Where the Domino Fell - America And Vietnam 1945-1995 by James S. Olson, Randy W. Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

trams stalled in their tracks, rickshaws disappeared, and Vietminh roadblocks paralyzed commercial traffic. Vietminh agents went into a French suburb and murdered 150 people. Gracey rearmed Japanese soldiers, and the combined force of Japanese, Gurkha, and French troops went after the Vietminh.
     
    There was a small American contingent in Saigon. Prime within it was A. Peter Dewey, who had parachuted into Tonkin in 1945 to harass the Japanese, and as head of the OSS team in Saigon he soon developed a close relationship with Ho Chi Minh. An outspoken opponent of French imperialism, Dewey clashed repeatedly with Gracey. Their personal battle came to a head late in September when Gracey would not let Dewey fly the American flag on the fender of his OSS jeep. On the way to Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon on September 26, 1945, Vietminh soldiers fired on the flagless jeep, killing Dewey instantly. Just before leaving for the airport, Dewey had written, “Cochin China is burning, the French and British are finished here, and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia” When he learned of Dewey’s death, Ho Chi Minh formally apologized. Gracey, to the contrary, remarked that Dewey “got what he deserved” A. Peter Dewey was the first United States soldier to die in Vietnam.
     
    The Vietminh were also on the run in Tonkin, where Chinese troops removed the Vietminh from power and replaced them with a group favorable to the anticommunist Chinese leader Jiang Jieshi and wanting Vietnamese independence without communism. By the end of September, while British, French, and Japanese troops hounded the Viet-minh in southern Vietnam, the Chinese reduced Vietminh-controlled territory in Tonkin. In just a month, Ho found himself dealing with all of Vietnam’s enemies—the Chinese, French, and Japanese—as well as the British.
     
    Although Great Britain was officially neutral about the French return to Indochina, most British officials were worried about their own empire. Insurgent nationalists were active in Malaya and Burma, and Mohandas Gandhi was steadily gaining power in India. When their responsibility for disarming Japanese troops ended in December 1945, the British withdrew from southern Vietnam. Each departing group of British-Indian troops was replaced by French soldiers wearing American fatigues, helmets, boots, and ammunition belts, carrying M-1 carbines, and driving Jeeps and Ford trucks. In Tonkin, the Chinese and French reached a formal agreement in February 1946: China would withdraw from Tonkin, and France would surrender the commercial concessions a Franco-Chinese treaty had granted in the 1890s. The last Chinese troops were out of Vietnam in October.
     
    The French were back, and while most of Ho Chi Minh’s colleagues opposed rapprochement, his political instincts dictated compromise. General Jacques Philippe Leclerc, temporary head of French military forces in Vietnam, also favored compromise. Even though he had 35,000 soldiers at his disposal, Leclerc had no enthusiasm for fighting an open- ended war against the Vietminh. Late in January, he toured the Mekong Delta and the Iron Triangle, a Vietminh stronghold twenty miles northwest of Saigon. “Fighting the Viet Minh,” Leclerc decided, “will be like ridding a dog of its fleas. We can pick them, drown them, and poison them, but they will be back in a few days” On February 5, 1946, Leclerc remarked, “France is no longer in a position to control by arms an entity of 24 million people”
     
    January 12, 1947—Some of the 8,000 French troops aboard the
Ile
de France
prior to departure from Toulon Harbor for duty in Indochina.
(Courtesy, AP/Wide World Photos.)
     
     
    On March 6, 1946, the French and Vietminh negotiated the Franco-Vietminh Accords. France extended diplomatic recognition to Ho Chi Minh’s regime—calling it a “free state . . . within the French Union”— and promised to hold free elections in the “near future” to determine whether