Should I have labelled this as a rant? It might come off as one, so sorry mods if I labelled it the wrong. Anyway, Han here. I'm here to talk about a specific scene from the film Hamburger Hill. It's a very special scene because it is one of the few (perhaps the only?) scene in a Vietnam War film that features a Kit Carson Scout. Except the American soldiers in the scene do not even refer to me as one. Let's watch and see just how much they mess up this scene.
In the scene, Sgt. Frantz stands in front of five FNGs (Fucking New Guys) that have just arrived. He's giving them the run-down that goes like this:
All right, listen up. You people will not die on me in combat. You fucking new guys will do everything you can to prove me wrong. You'll walk on trails, kick cans, sleep on guard, smoke dope and diddely-bop through the bush like you were back on the block. Or on guard at night you'll write letters, play with your organ, and think of your girl back home. Forget her. Right now, some hair head has her on her back and is telling her to fuck for peace.
The usual tough guy talk, but he has a point. Newcomers would have to learn how to fight the war while in the field and listening to people who have actually survived thus far is a great idea. An even better idea? Listening to me. I make my entrance at this point. "This is Han," Sgt. Frantz' says as he points over at me while I'm flexing half naked in front of the wire holding a B40, the North Vietnamese variant of the Soviet RPG-2. I then proceed to methodically show my skills in getting through the wire and all the little alarms that the Americans have put up to prevent someone like me to get into their positions. While this is happening, Sgt. Frantz continues his lecture:
Those of you who are foolish will think of him as 'g--k,' 'sl--e,' 's--t' or 'd--k.' He is your enemy. He came over on the Chieu Hoi program, and after he fattens himself on C-rations he will be hunting your young asses in the A Shau Valley. Now forget about this Viet Cong shit. What you'll encounter out there is hardcore NVA, North Vietnamese. Highly motivated, highly trained and well equipped. If you meet Han or his cousins, you will give him respect and refer to those little bastards as 'Nathanial Victor.' Meet him twice, and survive, and you will refer to him as 'MISTER Nathaniel Victor.'
Ugh. Where do I even begin? The Chieu Hoi program was started by the South Vietnamese government to make soldiers like myself, who were part of the People's Liberation Armed Forces (known to my new American allies as the 'Viet Cong') or the People's Army of Vietnam (the North Vietnamese Army), defect to the South Vietnamese government. I was one of those about 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers who defected. However, what Sgt. Frantz' isn't telling these FNGs is that I am a Kit Carson Scout. I volunteered to work for the Americans as a scout. I literally save American lives, and this idiot is telling them that I'm going to just eat my fill and then go right back to my former colleagues? First of all, I defected because the conditions in the PAVN were so awful that I could not stand it any longer. I had been forced to come down to South Vietnam, it had not been my own choice. I was a conscript. I had family in South Vietnam that I thought I could find shelter with if I defected, but it was a tough decision to make. I know my family in North Vietnam would be punished by the government. I just couldn't stand it any longer. Why would I go back? You know what the PAVN would do with someone like me? I think you know and it's not a pretty thing to think about. The strange thing here is that Sgt. Frantz is doing the opposite of what he should be doing: He should want his FNGs to trust me. He should make me think I am their ally because I will save their ass when they're out there. I know the enemies ways because I used to be one. Now, I get what you're saying: 'He's only describing you like that because he wants to scare the newbies into taking the enemy seriously!' -- Okay, sure, but by doing it this way, he's only making them mistrust me (and in extension, any friendly Vietnamese soldier) even more.
Sgt. Frantz continues his tough guy thing, continuing his demonization of North Vietnamese soldiers and what American soldiers are up against. Kind of boring and repetitive. He ends it with me posing with the B-40, having gotten through the wire, aimed at the FNGs. We get what you're trying to say, Sgt. Frantz. But whatever, you might be asking yourself: Did these sort of demonstrations actually happen? The answer is yes, of course they did! But not for some random selection of five rookies and some asshole Sergeant who can not even be bothered to teach his boys about people who will save their ass. Kit Carson Scouts like myself would do it in front of large crowds, some even attended by generals, where we should off just how easily we could penetrate the wire of base camps and firebases during an assault. However, they wouldn't just send anyone to demonstrate. Both the PLAF and the PAVN had what is known as sappers, a sort of elite unit whose task it was to infiltrate and assault fixed installations with explosives. I was a sapper and that's why I was selected to show off my skills. Yet it's practically an insult to do iy in front of five people who are clearly paying more attention to their superior than my pretty awesome skills. You try being half naked and slither your way through several rolls of concertina wire while doing your best to avoid trip flares or rattling the Coke cans with pebbles in them. How long would it take you? For me, two to three minutes. Although the demonstrations were meant to serve as a way to showcase just how dangerous the enemy was, it was also instructive in showing off the people who were now on the side of South Vietnam and the United States.
