Intrigue and Betrayal in Saigon and the First American Death in Vietnam

 

OSS Lt. Col Peter Dewey as a captain.  The dashing and well connected young officer accidentally became the first American casualty in Vietnam.

Lt. Col. Albert Dewey cut a dashing figure and had distinguished himself as Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative behind the lines in France when he was got a sensitive assignment to help repatriate Allied prisoners of war (POW) in Indochina in September of 1945.  He was considered perfect for the job because he spoke flawless, perfect French and had the kind of idealistic democratic zeal common to the OSS—the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during World War II.  Within weeks, on September 26 he became the first American fatal casualty in Vietnam killed in a case of mistaken identity by Viet Minh troops he was sympathetic to.

Albert Peter Dewey was born in Chicago on October 8, 1916 into a distinguished family with important connections.  His father was a banker who served in the Navy World War I, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Andrew Mellon, served as a financial adviser to the Polish Government and director of the Bank of Poland, and was elected as a Republican to Congress in 1940.  His father was a cousin of Spanish American War hero Admiral George Dewey and the family was also related to New York Governor and Presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey.  His mother, Marie Suzette de Marigny Hall, was descended from a distinguished Louisiana Creole. 

The boy learned French from her as was dually fluent by the time he entered school.  He was educated in Switzerland at the Institut Le Rosey, before attending at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. He graduated from Yale University—the cradle of many OSS officers, where he studied French history and was a member of the Berzelius Secret Society with other well connected students.  Later, Dewey also attended the University of Virginia School of Law.

After graduation from Yale in 1939, Dewey became a journalist for the Chicago Daily News, the leading liberal and Democratic competitor of the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune in its Paris bureau. 

In Paris Dewey reported on the German invasion of France for the Daily News.  But he could not resist getting personally involved in the struggle against the Nazis.  He enlisted as a lieutenant in the Polish Military Ambulance Corps with the Free Polish Army in France. Enlisting in the medical service protected him from possible prosecution for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act by being a combatant. Following the defeat of the French army, Dewey made a daring escape through Spain to Portugal, where he was interned for a short time.

Back in the U.S. he worked for family friend Nelson Rockefeller in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs as part for Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy meant to discourage German and Japanese influence in Latin America.   Rockefeller once sent him to meet secretly with General Charles de Gaulle.

General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the creator and commander of the OSS, recruited Dewey from his oft-tapped pool of Yale alums.  On August 10, 1944, Dewey parachuted into southern France as the leader of a 10-man OSS team which operated behind the lines for six weeks transmitting intelligence reports on German troop movements. For his service, General Donovan personally awarded him the Legion of Merit and the French gave him the Legion of Honor and a second Croix de Guerre.

Rather than further service in Europe or Latin America Donovan had other plans for his young hero.

As the war was drawing to a close the OSS turned its attention to the post-war world.  The organization operated with remarkable autonomy from the War Department, State Department, and even the President.  It saw that American interests and the interests of its Allies would diverge and even clash.  Nowhere was this truer than in Asia and the Pacific.  The British, French, and Dutch hoped to quickly re-establish colonial rule when the Japanese were defeated and expelled but nationalism and anti-colonialism had spread in the occupied areas.  The OSS had supported and supplied guerilla resistance led by local forces who expected independence.  That was especially true in Indo-China where they had worked closely with Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh insurgency. 

The OSS considered the Viet Minh to be essentially nationalist and democratic although it recognized that Ho and other leaders had Communist connections.  That didn’t bother the agency which had worked with Resistance groups throughout Europe that included Communists and socialists.  In Asia the assessment was that re-establishing colonial rule by war weakened and weary imperialist powers was ultimately untenable.  In Vietnam it looked to the Viet Minh to establish a republic that would be pro-Western or at least neutral.  It counted on ancient Vietnamese hostility to Chinese encroachment to check advances there if the People’s Army ousted Chang Kai Shek’s ruling Kuomintang.

 

OSS Deer Team members pose with Viet Minh leaders Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap during training at Tan Trao in August 1945. left to right are Rene Defourneaux, Ho, Allison Thomas, Giap,, Henry Prunier and Paul Hoagland, far right. Kneeling, left, are Lawrence Vogt and Aaron Squires. 

