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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-08499 to 363-08506.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-08499 to 363-08506
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Title
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Article about Chinese Communist activity in South Vietnam
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Description
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Original title: "Chicom", Keever's title: N/A, Article draft about Chinese Communist activity in South Vietnam, for The North American News Alliance
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AI Usage Disclosure
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
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Transcript
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Beverly Deepe
64A Hong Thap Tu
Saigon, Vietnam
December 14, 1966
Chicom-page 1
SAIGON--Small numbers of military personnel from Communist China
have infiltrated into South Vietnam, informed sources disclosed here.
The situation is not considered grave.
A-ask spokesman for the American military command in Saigon flatly
denied the report.
"I've never heard of that before," the spokesman said.
"There are
no Chinese Communist military personnel in South Vietnam."
Intelligence sources indicate that no repeat no prisoners from
Communist China have yet been captured on the battlefields of South
A number of Vietnamese residents of Chinese extraction-
Vietnam.
most of whom speak Vietnamese--have been locally recruited by the Viet Cong;
some have been captured, "but they're a different kettle of fish and
nothing to worry about, " one official explained. There are roughly
one million persons of Chinese extraction in South Vietna, many of whom
have taken out Vietnamese citizenship.
(MORE)
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Deepe
Chicom-page 2
During the past two years, this correspondent has discussed the
question of Chinese Communists infiltrating into South Vietnam with a wide
fange of sources, including Vietnamese government officials, American and
Vietnamese officers in the field, diplomats and intelligence agents.
is the evidence that ex small numbers of Chinese Communists military
personnel have clandestinely moved into South Vietnam:
This
1. This summer,
Saigon embassies of America's major allies began
reporting to their home capitols that they believed military personnel
from Communist China had arrived in the South. The existence of the
Chinese Communists in the south was no longer a question in their minds.
The question they posed was explained to this correspondent by one
high-ranking diplomat-who is also an intelligence officer, "What are the
Chicoms doing here?" he pondered. "We believe they are operating
If they are advisors or military technical
as individuals --not as units.
tehe technicians,
such as mortar experts, to the Nort
North Vietnamese units, then the situation is not serious. If, however, they
are observers, it may mean they are sizing up the American troops as a
If that is the case,
then hold your hat-we are in a totally new war, which can send the whole
world up in nuclear flames."
protru prelude to sending in their own ground troops.
(More)
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Deepe
Chicom-page 3
2. One high-ranking Vietnamese government official, and curr
concurrently a general, said Vietnamese intelligence information had
confirmed the presence of Chinese Communist troops in the South.
"big"
In
another case, in July, one Chinese Communist main force unit arrived
in southern Laos to replace the North Vietnamese division 324-B which
was sent to into the demilitarized sone zone from North Vietnam and Laos
to fight the American Marines.
3.
Other intelligence sources indicated that radio communications
spoken in Chinese had not only been heard but also had been taped by
Vietnamese and allied forces. He said these tapes had been sent to
Washington, D. C. In addition, one American officer--who spoke
military
Mandarin Chinese-reportedly heard Chinese radio communications during
Operation Hastings-Prairie along the demilitarized zone earlier this year-
and befuddled the speakers by replaying to them in their own
language. Since December, 1964, Vietnamese field commanders have reported
Chinese language radio transmissions during large-scale battles in
Communist stronghold areas.
3.
WI
Reports of Communist military operations wr written in Chinese
While Vietnamese is a
characters have been captured by allied units.
tonal language similar to Chinese, it is written in an alphabet of Western
letters.
(More)
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Deepe
Chicom-page 4
4.
American military troops have reported finding an incras
increasing number of Communist dead-seespecially near the DMZ with their
faces blown off, presumably by grenades thrown by hastily retreating
troops in an attempt to erase facial features from the dead left behind
on the battlefield.
5.
Six ralliers-persons who once served the Communists and then
voluntarily elected to come to the government side--have reported the presence
of military personnel from Communist China in their areas of operation.
French times.
One rallier named Nguyen Van Quang reported Chinese Communist personnel
in Kien Phong province, 70 miles west of Saigon, Kien Phong province
borders on Cambodia and contains wide expanses of the marshy Plain of Reeds,
which has long been a Communist haven. Another rallier named Nguyen Dinh
Than reported Chinese Communists in Quang Ngai province, 80 miles south
of Dn Danang and a long-time Communist stronghold even during
Vu x Quan Toan reported Chinese Communists in Phuoc Tuy province, 45 miles
southeast of Saigon. A fourth rallier named Vo Van Nhu reported Chinese
Communists in the II military corps, which covers half the territory of
South Vietnam. It lies north of Saigon and borders both Cambodia and Laos.
