he Cao Dai, Binh Xuyen, and Hao Hao) They executed everyone of them by drowning or buried alive. When I patrolled for a short time in the ARVN before stationed on a naval ship, we would find hundreds of burial sites along the coast. We would dig them up and find hundreds of bodies without any signs of cuts of bullet wounds. This meant that they were all drowned or buried alive. As for villages, the stories that you here of brutality and out of hand conduct are only one side of the story. You must understand, when you walk into a village and see only women, children, and old men, you knew that it was communist. All the soldiers are hiding in the woods watching you. You walk a little further and a bullet shoots by, and your friend drops to the ground. You patrol a little further, and you trip a wire, and your font line loses their legs, or their eyes. All of these villages were no doubt communist. There is no mistake. At night we were afraid to go to sleep. Many of my friends would doze off, and before you knew it, the women in the village slit all their throats. The Americans were the worst off, because they underestimated the Viet Cong. They enjoyed themselves in prostitution houses, and in the morning they were all dead. The Viet Cong work themselves like viruses. They go into villages at night and convince the people not by patriotism, but by threat of death to themselves and their families. What choice do you have but to follow them.”This raises a good point because the media always portrayed the Viet Cong as righteous people fighting for independence. Nothing atrocious was ever filmed until the battle at Hue during the Tet offensive. American public was shocked at footage of Viet Cong executing mass numbers of people, but Khiem states that the reaction of indigenous Vietnamese was acknowledgement rather than shock. The Vietnam War has long passed, but its details are increasingly studied and scrutinized. As for Ngo Dinh Diem,...
