James G. Zumwalt

Every male member of my immediate family served in the Vietnam war.

But it was an event long after the guns fell silent on that country’s battlefields that triggered a change in my attitude about that conflict.  In 1988, my older brother, Elmo, died from Agent Orange-related cancers linked to his service as a Swift Boat commander during the Vietnam war.  In a bitter irony of that conflict for our family, it was the actions of my father, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., in ordering the spraying of Agent Orange along the river and canal banks of the Delta region when he commanded all US naval forces in Vietnam that sealed my brother’s fate.  For years after Elmo’s death, my brother’s loss embittered me towards the conflict and the enemy we had fought there.  As my father later took up the fight to win medical benefits for veterans exposed to Agent Orange and suffering from related cancers—a correlation not then recognized by the US Government—I stood on the sidelines.  When my father planned to go to Vietnam in 1994 to meet with the Vietnamese leadership to discuss conducting a joint study on Agent Orange, I had mixed emotions about joining him.  Little did I realize the impact that trip would have on how I came to view our former enemy.

After several days of meetings in Hanoi, I found my bitterness towards our former enemy growing as I sat across the table from those responsible for the deaths of so many Americans.  That anger grew until I met Nguyen Huy Phan, a Vietnamese war veteran and physician.  Ours was a one-on-one meeting.  He began our conversation by extending his condolences for the loss of my brother.  As we discussed the war and its impact, I could see tears in his eyes welling up.  I soon learned, he too had lost a brother in the war.  While I had had the benefit of being with my brother when he died, thus knowing how and when he passed, Phan did not.  He spent many years trying to locate his brother’s remains so they could be returned to the village of his birth for proper burial—a very important part of Vietnamese culture.

It was as Phan shared his story, I felt the change in my attitude about the war occur.  For the first time I asked myself, “Was the loss of a loved one any less devastating just because it took place on the other side of the battlefield?”  The obvious answer was “no.”  Two men—whom fate had placed on opposite sides of the battlefield—lost brothers they loved and were devastated by that loss.  It was through this experience I came to realize the stories that took place on the other side of the battlefield during the Vietnam conflict needed to be told—and made the commitment to do so. In late 1994, I began making numerous trips to Vietnam, eventually interviewing nearly 200 Vietnamese soldiers and their family members to learn as much as I could about the hardship and suffering they endured.  My interviews included the well known—such as General Vo Nguyen Giap (NVA Commander), General Dong Si Nguyen (Commander of the Ho Chi Minh Trail), General Tran Van Tra (Viet Cong Force Commander)—as well as the lesser known’s who endured most of that hardship.  The collective story they had to tell was one of intrigue, of patience, of ingenuity, of dedication and, most importantly, one with no option other than victory.  These stories, told in “Bare Feet, Iron Will,” share some unique insights about the war.  Some of these insights, told to Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss and Vietnam veteran Carl Batecchi, appear in their books, “They Marched Into Sunlight” and “A Doctor’s Vietnam Journal,” respectively.

The stories include insights about medical conditions—such as conducting brain surgery without anaesthesia; losing medical supplies to aerial attacks only to ingeniously replace them with materials freely discarded by US troops; doctors and nurses donating their own blood prior to surgery due to lack of refrigeration; soldiers pedalling bicycles, hooked up to generators, during surgeries conducted underground to provide lighting and electrical power for surgical tools; etc. 

They include insights about the Ho Chi Minh Trail—including the use of “invisible roads” dug out of riverbeds during the dry season and used at night so as not to leave convoy tread marks; “submarine bridges” built just under the waterline of a river to be invisible from the air, over which convoys crossed with foot guides; the evolution of the Trail from a footpath to an eventual logistical highway designed with truck stops.

They include insights on the Cu Chi Tunnel system—including the time-consuming digging by five man teams; the removal and hiding of excess soil in some very creative ways so as not to raise suspicions about tunnelling activity; the effective camouflaging of tunnel entries/exits so well that American troops sometimes inadvertently incorporated them into the temporary defensive positions they established. 

They include intriguing insights evolving into odd coincidences—such as what led a Vietnamese veteran to write a novel about the war praised by Western critics; such as an interview in which I would learn the interviewee had tried to kill my father; such as the earlier-than-realized first American casualty of the Vietnam conflict and what that incident would portend for US involvement.  

They include some very telling insights about Vietnam’s allies—including China, a country with which Vietnam has fought in almost every century since Hanoi’s independence, and how China sought at times to give the appearance of helping North Vietnam while not doing so; North Korea, which pressured Hanoi to allow it to send pilots to fight the Americans, only to have Hanoi send the Koreans home, and how an effort was made to hide this participation by burying North Korean pilots in an obscure cemetery.

As I embarked upon this effort to learn all I could about the personal experiences occurring on the enemy’s side of the battlefield, I was concerned about the willingness of North Vietnamese veterans, still subject to communist government control at the time of my interviews in 1994, to openly share their stories.  As “Bare Feet, Iron Will” reveals, my concern was unwarranted.

~ James Zumwalt

Book Summary

Prologue

People react differently to grief.  For the author, it turned to animosity, directed against not only the war but also the enemy against whom we had fought.  In 1994, traveling to Vietnam for the first time since the war, he met with Vietnamese leaders to discuss the Agent Orange issue.  In doing so, it provided him with the opportunity to learn about the conflict from the perspective of those who had fought it on the other side of the battlefield.  As these former enemy veterans began sharing their personal stories of hardship and tragedy—one of which was not too dissimilar from the author’s own—he was struck by a stark realization.  As difficult and tragic as the war had been for Americans who served, it had taken as much, if not greater, a toll on the Vietnamese.  In war, there are never winners—and Vietnam was no exception.  Returning to Vietnam more than 50 times to interview hundreds of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) veterans, in addition to Vietnamese civilians, the author obtained a better understanding as to the extent of our former enemy's suffering during that war.  The result was a metamorphosis, which changed his attitude towards a former foe.  "Bare Feet, Iron Will" became the vehicle by which he shares what this metamorphosis taught him.

