War and Propaganda
Secret History: Churchill Started the Vietnamese War
Abstract
Can we Trust Our Leaders? Shameful History
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.George Santayana
Original articles lightly edited. Freely distribute
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 26 September 2006, Friday, 2 October 2009
Churchill Starts the Vietnamese War
When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, they left a power vacuum in Vietnam. Since September 1940, they had been the masters of the French colony. The only resistance they had met was from the Vietminh, the nationalist force led by Ho Chi Minh—trained and equipped, ironically, by the USA.
When the Japanese collapsed, and with the French forces either incarcerated or driven into China, the Vietnamese thought their time had come. The National Liberation Committee, under Ho Chi Minh, took power in Hanoi and the Vietminh Provisional Executive Committee for South Vietnam was set up in Saigon.
The “August Revolution” had been accomplished. A week later, on 2 September, Ho Chi Minh’s Government issued their Declaration of Independence, which ended on the distrusting note:
We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self determination and the equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam…
But the high moral tone of Allied statements about freedom and independence were for the record only, for Vietnam. So far as Winston Churchill was concerned, the war in the Far East was being fought to re-establish the Imperial status quo. And he took it upon himself to look after the interests of the other Imperial powers there, France and the Netherlands.
President Roosevelt, on the other hand, detested the Imperial systems. Time after time he tried to persuade Churchill to give guarantees of colonial emancipation—and time after time he failed. Roosevelt’s plan was to put French and Dutch possessions under the “trusteeship” of the UN, to prepare their people for independence. Stalin was happy with it, but Churchill loathed it.
By late 1944, there was steady inter-command wrangling between the American General Wedemeyer, Commanding the China Theater, and Mountbatten, who was running the South East Asia Command. The RAF had been flying sorties over the area, usually in support of clandestine French and British forces, throughout 1945. Wedemeyer suspected that the British would propose the extension of South East Asia to include all former British, French and Dutch colonial possessions. He was right. Shortly before the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the British Chiefs of Staff asked that SEAC’s boundaries be extended. And when at Potsdam the Combined Chiefs eventually arrived at a compromise, Indo-China was split at the 16th Parallel—the north under Wedemeyer, the south under Mountbatten.
When this decision was taken at Potsdam it was fully expected that it would involve an invasion followed by a protracted campaign against the Japanese forces. But the sudden end to the war transformed the situation completely. The confrontation, when it came, was not between British and Japanese, but between the British and Ho Chi Minh’s nationalists.
On 13 August, 1945, Mountbatten was told to secure Japanese Headquarters, round up and disarm the Japanese prior to their repatriation, and release and ship home Allied POWs and internees. He was to occupy no more of the country than necessary, and was to get out as soon as possible. The organization established to handle the job was SACSEA Commission No 1 under Major-General Douglas Gracey.
The British force earmarked for the job in South Vietnam was General Gracey’s own 20th Indian Division, reinforced by extra battalions of Gurkhas. At the end of August the advance units of the Commission—mostly medical teams—began arriving in Saigon. They were cordially greeted by the Committee of the South and given all the help they needed. When Gracey himself arrived on 13 September, crowds lined the route from the airport waving Vietminh and Allied flags, and slogans saying “Welcome to the Allies… But we have no room for the French”.
For the first few days of Gracey’s regime, Saigon was quiet enough. Most of the essential services were operating, for apart from failing to cope with a few food shortages and minor criminal activity, the Vietminh were not doing a bad job. During the day at least, French civilians were safe enough.
But despite strenuous efforts by the Committee to assist the SACSEA Commission, Gracey made it quite clear that he would have nothing to do with them. “I was welcomed on arrival by the Vietminh”, he later said, “and I promptly kicked them out”. As a protest against the British attitude, the Vietminh called a series of strikes and closed down Saigon market. Two days later Gracey responded by closing down the Vietnamese Press. And then, on 21 September, 1945, he issued a proclamation which was virtually a declaration of Martial Law throughout South Vietnam. In it, he warned…
…all wrongdoers, especially looters and saboteurs of public and private property, and those also carrying out similar criminal activities, that they will be summarily shot.
Not only the Vietminh were alarmed, Mountbatten himself was concerned, and warned Gracey to watch his step. But if the Proclamation of Martial Law was a mistake, Gracey’s next move was a disaster. On the night of Saturday, 22 September, 1945, the British took over Saigon jail, disarmed the Vietnamese and released the French colonial troops who had been incarcerated by the Japanese.
These rough French colons, under de Gaulle’s representative, Cedille, promptly assembled a small armed force. In a fast and brutal coup d’ etat they ousted the Committee from Saigon Town Hall, arrested everybody they could find and ran up the Tricolor. Tom Driberg (later a UK MP), who was reporting the situation for Reynolds News, was appalled by the behavior of the French. He described “disgraceful scenes of vengeance”, and even the official report of the British Commission deplored the whole affair. By then, the damage was done. The moderate line which the Vietminh had all along tried to enforce was now discredited. The British had come simply to restore the French.
