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Phạm Văn Đổng

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Not to be confused with Phạm Văn Đồng.
Pham Van Dong as a Lt. Colonel, 1953.

Pham Van Dong (1919 - 2008) 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 April 30, 1975.

Early life and education

Phạm Văn Đồng (who has the same name the former Prime Minister of North Vietnam) was born October 25, 1919 in Quốc Oai,Son Tay, Vietnam when the country was still part of the French empire, and grew up in Hanoi.

Generations of Phạm's family had taught at the Imperial Court. Pham Van Dong himself had planned to become a teacher, and enrolled at the École Normale d’Instituteurs. In 1938 he had to withdraw, as he did not have the money to bribe a Court official, even though he had passed the required examinations, and joined the French colonial army.

Military career

Dong would later become the first ever Vietnamese officer to command French soldiers, and also one of the few Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) officers to have been officers in the French Army.

Six year after joining the army as an enlisted man, he was promoted to Officer of Materials for the 19th Colonial Infantry Battalion (Officier du matériel de 19è Bataillon de Marche de L’Infanterie Coloniale) based in Móng Cái. Here, he earned the trust of many young Nung men. He would train these Nung men to be competent officers of the ARVN.

During the Second World War, Dong and his troops redeployed to China where they fought against Japanese armies only to return after the Japanese surrendered.

In 1948, Dong worked for Governor of North Vietnam Nghiêm Xuân Thiện as Sous-Directeur des Etudes (Phó Giám-đốc Kế-hoạch) before serving as Chief of G2 for the 2nd Vietnamese Battalion (Trưởng Phòng 2 của Bộ chỉ huy TĐ2 VN).

In 1951, he was appointed Province Chief of Nam Định. He was also asked by Minister of Defense Phan Huy Quát to join the Vietnam National Army as a Lieutenant Colonel.

In 1952, Dong was appointed Commander of the 55th Vietnamese Battalion (55e BVN) stationed at the Na San Line where he reported to General Raoul Salan. 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 Bùi 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 nineteen light infantry battalions and two artillery companies with the mission to pacify a military zone comprising of seven provinces.

In 1954, prior to Vietnam's division into North and South, Dong was appointed Commander of the Quảng Yên 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 the Coastal Interzone (Phân Khu Duyên Hải), a post he held until 1956, when he became the Commander of the 3rd Field Division. 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 escalation of the Vietnam War and with the 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 joined the government as Uỷ viên An-Ninh (Security Commissioner) in the Military Revolutionary Council (Hội Đồng Quân Nhân Cách Mạng). Later promoted to Major General, he served as military governor of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and concurrently as Commander of the Special Capital Zone during which time he had to deal with an enemy in South Vietnam, the Buddhist "peace movement" led by two monks, Thích Trí Quang of the Ấn Quang group and Thích Tâm Châu of Việt Nam Quốc Tự. Both of these monks wanted to topple the government of Vietnam, or at least to render it ineffective. During these turmoil times, General Dong was very effective in suppressing Buddhist protests and street agitations. Arrests were limited but well chosen and almost of detainees were Communists agents within the Ấn Quang group. Recent declassified CIA documents suggest that the movement had been penetrated by Viet Cong agents. Tâm Châu himself published a White Paper in 1993 accusing Trí Quang of harboring Communist agents.

From 1969 to 1974, General Dong served military personnel in a different capacity, Minister of War Veterans (equivalent to the US Secretary of Veterans Affairs).

With his commanding skills and knowledge, Dong was regarded highly as an ally by the Americans and well respected by many ARVN 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 Ly, a Nung, with whom he had five children. She died in 1992 at the age of 72, and Dong remarried to My-Lan Trinh, from whom he acquired three stepdaughters.

Dong died of congestive heart failure on November 26, 2008, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

In his spare time, Dong wrote poems to relax under the pen name of Nùng Khánh Lâm.

Awards

His decorations included:

  • Tuong Trung Long Tinh huy-chuong (Officier de l’Ordre du Dragon d’Annam)
  • De tam dang Bao quoc huan-chuong (Commander of the National Order)
  • Chuong my boi tinh de nhat hang (Chuong my medal, 1st class)
  • De tu dang Bao quoc huan-chuong (Officer of the National Order)
  • Luc-quan huan-chuong de nhat hang (Army Distinguished Service Order, 1st class)
  • Anh-dung boi tinh (Gallantry Cross, with 18 citations)
  • Phat Trien Sac Toc Boi Tinh de nhat hang (Ethnic Development Service medal, 1st class)
  • Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
  • Croix de guerre 1939-1945 avec palme de bronze (citation a l'ordre de l'Armee)
  • Croix de guerre des TOE avec 2 palmes d’argent et 4 citations de bronze
  • Croix du combattant; Medaille coloniale avec barrette Extreme Orient
  • Medaille d'honneur pour actes de courage et de devouement
  • Medaille commemorative de la guerre 1939-1945
  • Medaille commemorative de la Campagne d'Indochine
  • Chevalier de l’Ordre du merite du Territoire autonome Nung
  • Croix d'officier de l’Ordre du merite civil de la Federation T’ai
  • Order of the Brilliant Star, 1st Class, Republic of China
  • Euilji Cordon (Field Marshall Lord Euilji Order of Military Merit), Republic of Korea.
  • Geun Mu Gong Ro Medal, 2nd Class, Republic of Korea
  • Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant, Thailand

References

  • Simpson, Howard R. (August 1992). Tiger in the Barbed Wire: An American in Vietnam, 1952-1991. Brassey’s Inc.
  • Halberstam, David (1965). The Making of a Quagmire: The classic account of the United States in Vietnam. New York: Random House.
  • Prochnau, William (1996). Once Upon a Distant War: David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett - Young War Correspondents and their early Vietnam Battles. New York: Random House.
  • Moyar, Mark (October 2006). Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Cambridge University Press.
  • Trần Văn Đôn (1989). Việt Nam Nhân Chứng. Los Angeles: Xuan Thu Publishing.
  • Ðỗ Mậu, Hoành-Linh (October 1986). Việt Nam Máu Lửa Quê Hương Tôi. Mission Hills, CA: Que Huong Publishing.
  • AFRVN Military History Section - Ministry of Defense, Quân Sử 4: Quân lực Việt Nam Cộng Hòa trong giai-đoạn hình-thành: 1946-1955 (reprinted from the 1972 edition in Taiwan, DaiNam Publishing, 1977)
  • Đoàn Thêm (1968). 1965: Việc từng ngày/ a day-by-day account. Saigon: Phạm-quang-Khai.
  • Đoàn Thêm (1969). 1966: Việc từng ngày/ a day-by-day account. Saigon: Phạm-quang-Khai.
  • Đoàn Thêm (1965). 1945-1964: Hai mươi nåm qua, việc từng ngày/ 1945-1964: Twenty years ago, a day-by-day account. Saigon: Phạm-quang-Khai.
  • Huỳnh Văn Cao (1998). Một Kiếp Người. Maryland: Self-Published.


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