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Melville Stephens Speech--1971
Melville L. Stephens
Bender/Leone
Viewpoijnts
pp. 228 - 233.
He spoke a week after John Kerry did.
I would like to thank ... members of the committee for the opportunity to be here. I particularly appreciate the opportunity to speak because I know that my views are not very popular these days.
However, my convictions are very strong and based on my own experience and what I believe is a realistic sense of the situation and the feelings of the Vietnamese people.
I was in the Navy from June of 1967 until September of last year [1970] and spent nearly 34 months in the Southeast Asia combat zone. This nearly 3-year period included 10 months aboard a cruiser of the 7th Fleet in a gunfire support role, during which time I had an opportunity to visit various areas of I Corps [U.S. Army First Corps' South Vietnamese Area of Operations]; and almost 2 years in Vietnamese in country tours. I worked extensively with the U.S. 9th Infantry Division and various units of the South Vietnamese armed forces including the Vietnamese Navy, the Vietnamese Marine Corps, the Vietnamese Army, the regional and popular forces, and the irregular defense groups. During my last tour, which ended in May of last year, I had an opportunity to travel extensively throughout the country of Vietnam, and view firsthand the process of American withdrawal and the Vietnamese forces moving in to take over the combat role.
During this time I feel very fortunate to have made a great many friends among the Vietnamese people. I cannot speak more highly of my personal regard and affection for these people, both as friends and as comrades. My concern and the reason that I asked to speak today, is to ask you to consider carefully your course, so that peace for Americans does not come at the cost of additional sacrifice for these people.
It seems, that since I returned to the States last spring, that the cries for unconditional withdrawal and the setting of an immediate date for ending American support have become very loud, and I know that you on the committee have listened very carefully.
I believe that these arguments have two principal weaknesses. First, they are based on questions which certainly should have been asked in the early 1960's, but which were not. We are there; we have been there for a long time. The questions of legality and specific strategy which were valid 10 years ago are no longer the relevant ones.
Second, the very truth that all war is terrible and brutal is especially true of this one in which the civilian population is so intimately involved. Only those of us who have been there and fought and lived with the Vietnamese people can know how very true this is. I certainly agree that this war has gone on too long and must come to an end. Bul I ask you to consider carefully the manner in which you intend to end it.
I want to assure you that after my nearly 3 years in Vietnam I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of the Vietnamese people are opposed to the Communists. A great many of them have taken their stand because of the American commitment to the Government of Vietnam. I would like to think that you and I and the American people have a responsibility to these Vietnamese who have had faith in us in the past and have risked their lives for something they believe in. Peace for us must not come at the cost of their lives.
As I look around Washington today, and last week, I am very offended to see Americans carrying the flag of the VC. I fear that some Americans, in their passion for peace, have made heroes of the Vietcong. Let me assure you . . . that in South Vietnam, the Vietcong are not heroes.
I heard a great deal about atrocities last week, particularly from my fellow Vietnam veterans who were here. I certainly do not deny that some of them took place. But there is also another side which should be heard more often. I would like to tell you about two particular incidents, which I am personally aware of.
In the Spring of 1969 near Can Tho in the southern part of the delta I was unfortunate enough to be a witness to the grenading of a Vietnamese school bus, which was clearly marked as a school bus, by the Vietcong. Two of the children were killed outright; several were wounded so severely that I doubt that they could possibly have survived; and three others were maimed in the most grotesque manner that you could imagine.
Earlier in my tour I became very close friends with a young Vietnamese boy of 11 named Tran who had been orphaned by the Vietcong. Tran told me that in the fall of 1967 his father had been elected to a local village office and Tran had been seized by the Vietcong in the area and had had his left arm cut off with a machete as an example to his father. His father had refused to resign even at this, but he, along with his mother, were killed in the Tet offensive of 1968.
Senator, as I say, I speak from personal experience. I speak of only a few incidents like this, but anyone who has spent any time in Vietnam will assure you of the brutality and the terror of the Communists. They, the Communists themselves, have been quite blunt in stating that terror and mass execution are their principal strategy. The South Vietnamese I lived with know this. They know that they take their lives in their hands when they support the Government of Vietnam and so they depend upon us for the support which we have promised.
I think I understand as well as any the passion of all of us in this country for an end to the war, but it is my firm conviction that peace at the price of these Vietnamese people is too expensive, and it is a peace that I could not live with.
I want to tell you from my own sense, from my own personal experience from nearly 3 years in Vietnam, that the setting of an arbitrary date for American withdrawal can only hurt the cause of the South Vietnamese people, and that I am firmly convinced that the current program, which I was a part of, and which I have watched since I left, is as progressive and ambitious as I believe the situation could permit.
When I speak of my fear for the Vietnamese people, I certainly don't speak of the generals and the admirals, of the high ranking officials. Frankly, I am quite sure that in a situation they call handle themselves. I do refer to the junior officers and the troops who I knew, to the merchants and to the farmers and to the local officials, those who we would call the average citizens of the country.
I think, sir, that the issue of ending this war is not the issue of our saving face; but the issue of our responsibility, as a nation and as individuals, to these citizens of South Vietnam. Many of them have committed themselves, because we very literally asked them to. I hope and urge that in our urgency for peace that we do not abandon them. . . .
Question
Senator Hugh Scott: Lieutenant Stephens, yours is a calm, quiet voice, and yet it is just as important surely that your views and your voice be heard in the media, on television and on radio. It is more difficult for you to draw the cameras to you because you are speaking rationally and reasonably and out of a very deep concern. . . .
You have talked to other veterans. By various estimates, approximately 1,500 veterans were here. There have been over 2.5 million who have served in Southeast Asia, and you have, of course, talked with many of them. Is it your opinion that you are reflecting a general sentiment or a majority sentiment of those veterans with whom you are familiar and with whom you have served?
Mr. Stephens: Mr. Scott, even among the 1,500 veterans here last week in the protest, there were very few who did not have very close Vietnamese friends whom they hold very dearly and when they think about the issue objectively, they know that we have a responsibility to them, and they look for an answer which will not abandon them.
I can understand that from war develops a passion for peace, but that passion sometimes makes people less than objective, and I feel that I speak for the majority of the people--no, I don't, I don't want to presume to speak for the majority or for anyone else except myself, but my sense of being there and being with other Americans and South Vietnamese, is that there is a lot of respect for the South Vietnamese and a commitment to them. . . .
I certainly understand the urgency of the American people, and of those in this room particularly for a quick end to the war. I mean it has gone a long time for us also.
But the reason I came here to speak today is because I am afraid that in this urgency that we will lose our objectivity, and we will forget the commitment which we made in the past and which the Vietnamese depend upon.