Almost immediately the fighting began. The first attacks came in Saigon itself when the nationalists tried to storm the power station and take the radio station. They were easily repulsed by the Gurkhas. In that engagement only two Vietnamese were killed, but in a sweep through the north of the city the British killed 28 and arrested 34. Next day the fighting intensified, and units of Vietnamese were reported to be infiltrating to the center of the city.
For the next two or three days mortars, 25-pounders and heavy machine guns were freely used by the British in the street fighting, and Vietnamese casualties were heavy from the outset. In one clash with 80 Brigade in the south of the city, 60 Vietnamese were killed. By now Mountbatten was thoroughly alarmed. He called Gracey and Cedille to Singapore on the 28th, and told them that the fighting must stop before the British got bogged down in a war which was none of their business. When Gracey returned, he managed to fix up a truce and a meeting with the Vietminh on l October.
It was to little avail. Despite their efforts, the Vietminh had lost control of the other nationalist groups, the truce was broken time after time and at a meeting in Rangoon on 9 October, when the news came through that more British troops had been killed, Mountbatten authorized Gracey to take “strong I action”. In a series of fast attacks, the British extended their perimeter around Saigon and began patrolling deep into the Mekong Delta and the countryside to the north of Saigon.
Then in the middle of October the Vietnamese launched their most desperate bid to oust the British. On two nights running there were frenzied assaults on the docks, the airport, and on key installations throughout the city. In places the British military were taken aback at the desperation of the onslaught. The 32 Brigade defending Cholon wrote that their perimeter was attacked by “400 men armed with rifles, spears, bows and poisoned arrows, and even a mild type of teargas”.
But fanaticism and courage were not enough against the overwhelming firepower and experience of the British troops. The Vietnamese attack soon ran out of steam, and steadily they were pushed out of the city and into the countryside. The war was not over. It had taken another form. From then on the conflict became a smaller version of the kind of confrontation that became familiar in Vietnam in the murderous years after. The street battles of September and October gave way to a brutal business of ambushes, small scale guerrilla attacks and terrorism. To this new guerrilla war the British Command responded with draconian measures. The British soldiers were told:
We may find it difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Always use the maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostiles we may meet. If one uses too much, no harm is done…
Gradually the countryside was being pacified—or terrorized—into submission. By the beginning of December 1945, the 4/2 Gurkhas felt relaxed enough to throw a party. Colonel Kitson wrote:
About 100 guests turned up. We thought it a great success, marred only by the fact that two Frenchmen were murdered almost within sight of our house an hour I before the party started, and some of us had to go out and clean up the mess.
Evidence of British ruthlessness is hard to refute. At the end of December, 100 Brigade’s patch to the north of Saigon was becoming troublesome again and Intelligence reported a big build-up of Nationalists. The British units were directed not to be over-scrupulous. Brigadier Rodham told his soldiers:
The difficulty, is to select him [the enemy], since immediately he has made his shot, or thrown his grenade, he pretends to be friendly. It is therefore perfectly legitimate to look upon all locals anywhere near where a shot has been fired as enemies, and treacherous ones at that, and treat them accordingly.
It was that kind of war, and one extraordinary aspect of it was the use the British made of their former enemies, the Japanese. When the advance units of the 1/1 Gurkhas deplaned at Saigon they were shocked to find:
Fully armed Japanese guards and patrols had to be allowed to carry on as willing and well-disciplined “allies” outrageous as this seemed to all ranks at the time.
For although the British had come to disarm them—and had, in fact. begun to do so—the moment the trouble began the Japanese troops were promptly enlisted on the side of the British. Gradually, as the Japanese began to take the brunt of the casualties, British outrage gave way to relief, followed by admiration. The chronicler of the 4/10 Gurkhas wrote:
The Japanese were freely used in all these operations, and they did their job with their characteristic efficiency.
He added gratefully:
a satisfactory result of their use was to reduce the casualties among our own troops.
In fact, during the fighting in late October-November 1945, Japanese casualties were more than the British, Indian and French combined, and local feeling against them was so high that any Vietnamese even selling them food was under threat. In contrast to this hatred, friendship between the British and Japanese became so warm that when the Frontier Force Regiment were shipped out from Cap St Jacques, in March 1946, there were touching scenes of farewell as “many Japanese senior officer and men lined the route to say goodbye to the Battalion”.
By the turn of the year it was almost all over as far as the British were concerned. General Leclerc’s French forces had been steadily building up ever since October and they were now in sufficient strength to pacify the south on their own. Gracey left the country, his job done.
The official figure for the number of Vietnamese killed during the occupation was 2700. The real figure is certain to have been much higher, and even that amount must pale into insignificance beside the mass slaughter of French, American, Australian, New Zealand and Vietnamese combatants and civilians in the 27 years of war that followed Britain’s destruction of Vietnam’s first modern attempt to control her own destiny.
in The Observer supplement, May 1972.