Section One: Medical Care

Medical treatment for American wounded in Vietnam far surpassed anything the Vietnamese could provide for their wounded. The four chapters of this section provide insights into the problems that existed for the Vietnamese and the innovative solutions they applied. It provides the reader with an appreciation for the extreme hardship the enemy had no choice but to endure when such solutions simply were not available.

Section Two: Survivor's Luck

Faced for the most part with overwhelming technological, logistical and weapons superiority, the Vietnamese soldier found every day was a fight for survival—often with the odds stacked against him. In combat, many variables came into play to determine whether that fight met with success or failure. The four stories of this section focus on the role luck came to play in the storyteller's survival.

Section Three: The Civilian Toll

A tragedy of war is the inability to limit casualties to combatants alone. Until bombs are made smart enough to tell the difference between combatants and non-combatants, the loss of civilian lives will always be a reality of war.  In the Vietnam conflict, war encompassed an entire nation, claiming a heavy civilian toll in the process. Not until 1994 did Hanoi reveal the actual number of civilian casualties, estimated to be in excess of two million. In the four chapters of this section, the impact on Vietnam's civilian population is shared in the personal experiences of parents, siblings and children whose lives were forever changed.

Section Four: Patience

To the American soldier serving in Vietnam, time meant everything; to his Vietnamese counterpart, it meant nothing. While the combat tour for American soldiers was one year, the Vietnamese soldier never knew when his would allow him to return home—some spending the entire war at the front. Thus, to the Vietnamese soldier, time lost significance. All that mattered was that he survive today so he could fight tomorrow. The two chapters of this section focus, first, on how the Vietnamese determined early in the conflict that patience was an effective weapon to be used against the Americans (an accurate assessment, ironically based on flawed intelligence) and, second, on how patience was employed in a successful attack against a seeming impregnable major US facility.

Section Five: Ingenuity

It also became apparent to the Vietnamese early in the conflict that victory turned on their ability to counter US technology, especially in the air. The two chapters of this section focus on how the Vietnamese developed a very creative air defense system, how they studied US tactics to determine the best means to defeat the Americans and how, in one instance, Vietnamese ingenuity succeeded in bringing down a US aircraft without a shot having to be fired.

Section Six: The Missing-In-Action

While the MIA issue remains a very emotional one for Americans, there is little appreciation for Vietnam's MIA problem. Today, approximately 1,800 Americans remain unaccounted for—a number that pales by comparison to Vietnam's 300,000. The three chapters of this section share MIA/POW accounts on both sides of the battlefield, including the discovery by the author during his research of previously unknown information pertaining to one American MIA.

Section Seven: That's Entertainment

Just as USO shows were put on for American troops during the Vietnam war, Vietnamese soldiers periodically were treated to performances by troupes of entertainers who traveled the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  In many cases, unlike their US counterparts, these troupe members had to stop during a performance to take up arms against American attackers. The chapters in this section share personal stories of what life was like for the performers.

Section Eight: The Unexpected

Several interviews the author conducted resulted in an unanticipated ending. The most compelling of the four accounts in this section is an interview in which the author learns the interviewee had masterminded a 1969 assassination attempt against the author’s father.  Other accounts include a surprise resolution of conflicting facts given about the capture of John McCain.

Section Nine: "Iron Will" Personified: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and Cu Chi Tunnels

To understand the true nature of the Vietnamese soldier's commitment to fight the US for as long as it took to achieve victory, one need only examine his commitment to occupy and defend the Ho Chi Minh Trail and Cu Chi tunnels. Understanding this commitment is to understand his "Iron Will." This section traces the development of both the Trail and the extensive tunnel system in Cu Chi, primarily through the personal experiences of the soldiers who lived and fought there.  While the commitment to develop, maintain and defend the Trail and Cu Chi tunnels at all costs provides the reader with insights into the Vietnamese mindset during the war, just as revealing is North Vietnam's attitude towards the use of foreign combat troops to assist in Hanoi's war effort.  The final chapter of this section focuses on Hanoi's firm belief that, while accepting foreign military assistance in the form of supplies, equipment and training was appropriate, it was inappropriate to accept foreign combat manpower. Unlike South Vietnam, which accepted foreign combat manpower from several of its allies, Hanoi, with one very surprising and short-lived exception, opted to go it alone.

Epilogue: "Lest We Forget"

History reveals America made many mistakes in its policies towards Vietnam. As one looks back on that history, one cannot help but wonder whether Vietnam should have been the place in Asia where the US drew its “line in the sand” to contain communism.  Such a question then begs the question if the loss of 58,000 American lives in that war was for naught. The answer is "no."  For had the fight not taken place in Vietnam, it inevitably would have taken place elsewhere in Asia. And, by taking her stand in Vietnam, America bought time for other Asian countries, which, due to the instability of their economies, would undoubtedly have been targeted by Soviet and/or Chinese expansionism.  While the Vietnam war was being fought, these other countries strengthened and stabilized their own economies, thus denying the seed of communism a fertile ground in which to take root.  “Bare Feet, Iron Will” closes with this section, which includes a poignant poem found within the ruins of a chapel demolished in a mortar attack. The poem is a fitting tribute by which to remember all victims of a terrible war, representing a terrible mistake in the history of American/Vietnamese relations.  The words are just as applicable to those who fought and sacrificed on the US side as they are to those who did so on the Vietnamese side.  It is only by remembering those who made such sacrifices in the Vietnam war that we can hope to avoid making such a mistake in the future.