In December of last year the large American politician, the former democrat senator Eugene McCarthy died. In due time McCarthy caused a stir in the fact that in 1968 expressed to one of the first an official protest against stay of the American troops in Vietnam. The death of the former senator coincided with publication of the sensational documents opening new pages of the second Indochina war begun with the USA in 1965 against Northern Vietnam. The initial version explaining the reason of input of the American armed forces to Vietnam sounded simply. According to it, vyetkongovets (reduction from “Vietnam kong Shang” – the Vietnamese communist) whose torpedo boats at the beginning of August, 1964 few times attacked the fleet of the United States standing in Gulf of Tonkin are guilty of everything. Attacks of vyetkongovsky boats became the last straw which exhausted all patience of Washington, and the congress of the USA adopted the resolution granting to the president Johnson the right officially to declare war to Northern Vietnam. And several months ago the U.S. National Security Agency published interesting documents. According to them, torpedo boats of Northern Vietnam, undoubtedly, disturbed the American fleet, but their first attack happened only in several days after the president Johnson made the fatal decision. Another thing is that appear this information sooner or later, nothing would change. The civilians of the small Asian country which were not in time to recover from the first Indochina war against France were doomed for ten years of horror and fear. At the same time many inhabitants of the small villages mislaid in the Vietnamese jungle to the death did not know a name of the president, even where there is their government. Nobody found time to explain to peasants who and with whom is at war and why they have to bear the lion’s share of sufferings. “Before huts, – the former soldier of army of the USA remembers, – old men stood or squated in dust at a threshold. Their life was such idle time, all it passed in this village and fields surrounding it. What do they think of the strangers interfering in their small village? As to them to understand the continuous movement of the helicopters cutting their blue sky; tanks and semi-track laying vehicles, the armed patrols splashing through their rice fields where they cultivate the land?””
Destruction
The understanding came quickly. Planes and helicopters bore with themselves the bombs equaling the whole settlements, or the napalm fire which is burning out wood hectares with the earth. And sometimes from planes strange powder silently poured. In the districts processed by powder the jungle and hardly the grown-up harvest disappeared, and women soon began to give birth to freaks. This chemical carried the informal name “Agent Orange” as marking on barrels was orange color. The dioxine which is the most toxic substance ever created by the person was his part. Chemists consider that 80 grams of the dioxine added to system of water supply of New York are quite enough in order that this megalopolis turned into the dead city. And over the territory of Vietnam for all war 400 kilograms of “Agent Orange” were sprayed – the tenth part from this quantity quite would be enough for destruction of all our planet. The plan for use of toxic chemicals in Vietnam was signed by the president Kennedy in November, 1961. But this weapon already forty years continue to kill, influencing modern generation of Vietnamese. Still some children are born with physical uglinesses and deviations in intellectual development. Besides the military weapon Americans widely used psychological impact on the enemy. Practically each battle was preceded by “music”. Directly in the jungle powerful loudspeakers were established. From them in depth of the wood horror cries, bitter crying of women and children, shouts of wild animals, funeral music rushed. Children’s voices in Vietnamese shouted: “The father, come back home”. At night over the jungle turned the helicopters equipped with powerful translators. They gave the “voices of the dead” broadcasting about uselessness of resistance and urging guerrillas to lay down arms down. However the Vietnamese soldiers did not give up. Without having helicopters, they actively entered near fight, waiting bombings underground, in Heap tunnels – the surprising invention of the Vietnamese guerrillas.
Soldiers of vaults
Tunnels of the Heap represent huge underground two-storeyed, and here and there and to three floors, the labyrinth which stretched for two hundred fifty kilometers. Only the local could squeeze into the narrow courses, to the tall American guys in addition loaded with ammunition, the entrance was closed there. Dropped bombs on Heaps, and guerrillas were only dug in even more deeply. Soldiers started up poison gas in each suspicious hole in the earth, but vyetkongovets were rescued by well thought over ventilation. Americans brought specially trained dogs, but underground those were waited by traps – holes with sharp bamboo stakes at the bottom. Eventually, from undersized soldiers of the American army even the special division for underground war – “Tunnel rats” was created. But “rats” or vanished completely in tunnels, or, without fearing tribunal, refused to climb in terrible holes. One of veterans expressed the general opinion: “On courses of elementary education to me hammered the rule into the head: on the first place a task, on the second your soldiers, and then already you. Nonsense! In Vietnam I learned truth: on the first place the skin, then your friend and to spit on a task”.
Dead village
Without having an opportunity to smoke from vaults of vyetkongovets, soldiers broke on civilians of Youzhny of Vietnam whom they were urged to protect from “a communistic infection”. In memory of Vietnamese forever there was a destiny of the village of Songmi. It happened on March 16, 1968. The small small village located on east coast of the South China Sea included group of the American soldiers – a company of “Charlie” from structure of the 11th infantry brigade. What occurred then, it is difficult to describe. In the village there came hell. The young, healthy guys armed with submachine guns with mad gloss in eyes scorched extensively, without understanding who before them: old woman, child or dog. To women ripped up bayonets stomachs, to children hurt the heads butts. The commander of a company lieutenant William Kelly with own hand cut off a knife the head to the baby to take off a necklace from his neck. In an hour everything was over. From five hundred residents of the village survived several women and children who were not noticed under corpses. One of them is living still, but she can tell nothing about the incident. On any question concerning bloody events in Songmi, this woman who turned that terrible day into the old woman can only cry. In December, 1966 the cardinal Spellmen, the archbishop New York, in the sermon on the American naval base near Saigon told that the Vietnamese war is battle for a civilization and has to terminate in a victory. Hopes of the archbishop did not come true, America suffered a crushing defeat. As a result of “battle for a civilization” died not three, not four million civilians and one million hundred thousand Vietnamese soldiers – nobody can still give exact numbers. In addition, once big primitive tribe of the mountain Khmers who were living in the territory of Vietnam and not having any relation neither to war, nor to world politics completely disappeared from the face of the earth. These people stood on very low level of development and were not taken seriously by warring parties that, however, did not prevent primitive hunters to assemble the weapon scattered on the jungle and to learn to pull quickly the trigger. Unfortunately, they could not estimate up to the end the danger of death which is concealed in “the iron which is spat fire” and as a result just exterminated each other. The civilization won against them.
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