You're welcome, America.
Historian's commentary.
This is a fascinating scene from Hamburger Hill. Not only is it the only depiction of a Kit Carson Scout (a North or South Vietnamese soldier who had defected to to the SVN government and then volunteered work the United States) in cinema that I am aware of, it actually shows something that they did: Put on demonstrations to show how they were able to penetrate American defenses. The setting of the scene is definitely very weird and the whole speech feels incredibly out of place. Contemporary photographs of these demonstration shows entire crowds of American soldiers (more often than not newcomers) watching on intensely as a lone Kit Carson Scout crawl through the concertina wire after having having stripped down to his shorts. Sometimes, the demonstration would be accompanied with a running contemporary broadcast from loudspeakers. It would often be followed by the Kit Carson Scout explaining to the onlookers the importance of building effective barricades and giving them advice as to make them stronger. Sometimes, even generals attended these demonstrations, as shown in this photograph of an unnamed Kit Carson Scout greeting Lieutenant General Donn J. Robertson in 1971. How would a demonstration look in reality? This eyewitness account written by SP5 Thomas Maus and PFC Bill Eftink gives us an idea:
Soon after his arrival, [former PLAF sapper Nguyen Trong] Thu was demonstrating his prowess at crawling through the barbed wire entanglements of the firebase. The demonstration was watched by many of his would-be victims. In three minutes, Thu worked his way through three strands of wire, disarmed a claymore mine and avoided numerous trip flares to breach the perimeter's most concentrated defense. The former sapper explained that the Viet Cong are trained to edge through concertina barriers much faster than this if necessary, but they normally move slowly to avoid detection.
^Source: ^"Infiltration ^Tactics ^in ^Vietnam ^Now ^Being ^Taught ^By ^Enemy ^Experts" ^by ^SP5 ^Thomas ^Maus ^and ^PFC ^Bill ^Eftink. ^Army ^Digest ^Volume ^25, ^No. ^1., ^1 ^January ^1970, ^p. ^38.
The portrayal shown in the film, however, is not particularly good. There is not even a mention of who this person really is beyond his name and that he is a defector (something that is only obvious to the viewer if they know what the Chieu Hoi program is), but beyond that, nothing. He is demonized for no reason other than to make the FNGs (and the viewers) aware of the enemy's capability. Instead of using the moment to add some additional nuance, that there were North Vietnamese who wanted to work for the Americans (!), it becomes a useless 'us vs. them' display with little connection to reality. This continued marginalization of Vietnamese voices and perspectives in American depictions of the Vietnam War fails to add complexity to the Vietnam War as depicted in popular culture and leaves South and North Vietnamese men and women as silent stereotypes. Han, the Kit Carson Scout in the film, would have understood everything Sgt. Frantz was saying -- after all, Han had studied English at Kit Carson Scout school before being assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and likely had American friends amongst his fellow soldiers.
While there were plenty of American soldiers who distrusted the Kit Carson Scouts, commanders at least attempted to make grunts trust them. The role of the scouts were to protect American soldiers, to prevent them from falling into ambushes or from stepping into a booby trap. They were incredibly effective at their job and there are countless of accounts of not only their heroism in battle but of how they prevented the deaths of many American soldiers. Yet this came with a cost. For North Vietnamese defectors, it would be impossible for them to return home and their families would likely suffer because of their defection (through ostracization, losing job opportunities, being publicly humiliated, etc.) , something which prevented many North Vietnamese soldiers from defecting in the first place (only 2,000 North Vietnamese defected in comparison with 150,000 South Vietnamese).
For more information, please see my article Phan Chot’s Choice: Agency and Motivation among the Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War, 1966–1973 in War & Society 39:2 (2020), p. 126-143.
I legit would love a movie or mini series following the Kit Carson Scouts. They sound absolutely fascinating, and clearly a perspective we never really see.
/u/Han_Kcs,
Thank you for sharing your story with us and for correcting the misconceptions we may have had.
If I may be so bold, what became of you after the war? Did KC scouts face retribution when the South fell or did most of them come to the US? What kind of life did you and your fellow scouts have in the post war years? How were those in the US treated by the Vietnamese community?
Thank you for your service.
