless, I have had an abiding interest in that war, having read a number of books on the subject, even when I was too young to fully understand the surrounding issues. I seldom talk to anyone about WW1, though, as I don't like anoraks myself. These are the types who have an enthusiasm for some activity, eg, Jazz or sport, and at every opportunity will bore you by diverting conversation to that subject. If you have never met anyone like this, believe me, they exist.

In the 60s, WW1 came to signify meaningless carnage - the image of Tommies going over the top to be slaughtered epitomised the futility of war. An "anti-war" spirit towards the Great War pervaded popular culture, with productions such as "Oh, What a Lovely War!" and a revived interest in the poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two of the greatest war poets in any language. The contemporary poet, Roger McGough, expressed the prevailing view of many in his poem "On Picnics":

"at the goingdown of the sun

and in the morning

I try to remember them

but their names are ordinary names

and their causes are thighbones

tugged excitedly from the soil

by frenchchildren

on picnics"

This does not mean that Roger McGough was himself callously indifferent to the fallen of WW1. On the contrary, anyone has read his poetry will know that he is deeply compassionate towards the victims of war, even writing about his own family members who suffered war's after effects. But this poem does sum up the attitude of many in the 60s - WW1 happened a long time ago; it was futile; the men and women who fell died for nothing, and they, like the war itself, should be forgotten.

This has been an enduring viewpoint, seen in films such as "Tunes of Glory", "The Trench" and "Joyeux Noel". It can be heard in 80s songs like "Stop the Cavalry" (Jona Lewie), "The Children's Crusade" (Sting) and seen in the classic TV series of the 90s, "Blackadder Goes Forth".

What no-one took into account were the thoughts and feelings of survivors of the Great War. This view dismissed them as helpless victims - suckers, in other words. I cannot remember a single TV or radio programme that asked them whether they thought their hardship and sacrifice had been worth it or not; they were seemingly dismissed as being obsolete and irrelevant. Lyn Macdonald, in her marvellous book "To The Last Man", commented on this:

"In recent years I have listened in the company of (Great) war veterans to speeches which were kindly meant and expressed with real sincerity but whose sentiments have caused them pain...they realised long ago how difficult it can be to explain the concepts of loyalty, as they understood them..."

One positive result of the recent Armistice commemorations, as well as all other such events since 2014, has been to awaken a wider interest on the part of the general public towards those who fought in our name in WW1. There has been a greater debate on the rights and wrongs of Britain's entry to the conflict, and a boost in personal remembrance at public events and on social media. Many families have discovered more about long-forgotten forebears and learned to appreciate their sacrifice and suffering. Those forebears might have had "ordinary names", in Roger McGough's words, but they were people much like ourselves, in an extraordinary and nightmarish situation. It is as if, after the passage of a century, a barrier has been broken and a new bond has been formed.

For me, as far as I know, having no family members to remember, the barrier to the past was broken by my online work for Sefton Libraries: "Beyond the War Memorials", which I wrote about on April 29. Thanks to my work on the Waterloo and Seaforth War Memorial, and my investigations into the stories behind the names on that memorial, I had someone to remember. During the two minutes silence, I remembered them: Harold Joseph Wright, 14 years old, died on the Lusitania...Francis Zacharias, son of a German father and English mother...the gallant Walter Duncan, who escaped from German captivity...the brothers Andrew, Robert and Charles Cunningham, lost in France and Egypt...I thought of them all. A simple message on a wreath at Hounslow War Memorial summed up my feelings towards those newly important, if "ordinary" names:

And yet, while I now feel a much greater affinity and respect for our war dead, and fully appreciate the importance of commemorating the Armistice, I cannot help but reflect on the sadly unfulfilled hope of the combatants and survivors of 1914-18: that it would be the war to end wars. The violence went on in many places: Ireland, Turkey, Russia, Germany and the Baltic states. Warfare itself became even nastier, with civilians suffering an increased proportion of casualties. And, of course, the rise of Nazism in Germany led to WW2, partly, it is said, as a result of the terms imposed on the defeated Germans by the "victorious" Allies. But there was more to it than that. The C-in-C of US forces in France, General Pershing, said, in 1923:

"We never really let the Germans know who won the war. They are being told that their army was stabbed in the back, betrayed, that their army had not been defeated. The Germans never believed they were beaten. It will have to be done all over again.."

With the General's words in mind, I wrote this poem to mark the centenary of the 1918 Armistice:

ARMISTICE

Under fire from dawn,

We crouched in holes and slimy ditches

While spiteful bullets went buzzing overhead.

I prayed and sang with men and boys

Listening to the battle’s noise.

It stopped. Eleven a.m.

We sat for a while, bathing in silence,

Then slowly stood and cheered “The End”

And talked of going home again.

We sang “Goodbyeee” to sniper and shell,

Escapees from attritional hell.

Our foes stood up, side by side.

One German officer saluted and cried:

“Farewell, Tommy – we’ll meet again!”

And tried to control his wavering men.

The sun shone down with a friendly light

On souls emerging from endless night.

We shook their hands and said goodbye.

We drank a toast and wondered why

We’d had to fight.

They cheered, and marched off out of sight.

We drank more wine, and, gathered there,

The Padre led us all in prayer

For God to cause all wars to cease

And all mankind to live in peace.

But later, as I tried to sleep,

I thought long and I thought deep

Of the officer’s words before he went-

“We’ll meet again” – and what that meant.

The Tower of London, 11/11/2018. Photo by Bryan Morris.

