T. Harry Williams Center for Oral
History Collection
ABSTRACT
INTERVIEWEE NAME: John C. Burdett #
4700.0941
IDENTIFICATION: Vietnam veteran
INTERVIEWER: M.P. Humphreys
PROJECT: Americans in Southeast Asia
DATES: 3/20/75, 4/1/75
FOCUS DATES: Feb. 25, 1963, July 1967-July
1968, Jan. 1971-Dec. 1971
ABSTRACT:
T 1374
Grew up in West Virginia; family; education; training at Fort
Benning; first assignment was at Fort Ord, California; officer
training; arrival in Vietnam, was with 1st Cav
division; places he served in Vietnam; movements of battalion;
search and destroy missions in plains; rotation of duty;
responsible for men in company, duties; problems in rear at An
Khe; hierarchy of platoons; comparisons to TV show MASH;
description of villages; NVA rice supply; gathering intelligence;
missions; soldiers walking up and down the plains;searching the
area for tunnels, weapons, rice; catching and questioning people;
hot meals; moving after dark; radio communication; finding
transistor radios; interrogation; helicopter support; identifying
position of enemy at night; AK-47s used by North Vietnamese;
Vietnamese civilians stayed in at night so they wouldn't be shot;
working in two or three-man positions; R&R centers; bridges
and roads; railroads all destroyed; fire bases; barracks;
delivery of supplies; movements of his battalion; base at An Khe;
operating in Dak To; size of Burdett's area; guards, security;
fight in Dak To; operating east of Highway 1, near ocean;
reinforcing 4th Division at Dak To; how units operated
together; montagnards; slash and burn economy; using ten year old
maps; operating in thick jungle; native militia force that worked
in mountains, assisted US Army; use of aerial photographs;
catering service; hot meals;strategy of attacking from high
ground down to low ground; finding signs of enemy in the area;
booby traps made with sharpened bamboo sticks; Som(?) Offensive;
173rd capture of hill 875; Vietnam as a war without
fronts; hearing about protests at home; rumors of build up in the
north; three battalions within his brigade, he was in 1st
brigade; moving from little firebase in Binh Son; accumulation of
personal belongings; troops moving by air and water; arrival in
Ben Tre just after TET; trying to find people who went missing
during move during NVA shelling; sharing supplies with other
branches of military; terrible weather around time of Tet
Offensive; one battalion separated from others; rockets fired at
ARVN headquarters; fighting NVA across a cemetery; pushed
Vietnamese out; interrogated Vietnamese; Tet backfired; strength
of the NVA; move to Khe Sanh, then to A Shau Valley;Ho Chi Minh
Trail; gateway into Hue, old imperial capital; 1st Cav
working with ARVNs in A Shau Valley operation; major way station
for the Ho Chi Minh Trail; found hidden artillery pieces;
destroyed Russian amphibious tanks; captured rifles; found power
lines; ARVNs captured Russian trucks; logistical problems of
using enemy weapons; operation halted because of weather;
reopened old air strip; defoliation, burning supplies, ammo and
tunnels; detailed maps; taking prisoners; change of public
opinion ended defoliation.
T 1375
Additional training at Fort Knox and Fort Bragg; promoted to
major at Fort Bragg; ordered to return to Vietnam as an advisor;
types of people who went to school in Washington DC; description
of course at school, intensive language program; Burdett's
difficulty with Vietnamese language; test at end of course;
language teachers; Burdett's first or second grade Vietnamese
vocabulary; advantages of speaking some Vietnamese; sent to
Saigon in 1971, brief schooling there; CORDS program; plans to
phase out military, turn country back over to Vietnamese;
division of country by corps; Burdett sent to Cantho,
headquarters of the delta; worked with John Paul Vann, a civilian
and former Army officer; other people in charge there, including
full colonels and many civilians; Burdett went to Minh Duc
district, called Cai Nuoc by VC; roads and transportation into
district; driving during rainy season; Burdett replaced popular
commander; people he worked with there; haven areas; eradicating
haven areas and preventing VC assassinations; sugar and rice
mills, economy going back to work; co-workers; lived in old
French house with guards around it; rank, background of district
chief; North Vietnamese who came south in 1954 to flee communism;
gaining respect for the Vietnamese; friction with man Burdett was
replacing; visiting villages in area; protecting villages; local
police force known as "white mice"; command problems of
police hierarchy; new Americans in this area still caused a major
stir; meeting key figures, using interpreter; village market
places; market activity correlated with stability of surrounding
area; villagers asking for money; description of Burdett's boat;
traveling in village chief's boat; villagers abusing his boat at
public pier; Burdett's houseboy; raising funds for schools,
bridges, markets; televisions in villages; South Vietnamese
nationalists; education in villages; Burdett felt understaffed;
bureaucracy; evaluating pacification program; defoliation program
to eradicate VC havens; resettlement of South Vietnamese people
into bad areas to establish presence; cutting trees back;
military operations directed by province; Vietnamese artillery;
American gunships, aircraft available to him in Cantho; playing
volleyball, running, for recreation; movies; mail service;
monthly meeting at Vinh Long; recreation at Vinh Long; cut from
five-man to three-man team; visiting hamlets in district to
gather data; dangers of hamlet visits; writing monthly letter
assessing work of village chief; briefing visitors with set of
charts and maps; difficulty of keeping charts up to date; writing
reports; General Cushman's visit; Mr. Vann and Mr. Wilson came
for monthly briefing; briefing Vietnamese advisors from Cantho;
American colonel or higher would come with Vietnamese general;
visits from CIA people; rare visits of Americans from Vinh Long;
visits from newspaper reporters; study groups from Saigon who
were interested in revitalizing local water system; Burdett's
relations with legendary John Paul Vann; Vann's reputation and
personality; Vann's memorandums; Vann dropping by for briefings;
Vann's success in area; success of pacification program; trouble
in II Corps; headquarters later moved from Pleiku down to Nha
Trang; Vann's death in helicopter crash; Mr. Wilson replaced
Vann; land and tiller program; building and repairing schools;
instructing peasants in agricultural techniques; experimental
farms; increased rice yields; opening roads that had been
destroyed; constructing bridges.