6. This correspondent heard the preliminary interrogation of a
North Vietnamese Communist prisoner who said a military unit from Communist
China had infiltrated to South Vietnam with his unit.
(More)
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Deepe
Chicom-page 5
The prisoner,
who identified himself as Hoang Van Hue,
by the 2nd Bn., 4th Reg., Third Marine Division (American)
was captured
on July 21,
near the demilitarized zone in the famed "Helicopter Valley" where four
American helicopters were either shot down or crashed during Operation Hastings.
On the river bank of a small stream, where two a American Marine
platoons had been disasterously ambushed earlier in the week, the 15-year-old
Hue said "there are many Chinese in my battalion. There's one company of
He said
Chinese and two companies of North Vietnamese in my battalion."
the battalion commander was North Vietnamese and that the Chinese company
had a Chinese Communist interpreter who spoke Vietnamese for communication
with the North Vietnamese troops.
di
He told how the Hanoi regime force "petit garcons" (small boys) such
as himself to go into the army; he was a seventh grader in
where, among the other classes, he was taught Russian lanuage.
school, he said,
He said he belonged
to a "transportation element"-to pack rice, tobacco, and ammunition on his
back for the Commando battalion. He said his battalion was one of five
which had infiltrated into South Vietnam from North Vietnam two months earlier.
Hue, dressed in green T-shirt and green fatigue trousers, while
answering the questions of an American intelligence agent,
said the C
He said his father
Chinese Communists were "friends" of the North Vietnamese.
two sisters and two brothers--one of them already
was a farmer and that he
taken away to fight the war in Thanh Hoa province, where American planes
have been hitting almost daily.
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Deepe
Chicom--page
ib
The small boys, suffering from a broken and infected leg, offered to show
the American Marines from a helicopter the base locations of the North Vietnamese
units--but as the helicopter rolled in, it received a hail of automatic
weapons fire from the surrounding hills. Later, he was taken to a U. S.
field hospital where three American medical experts looked after him.
the only cooperative, talkative prisoner of the thirteen that had been
captured during the battle at that time.
He was
Even before the capture of Hue, American Marines who have fought many
hard battles in the northern part of the country, believed Chinese Communist
Here
forces had infiltrated! They no longer referred to their enemy as
發
"V. C." (for Viet Cong) or "Charlie"-but instead called them "gooks," the
Vietnamese military officers
Korean War term for Chinese Communist forces.
have long said that a small number of Chinese Communists were in South Vietnam.
The first serious report of this nature resulted from the battle of Binh Gia
in December, 1964, when South Vietnamese forces were badly hit fifty miles
southeast of Saigon.
American officials dismissed the reports.
Six months later,
Vietnamese
in the bloody battle of Dongai, sixty miles north of Saigon,
commanders again reported hearing radio transmissions spoken in the Chinese
Lenge. language.
Chen, in the battle of Plei Me, in October, 1965, the first American
soldier a sergeant-reported killing what he described as a Chinese Communist
soldier, because he was taller than the others and wore a more elaborate belt and
pistol. High-ranking American officials in that area brushed the report aside.
(More)
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Deepe
Chicom-page 7
Eight months later, in June of this year, a Vietnamese Marine
Regiment was ambushed between the northern cities of Hue and Quang Tri,
twelve
some four hundred miles north of Saigon and miles south of the demilitarize
zone. An American Marine advisor with the Vietnamese unit described some),
of the Communist dead as Chinese,
Jo an American general. A
REPORTE
month later, American Marine units launched Operation Hastings and captured
NAMED
the small boy Hue.
One American Marine, who said he thought he was fighting "the gooks,"
simply shrugged off the enormous political dimensions of the confrontation
with the explanation, "I'd rather fight the Chicoms now than ten years
from now when they have bigger nukes."
(More)
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Deepe
Chicoms-page &
In July, 1964, a similiar controversery arose between Vietnamese
and American military interpretation of intlig intelligence information
regarding the infiltration of organized units of the the North Vietnamese army.
South Vietnamese generals, based on the interrogation of the first North
said their country was being
Vietnamese prisoner captured in the South,
"invaded in slow-motion means from the North.
American intelligence
officers labelled these South Vietnamese generals as
sensationalist";
discounted the presence of organized units of North Vietnamese troops a woll
axetine aminteam and minimized the interrogation reports of the Nother
Northern prisoners. Roughly half a year later, however,
policy had swung not only to confirming the North Vietnamese units-but also
American polic
DOTERIC
Substome
5 byt
For direct American intervention to combat them. The/interrogation reports
of North Vietnamese prisoners,
which had earlier been minimised,
was then
published a in an official "white paper" justifying the American intervention.
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Date
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1966, Dec. 14
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975
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Location
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Saigon, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6311
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B118, F6
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