The OSS worked closely with Ho to help it quickly move to assume power before the French could effectively return.  In the north, for example OSS sent in Deer Team, commanded by Maj. Allison Thomas, who parachuted into the Viet Minh base area to train them for operations against the Japanese. When Thomas and his team arrived in late July, they were greeted by a large banner proclaiming, “Welcome to Our American Friends.” With the tone for their work set, the Deer Team went about training the Viet Minh in the proper use of bazookas, carbines, and grenades. Before long, a Vietnamese-American Force was born.  Together they marched on Hanoi in August after the A Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and easily took the city.

With the full support of their American allies the Viet Minh quickly occupied administrative offices and began de-facto rule.  This was validated by an official American Mission led by OSS Capt. Archimedes Patti.  Patti witnessed the first parade of the Viet Minh troops and the first “international” ceremony where the Vietnamese flag was displayed alongside those of the Allies and the new Vietnamese national anthem was played after the Star Spangled Banner.  On September 2, Patti and his team watched as Ho Chi Minh read Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence before a cheering crowd. This apparent U.S. recognition of Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese independence inflamed French opinion as most colonials had expected the Americans to refuse to deal with this up-start government and help France restore control over the colony.

Dewey’s mission to Saigon was expected to do the same in the South but he found a different situation in the old French colonial capitol.  Already on hand was British General Douglas David Gracey and 20,000 troops from the 20th Indian Regiment, mostly Gurkhas fresh from the long campaign in Burma.  By agreement among the Allies the Douglas was to take temporary control of Vietnam in the South and given wide authority.  He firmly supported the eventual restoration of French rule and was staunchly hostile to the Viet Minh.

 

20th Indian Infantry Regiment Gurkhas display Viet Minh trophies during the street fighting for control of Saigon.

None-the-less the Viet Minh had already occupied many government offices although there were soon skirmishes between them and the British.  Dewey’s mission was to facilitate the liberation of Prisoners of War.  In direct negotiations with the Viet Minh, he arranged the repatriation of 4,549 Allied POWs, mostly French but including 240 Americans, from two Japanese camps near Saigon.  He also indicated support for the Viet Minh assuming administrative control of Saigon.

This made General Douglas irate.  He declared Dewey persona non grata and ordered his expulsion from the country—an extraordinary slap in the face to an ally albeit one of considerably lower rank. 

Douglas was determined to oust the Viet Minh.  His Gurkhas were insufficient in numbers to do the job, so he issued arms to the released French POW and to some of the many French civilians in the city.  As Dewey waited in a hotel to leave the country wide-spread fighting began in the city.  In his last report to OSS Headquarters in Washington.  He wrote “Cochinchina is burning, the French and British are finished here, and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia.”

As street fighting raged Dewey was finally told he would be evacuated from Tan Son Nhat Airport on September 26.  He requested permission to fly the American flag on his Jeep to identify him knowing that the Viet Minh were only targeting the French and British.  Douglas curtly denies the request saying only generals were permitted by custom to fly national flags on their vehicles.

Dewey made it to the Airport but found that his flight had been delayed or canceled.  On his way back to the hotel he tried to wave past a Viet Minh checkpoint shouting in French that he was American.  That was a fatal mistake.  Assuming he was French the troops fired on his Jeep striking him in the head and killing him instantly.  another OSS officer, Capt. Henry Bluechel, managed to escape on foot.

 

 A lurid U.S. press account of Dewey's death.

Upon examining Dewey’s body, the Viet Minh must have quickly discovered that he was an American.  Perhaps in a panic his body was dumped in the river and never recovered.  In Hanoi Ho quickly recognized that the shooting was a disaster.  He sent a letter of condolence about Dewey’s death to President Harry S. Truman.

Meanwhile Douglas was still having trouble asserting control of the city and even armed Japanese troops to join in the campaign.  That further inflamed the Viet Minh and rallied many ordinary Vietnamese to his cause.

 

British General Douglas Gracey welcomed French General Philippe Leclerc to Saigon with full military honors.

By December he had some control over the city and staged a welcoming parade and ceremony to honor French General Philippe Leclerc who assumed command in the name of France but advocated for a negotiated settlement.  That advise was rejected, Leclerc relieved of command and died in a plane crash in 1947. The war of independence finally ended after the infamous Battle of Diem Bien Phu in 1954.  Vietnam was divided with Ho Chi Minh in power in the north and a pro-Western monarchy in Saigon—a solution much like that which had been recommended by Leclerc.