T 1376
Delivering funds for village development programs; bridge
building projects; corruption, stealing on projects; wrecker that
fell through a bridge; VFD? Projects used village labor; military
helped restore a church; Catholic community along Cochin River;
popular Vietnamese Catholic priest at that village; Hoa Hao
community; Cao Dai church; VC attempt to assassinate PF platoon
leader; resettlement in an agroville; priorities were getting
people back on land, developing rice strains, rebuilding roads,
bridges, rice mills; eliminating haven areas; elimination of
terrorist activity; program to open schools; Burdett helped with
English class; district chief who was from the North; district
chief's mean assistant; military action in Hoa Hiep?; avoiding
hurting civilians; success of ambushes; injured some civilians,
this caused trouble; investigating incident; rockets had misfired
and hit a house, Burdett held responsible; status of being an
advisor in the military; fringe benefits of advisor's job;
Burdett was a command equivalent; gaining respect for the
Vietnamese; position personally rewarding, but frustrating
militarily; amount and degree of fighting that year; would have
preferred commanding troops; Burdett now a major; relations with
district chief; translators' relations with district chief and
with Burdett; how translators assigned to that post; Americans
advised not to go out alone; propaganda campaign in area;
training, Kit Carson scouts; training local people in military
operations; radio programming; literacy in villages; police force
in villages; narcotics control operation; police force's patrol
boats; security on the river; dealing with complex chain of
command; Vietnamese pacification meetings; getting funding for
programs; AIK? money; supervising spending of money; mechanics
and their connection to black market; gas allocations, theft of
gas; functions of his staff on three-man team; going to Vinh Long
to buy food; helicopters delivered non-food supplies; visiting
villages and hamlets; other duties of three-man team; woman who
did laundry; houseboy and his chores; Burdett's assistant;
trouble with enlisted man who hated Vietnamese; courses in
Vietnamese; schools for Americans in Vietnam; Project PHOENIX;
accomplishing goals in district.
Tape 1377
Rationale for frequent rotation of personnel; combat fatigue;
awesome responsibility of command; commanders' lack of sleep;
differences between enlisted men and commanders; duties and
problems of commanders; influence of journalists on soldiers;
Burdett's men; men in field had few luxuries; men shared what
they had; resentment toward soldiers in rear; relative luxuries
of men in rear; not enough jobs in rear to go around; R&R
trips; people became cautious near end of tours; dangers of
overly cautious soldiers; problems caused by idleness; racial
friction; men killed in accidents; battle fatigue causing
accidents; foot rot; anti-malaria pills; foot rot and malaria as
signs of poor leadership;
guarding bridges at night, could swim during day; prostitutes checked for VD near An Khe; corruption while Burdett was a district advisor; success of Vietnamization program; resentment against Americans; use of shotguns; misfires of M-16s; views on America's place in Vietnam; ideas about a "limited war"; search and destroy missions; joint operations with ARVNs; Vietnamese Airborne Division in the A Shau Valley; continued acquaintance with officers he knew in Vietnam; opinion on strategy of war; separation of officers from enlisted men; relations between NCOs and regular officers; justifying expenses in Vietnam; draft was not equal, students more likely to get drafted; low caliber recruits when draft first eliminated; advantages of voluntary entry into service; saddened by recent developments in Vietnam; Burdett regrets undeserved criticism about Vietnamese, and about American withdrawal;
TAPES: 4
TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 5 hours
# PAGES TRANSCRIPT: 13 page index
RESTRICTIONS: none