"Maids in Hell" - Beirut to Park Lane

I was brought up with stories about William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833), pictured above. His campaign, along with other British abolitionists, led to the outlawing of the slave trade in the British Empire. He died about a month before the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act, yet he saw the beginning of the end of what he, and others, saw as an abhorrent institution. 

I wonder how Wilberforce would have reacted to a programme shown on the BBC three days ago - "Maids in Hell:Why Slavery?". It was a disturbing programme that dealt with the treatment of African and Filipina maids in the Middle East - specifically Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Abuse of such workers has been reported before, but this programme conducted some hard-hitting interviews with a Lebanese employment agency ( run by the urbane Maher Dumit),Emma Mburu, a formidable Kenyan senator opposed to the domestic worker trade and some heart-rending interviews with ex-maids who described, in graphic detail, the ill-treatment they had received at the hands of their Middle Eastern employers.

Of course, there are obvious differences between this form of "employment" (called "Kafala") and the slavery system that Wilberforce campaigned to abolish. These domestic maids are, in theory, paid for their services, and their contracts end after about two years. Instead, their passports are confiscated, they are not allowed to change jobs and, in Jordan at least, they are not allowed to have mobile phones.

If this were not bad enough, some (many?) Middle Eastern employers of maids have a habit of expecting far more from the maids than simple domestic duties. Human Rights Watch has described numerous cases of beatings and sexual abuse of maids. Rothna Begum interviewed 19 Tanzanian ex-maids, finding that:

"The women who described sexual harassment and assault said that male family members groped them, exposed themselves, chased them around the house, and entered their rooms late at night. Several described attempted rape. Twenty-year-old “Jamila A.” said all the men in the family she worked for in Oman, “even the old man,” assaulted her and hid her room keys so she could not lock her bedroom door."

The BBC programme showed this to be the tip of a very large iceberg. There are also many complaints of maids being forced to work 18-hour days, with no time off. Many never receive any salary at all. Small wonder, then, 10 000 maids fled from Saudi Arabia last year. No surprise, either, that 67% of domestic workers' deaths in Lebanon are caused by suicide or "falling from buildings". One ex-maid in the BBC programme said that she had risked her life escaping from a third-floor flat, preferring death to servitude at the hands of her employer. That might explain these deaths - 110 in Lebanon in 2016, averaging two a week. Most notorious of such cases is that of Joanna Demafelis, a Filipina who was murdered by her employers in Kuwait, stuffed into a freezer and not found for a year.

Maher Dumit, the agent featured in the programme, passed the comment that if Lebanese people were all bad, no maids would go there at all. An ignorant person might ask "Well, why do they go?". The answer is ludicrously simple. These maids are recruited from the poorest people in Third World countries: Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Philippines. In fact, the "recruiters" specialise in attracting the desperate of these lands. To provide for their families, these girls and women are prepared to travel thousands of miles to an uncertain future. That is why all domestic workers in the Middle East are there - to send money home. 

The programme ended on a melancholy note. A Kenyan maid, Mary Kibana, a married woman with four children, returned from Jordan with 100% burns. Before she, sadly, passed away, she said that she was caught in a fire in her employer's kitchen. All she remembered next was being found by her employer and kicked. After Mary's funeral, the then Senator Emma Mburu tried contacting a minister in the Kenyan government, who made a politician's answer to her impassioned appeal for action. Mary's family received no back salary and no compensation. Emma Mburu commented: "You feel useless".

A couple of years ago, I felt like that. The programme, rightly, focussed upon this problem at its worst - in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the problem exists right here in the UK, where many wealthy Middle Eastern families own property and, when visiting London, bring their domestic workers with them. They bring their nasty, abusive attitudes to their domestic workers as well. A UK-based group that campaigns for domestic workers brought here was quoted in The Guardian in 2017:

"Kalayaan’s data showed that 85% of domestic workers... reported psychological abuse. In addition, 63% said they had no access to regular food and 81% claimed they were not allowed out of the house; 83% said their employer took their passport, while 33% said they received no wages at all."

This was reported to Kalayaan by domestic workers who escaped from their employers. If accurate, and I have strong personal reasons for believing it to be, we have Middle Eastern slavery right here in London. I have no doubt that this happens in every European capital city and everywhere Middle Eastern employers are domiciled.

I have encountered this awful state of affairs at first hand. Several years ago, we had a runaway Filipina visit us here in Hounslow. She came because a friend of ours, who knew that I was, and remain, a long-standing member of Amnesty International, thought I could help in some way. And this lady - let's call her "Linda" - needed help. She had been brought to the UK by her Middle Eastern employer to work in the family flat in Mayfair. Linda committed some minor misdemeanour and was threatened by her employer. He said that he would punish her severely for her offence (I think she broke a plate) when they returned home. Wisely, Linda escaped with the help of some Filipinos, only to find herself in a dire situation. She had not heard of Kalayaan (neither had I), she had no passport and faced possible deportation to the Philippines, although she had seen a solicitor.

I tried to help. I phoned AI's head office, but they were unable to provide much assistance. As Linda was possibly facing deportation to the Philippines, where she was not at risk of torture or imprisonment, AI could not intervene. They did give me the phone number of the Refugee Council, but could do no more. I reported back to Linda, and her disappointment was palpable. Like Emma Mburu said: "You feel useless". I certainly did. 

There is, however, a happy ending. Linda has been allowed to stay in the UK, and is loving it here. After what she has been through, that's no surprise. I could not have secured that for her. I cannot change the dire economic situation that affects so many in the Philippines and Africa, still less can I provide an answer to why so many (not all) Middle Eastern employers are so abusive to domestic workers. The UN condemns this situation, but has little means of taking positive action. In spite of this, I wish I could do more.

One of far too many...