With the defeat of France, the U.S. stepped in to shore up the shaky South Vietnamese.  Under the leadership of staunch anti-communist Allen Dulles, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which became the successor to the OSS in 1947, pushed for ever greater involvement into what became the Vietnam War to Americans and conducted operations in that country and in neighboring Laos and Cambodia for many years.

If only the U.S. had heeded the stark warning from the first U.S. casualty in Vietnam.

  

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche Was the Impossible Diplomat

Ralph Bunche as a senior diplomat from the National Museum of American Diplomacy.

On September 22, 1950 the world was surprised when an American diplomat on loan to the United Nations was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  It was not that his achievement was unworthy—brokering the thorny negotiations that led to an armistice agreement between Israel and the Arab States ending a bloody war that began when Israel declared its independence—it was because Ralph Bunche was an African-American.

Bunch was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 4, 1904 (some sources place the date a year earlier.)  His father was a barber serving an exclusively white clientele—and thus probably passing himself off as white in his work.  Some of his ancestors had been free since before the American Revolution.  His mother was an accomplished amateur musician.  Also in the household was his maternal grandmother, “Nana” Johnson who had been born into slavery but was also capable of “passing.”  Despite their fair completions the family strongly identified as Black and lived in that community.

Both parents were in fragile health and the whole family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico in hopes of improvement.  Both soon succumbed—probably to tuberculosis.  Bunche, his two sisters, and his grandmother moved to Los Angeles.

                                       Bunche as a UCLA graduate.

To help support the family Ralph sold newspapers and held numerous side jobs, including laying carpets, and being a house boy to a film actor while he attended Jefferson High School.  Despite the time lost to work, he excelled as both a student and an athlete.  He was valedictorian of his graduating class and earned athletic scholarships to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA.) While the scholarships paid his school expenses, he earned his personal expenses by working as a janitor.  He competed as a varsity basketball player on league championship teams while also competing in debate and writing for the campus newspaper.  In 1927 Bunche graduated summa cum laude and valedictorian with a major in international relations.

His accomplishment was a matter of great pride in his South Los Angeles neighborhood.  The community raised $1000 by subscription to supplement a scholarship so that Bunche could continue his education at Harvard.  He completed his Masters in political science in just a year.  He began teaching at Howard University, the nation’s most prestigious Black institution in the fall of 1928.  For the next six years he alternated terms at Howard and back at Harvard where he pursued his Doctorate.  He was named Chair of Howard’s Department of Political Science, a title he held until 1950 despite numerous absences to conduct research or in war time or diplomatic service.

He received many honors and distinctions as a scholar.  The Rosenwald Fellowship in 1932 and 1933 enabled him to conduct research in Africa for a dissertation comparing French rule in Togoland and Dahomey.  The resulting paper won the Toppan Prize for outstanding original research in the social sciences in 1934.  A fellowship from the Social Science Research Council from 1936-37 enabled Bunche to do postdoctoral research at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

                    Bunche as a young scholar.

As he was becoming the acknowledged leading academic on African affairs and European Colonialism, he began to forcefully expound his sometimes controversial views.  His influential 1936 pamphlet A World View of Race argued, “…class will some day supplant race in world affairs. Race war will then be merely a side-show to the gigantic class war which will be waged in the big tent we call the world.”  From 1936-40 Bunche was contributing editor to a leftist academic journal, Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly.

It was inevitable that with his credentials and expertise that Bunche would be called upon for service during World War II.  He began as a senior analyst on colonial affairs at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS.)  There his knowledge of French possessions helped provide information that kept most of the sub-Saharan colonies in Free French hands and available as support for eventual action in North Africa.  He also provided insight on Nazi attempts to turn South African Boers against the British Empire.

In 1943 Bunche moved to the State Department where he served under Alger Hiss as Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs.  There he worked not only on African issues but as a leader of the Institute of Pacific Relations and on the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. 

Bunche was active in preliminary planning for the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations held in Washington, D.C. in 1944 and as an adviser to the U.S. Delegation for the Charter Conference of the United Nations in 1945. He participated in the drafting of the Charter.  He worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt in the creation and adoption of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

Given his role in the birth of the institution, it came as no surprise when UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie asked to “borrow” Bunche from the State Department in 1946.  He was placed in charge of the Department of Trusteeship to oversee the numerous dependent areas that were placed under UN Trusteeship following the war.  It was delicate work, balancing the demands of former colonial masters and the growing anti-colonial nationalism of countries straining against the slow transition process to self-government.

