Phạm Văn Đổng

Not to be confused with Phạm Văn Đồng.

Pham Van Dong (1919 - 2009) was a South Vietnamese general from Son Tay. As military governor of Saigon, he was part of the resistance against the North Vietnamese when Saigon fell on 30 April 1975.

Early life and education

Pham Van Dong was born in 1919 in Son Tay, Vietnam, when the country was still part of the French empire, and grew up in Hanoi. He was a member of Vietnam’s Nung ethnic minority. Later in his life he would command the 3rd Field Division, made up entirely of Nung soldiers.

Generations of Dong's family had taught at the Imperial Court. Pham Van Dong himself planned to become a teacher, and enrolled at the École Normale d’Instituteurs. In 1938, however, he withdrew, and joined the French colonial army.

Military career

He would later become the first ever Vietnamese officer to command French soldiers, and also one of the few ARVN officers to have been officers in the French army. During the Second World War, Dong fought against Japan.

In 1944, he was promoted to Officer of Marterials for the 19th Colonial Infantry Division (Officier du matériel de 19è Bataillon de Marche de L’Infanterie Coloniale) based in Mong Cay. This was the place where he earned the trust of many Nung young men, quite a few of whom he trained to be competent officers who would later served in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam.

In 1952, Lieutenant Colonel Dong was appointed Commander of the 55th Vietnamese Battalion (55e BVN)stationed at the Nasan Line. At the end of 1952, he was promoted to Commander of the 2nd Mobile Group (2e Groupe Mobile). In 1953, he was appointed Commander of the Bui Chu Section and concurrently Commander of the Forces of North Vietnam Light Battalions and Artillery. The latter position was very important for he was in command of 19 light infantry battalions and 2 artillery companies with the mission to pacify a military zone that comprised of 7 provinces.

In 1954, prior to Vietnam's division into North and South, Dong was appointed Commander of the Quang Yen Military Academy, where he redeployed the academy and its personnel to southern Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom. He was then promoted to Commander of of the Coastal Interzone (Phan Khu Duyen Hai), a post he held until 1956 when he became the Commander of the 3rd Field Division in 1956. He held this post until 1958.

Dong, who was self-taught English, attended the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1958. He returned to Vietnam in 1959 and was appointed Deputy Commander of South Vietnam’s III Corps.

After the coup d’état in 1963 that toppled the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, several ARVN generals assumed leadership of South Vietnam. With the beginnings of the Vietnam War, however, and with increased United States involvement, the role of the ARVN became more significant but was wrongly seen by the media in the West as insignificant. During that time, he served briefly as Commander of the 7th Infantry Division before being sent to Taiwan as a military attache.

Returning from Taiwan in 1964, he was promoted to Brigadier General and later Major General, and served as military governor of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and as Commander of the Special Capital Zone. Dong was regarded highly as an ally by the Americans and well respected by many junior officers.

During the Fall of Saigon, he and his family were able to escape on a United States Air Force C-130 Hercules that took them to Guam, and then onward to the United States.

Personal life

In 1944, Dong married Le Thi Li, with whom he had five children. She died in 1992, and Dong remarried to My-Lan Trinh, who he acquired three stepdaughters from. His second wife died in Philadelphia on 26 November 2008. Dong died on 16 March 2009, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Awards

Dong was awarded the National Order of Vietnam, and also the Gallantry Cross with ten citations.

References

• Childs, Martin (March 16, 2009). "Pham Van Dong: South Vietnamese general who could not defend Saigon against the Communists". The Independent. Retrieved July 27, 2009.