While reading Rick Perlstein's reviews of right-wing revisionist Vietnam "history" books, and seeing the words "rural depopulation," I was having flashbacks. As a C7A cargo pilot in South Vietnam, Thailand, and over-flying Cambodia, in 1970-71, I saw the massive destruction to large swathes of territory in South Vietnam and the carpet bombing in eastern Cambodia. The largest de-populated area that I saw was in "III Corps," from greater Saigon northward 90 miles to the green ribbon of border towns and artillery bases that had been used as staging areas for the Cambodian incursion the year before. It was a huge swath of terrain defoliated, also cleared by large plows, and pock-marked from artillery, air strikes, some heavy bombing.Artillery bases were named for former towns, as Phuoc Vinh and An Loc, only there were no signs of these towns or of any settlement patterns.
As we pulled the U.S. Army out of these areas, the South Vietnamese Army did not replace them. The NLF was already inside Loc Ninh City when I last flew into that deserted artillery base in August, 1971, their wooden flute tones sonorous and dirge-like over the classified fox mike radio. By the next year, they had established a test base, the provisional revolutionary government in Loc Ninh, unchallenged by the South Vietnamese army, only by more Americans inserted in a fatal attempt to dislodge them as the generals sat in Saigon. I came home and joined Vietnam Vets Against the War, refusing duty in tankers, and wrote to a Senator McIntyre, who voted to end the bombing. We got our POW's home. North Vietnam drove into the south with hardly a shot three years later; the South Vietnamese leaders split to California.