Bunche was Count Folke Bernadotte's top aid as UN mediator until the Swede was assassinated in Jerusalem and he inherited the job.

In June, 1947 Bunche was assigned to work on the seemingly intractable problem of confrontation between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.  He soon moved from assistant to the UN Special Committee on Palestine to Principal Secretary of the UN Palestine Commission, which was charged with carrying out the partition approved by the UN General Assembly. When the original partition plan was dropped amid intense fighting between Arabs and Israelis in early 1948 the UN appointed Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator for the conflict with Bunche as his chief aide. Count Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem four months later on September 17 by the Zionist group Lehi. And Bunche was catapulted to chief mediator on Palestine. It was, theoretically, a temporary appointment.

The peace negotiations were tough, delicate, shirtsleeve work.  Bunche with a senior Israeli in his spartan headquarters on Rhodes.

For eleven months Bunche conducted ceaseless negotiations from his headquarters on the island of Rhodes.   Israeli negotiator Moshe Dayan later reported on Bunche’s unorthodox style.  He often conducted one-on-one talks with the parties over supposedly casual games of billiards.  He generally kept the parties apart as much as possible since their mere presence with each other in the same room inflamed passions and tended to harden positions.  He shuffled the parties in an out getting little concessions here and there from both parties until he could finally bring them together to sign the 1949 Armistice Agreements made successively between February and July between Israel and its neighbors, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordon, and Syria.  No party got what they really wanted, but all parties got what they could live with—at least for a while. 

Special U.N. envoy Ralph Bunche receives his Nobel Prize for brokering a peace between Israel and its neighboring Arab states.

His accomplishments made Bunche an instant celebrity.  He was greeted in New York City by a ticker tape parade and his adopted hometown of Los Angeles declared a Ralph Bunche Day. He was awarded the Spingarn Prize by the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) in 1949.  He was awarded 30 honorary degrees over the next three years.  He could not keep up with requests for speeches.  And all of this only intensified with the announcement of the Nobel Prize.

Of course, Bunche was not without critics.  His participation in the avowedly Marxist academic publication, his endorsement of National Negro Congress in the ‘30’s, and his close association with accused traitor Alger Hiss did not go unnoticed.  He was somewhat protected by the enormous prestige of the Nobel Prize—and the fact that he was no longer at the State Department. But he was subjected to an investigation by a Loyalty Board into American diplomats working at the United Nations in 1953 and had to personally appear and refute each of 14 spurious charges against him.  Although he had the support of President Dwight Eisenhower, it was a painful and humiliating experience for him. 

Bunche with Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King on the March from Selma to Montgomery.

Many also did not appreciate his loud public support for Civil Rights causes.  Academically, he had participated in the groundbreaking research on American race relations by Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal and often spoken out about the absence of scientific evidence for differentiations among the races.  He publicly supported actions by both the NAACP and the Urban League.  He endorsed the campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and participated in the 1963 March on Washington.  Controversy around him probably cost him an appointment as Secretary of State or Ambassador to the United Nations under John F. Kennedy.  But he did pave the way for Colin Powel and Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State and Susan Rice and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as Ambassadors to the United Nations.

The beneficiaries of his greatest achievement have not looked kindly towards him in recent years.  Palestinians and Israelis have hardened even more toward one another after years of ongoing conflict and bloodshed.  Both wield their own oft revised views of history as cudgels.  And both sides now feel that Bunche “sold them out” and blame the ongoing conflict in not getting everything they demanded in those tense negotiations.  Compromise and compromisers are no longer welcome in either camp.

For his part, the indefatigable Bunche resumed splitting his time numerous educational commitments, lecturing, and undertaking more missions for the United Nations.  From 1955 to 1967, he was Undersecretary for Special Political Affairs and from 1968 to his death was Undersecretary-General.  In 1960 Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld appointed him as his special representative to oversee the UN commitments in the war-torn Congo and he served similarly during conflicts in Cyprus, Kashmir, and Yemen.

The U.S. Postal Service honored Bunche with a 1982 stamp.

Bunche found time to teach at Harvard from 1950-52, serve on the New York City Board of Education from 1958-64, serve as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1960 to 65, as well as being a board member of the Institute of International Education, and a trustee of Oberlin College, Lincoln University, and New Lincoln School.

Bunche died, evidently of exhaustion, on December 9, 1971 at the age of 68.