The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam (i)

from John Sylvester, State, and Frank Foster, Army

As the People’s Army of Viet Nam entered Saigon the people shed their military uniforms and burned their papers. Medals. too, I should think, although I have never heard that.

Reasonable people anticipated a blood bath, with the officials and soldiers of the government dragged out and shot as the Red Khmer had done two weeks earlier in Pnom Penh.

Didn’t happen, and burning your uniform did no good. The winners came around with their files weeks and months later to invite the losers to a few days of classes at camp, which dragged on for years of disease and starvation to a clean and orderly decimation of the former Republic.

If they had been puppets as Ha Noi said, why did the Vietnamese Communists need to do more than cut the strings to the United States? If there was no nation in Saigon, who wrote all the books that lined the streets, abandoned in fear by their collectors?

That was the question the readers of Ha Noi asked, in the ranks of the People’s Army, and those who visited as tourists. The VC said the vestiges of RVN were all the work of the Central Intelligence Agency.

CIA had been drawing lists of VC and killing them for years. We almost won that way, by killing retail the politicians of a government we told our own people was not real.

So the VC were kind of nuts on the topic. And indeed our CIA like our Marine Corps are a formidable public relations agency.

But no, the readers of Ha Noi said, these are real books. People who read and write books can tell.

As can those who read medals, as I do, and wear them, as I don’t. John Sylvester, a diplomat, and the artillery man Frank Foster evidently recognize these as the medals of a genuine nation.

That confirms what the literature says, except the commie bullshit. I have known several leading Communist bullshit artists and they all took Saigon seriously.

The only people who speak of an American war are Americans. Two Viet Nams had a war for the whole ball of wax.

There was no North or South Viet Nam. Never happened. Stop saying so.

Look at the outline of the nation on the medals at right and left of the top row. The deltas of the Red and the Mekong, connected by the line of coast and the mountains.

The inscription on the middle one, Roman characters squished like Chinese, reads “gratitude of the homeland.” Sounds like one and only one Viet Nam to me.

If you want to feel your way into the Republic by reading something, here is a good place to start.

This was first post of 6 so far on The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam by John Sylvester and Frank Foster. The second posted on March 14, 2022, the third on April 9, 2022, the fourth on May 9, 2022, the fifth on June 13, 2022, and the sixth on May 18, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.