DEAR MR. ANDREWS, THE RESEARCH FOR THE BOOK ON THE MAY 1968 FIGHTING IN CHO LON IS MOVING ALONG WELL. YOUR FRIEND JOHN DRIESSLER, FOR ONE, HAS BEEN PROVIDING A LOT OF HELP. IF POSSIBLE, COULD YOU FIND A PLACE ON YOUR WEBSITE FOR THIS NOTICE:

AUTHOR SEEKS HELP ON BOOK ABOUT THE 9th DIVISION:
My name is Keith W. Nolan, and I'm the author of ten books on the Vietnam War. Each was based on interviews with veterans and document research at the National Archives. My most recent book is titled Ripcord; Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970 (Presidio Press, 2000).

I'm presently starting research on a new book. The subject is Battle for Cho Lon (May 7-14, 1968), which was fought in and around the southern part of Saigon by units operating under the control of the 3d Brigade, 9th Infantry Division. There were major contacts during the battle in the vicinity of the Y Bridge, the villages of Xom Cau Mo and Xom Co Dien, and along the Rach Kim, the Rach Bang Dong, and the Kinh Doi Canal.

Three infantry battalions were involved in the battle (6-31st Inf, 3-39th Inf, 4-39th Inf), plus two mechanized infantry battalions (2-47th Mech and 5-60th Mech), an artillery battalion (2-4th FA), and an air cavalry troop (D/3-5th Cav).

The only way to write the true history of this action is to talk with those who were there. If you served with one of the units cited above during May 1968, please contact me to arrange an interview. My mailing address is HCR 32, Box 68, Blackwell MO 63626-9606. I can be contacted atKWNolan@aol.com or at (636) 337-5733; reaching me by phone is sometimes difficult.

Thanks for listening and for your help,
Keith W. Nolan

[Editor's Note: When pressed for personal history, Mr. Nolan volunteered the following comments, which have been edited here for brevity's sake.

" I can tell you that I've been writing about the Vietnam War now for 20 years, ever since I was sixteen years old (I'm 36 now) and had the opportunity to speak with some Vietnam veterans, one of whom was my cousin. Their stories were fascinating, poignant, heartbreaking. From that moment on, I have devoted myself to interviewing Vietnam veterans and getting their stories on paper. I have been lucky enough to publish ten books on the war. My early books were quite bad due to clunky writing and the fact that veterans had not yet organized the kind of unit associations that now exist. It was difficult to find enough guys who had all been in the same unit in the same battle to reconstruct a definitive account of that battle. As I got older, however, and began to make contact with those newly-formed unit associations, my books naturally got better. My latest book is called RIPCORD; SCREAMING EAGLES UNDER SIEGE, VIETNAM 1970 (Presidio Press, 2000).

"My publishers repeatedly request that I stop writing about Vietnam battles and start writing about WWII and Civil War battles, the only two military history topics that consistently sell well. I have always refused. As I said, I feel obligated for reasons I cannot explain to get as many stories from Vietnam veterans down on paper as I can. The direct result of this is that I am literally buried in debt, with a wife and baby who live like peasants with me in a rundown shack of a house in one of the poorest counties in rural Missouri. I have always justified this poverty-level existence on the grounds that I was doing something important for a community usually ignored or maligned in print.

"Here is how I found out about the B/2-47th association. I had been impressed with what I had heard about the battalion (and the rest of the 9th Division) while writing THE BATTLE FOR SAIGON; you'll note that except for the controversial Barnes's quote*, the 2-47th is portrayed in the book as an excellent fighting unit. I was so impressed with the 2-47th and the 9th Division, in fact, that I thought to write a book about their role in the Battle for Cho Lon (May 1968). It was thus that I started searching the Internet to see if any unit associations existed in regard to Cho Lon and the 9th Division. I was delighted when I stumbled on the B/2-47th website and saw the extensive list of veterans who belonged to the association. I have looked forward to talking to as many of these individuals as possible about their memories of Cho Lon."] (EA)

*[Further Editor's Note: The "controversial Barnes quote" refers to a quote by Brice Barnes in THE BATTLE FOR SAIGON, then in command of the 2/47 Scouts Platoon. In Barnes' words, "The hamlet was a scene of mass confusion. Several superficially wounded GIs were crouched behind the disabled Bravo One APC, screaming at the reinforcements to take cover. None of their weapons were operative. They were in such a panic that they'd forgotten their training on how to clear jammed weapons. I took charge of those people and they responded. It was just a matter of them seeing some leadership."

Controversy arose when it was called to Mr. Nolan's attention that he had not acquired interviews from any of the "panicked" men or with anyone else who was there from First Platoon, Bravo Co. after Henry Jezek was wounded and medivaced, so their versions could be printed along with the Barnes quote. Mr. Nolan first responded without fully realizing exactly what he might have accidentally done to antagonize anyone. "In such extreme circumstances, why should I have doubted that some guys were freaked-out, especially when such an account was made by a highly-respected winner of the Distinguished Service Cross?" he said.

Some men have expressed that the Barnes quotuation seems to slant the entire story toward percieved selfagrandizment by Barnes, that the superficial values of glory lust and two dimensional B Western-like action/adventure bravado, seem to prevail in an account that indifferently cancels out the humanity of a handful of men caught up in ambush and confusion while holding their own against overwhelming odds BEFORE Barnes arrived, apparently unaware courage and heroism of many sorts had occurred there, died there, become maimed there; before he happened to see and characterize men and events through his own filters, thus (perhaps inadvertently) diminishing in a public record, the honor and dignity of men who are (now that the book is published and printed) unable to defend themselves, some having died then or in later actions, or in the case of one who was so severely wounded that to this day he can not remember what unit he was in during his tour. It has also been pointed out that Air Support is what ultimately saved everyone that day against a batallion of Vietnamese, who seemed infuriated by such a puny group hindering their advance.

Real men bleed, feel pain, feel fear, and struggle within themselves to overcome themselves with varying degrees of success, and for having been there at all under extremely controversial and difficult circumstances in the first place. They do not deserve rebuke for appearing to not measure up to the suspect and seeming superficial standards of such men as who may be temporarily in charge of them, who happen along in hurried moments, who have perhaps allowed their rank as Commanders who had the power and opportunity to thanklessly use those subordinant to themselves for their own gain and perhaps the subordinant's loss, who may or may not have understood then or since that Leadership is less of the ability to jump up in the fury of Battle, to declare "Follow Me!" to seemingly disorganized men; to depend on rank and fear of punishment, or an apparently inspired manly posture, than it is the ability to galvanize followers with trust and a realistic desire to please their own highest instincts, a command responsibility one does his very best to always fulfill, even in the absense of those to whom he owes his own life and reputation.

In order to avoid resentment among those at the bottom; among the Lowest of the Low, The Grunts, to whom Hotel Bravo is dedicated First, who shoulder the heaviest burdens and bear the greatest costs, who Matter by far the MOST by any fair standard, in Teddy Roosevelt's words, "stand in the arena", and to his very sincere personal credit, Mr. Nolan states that he would like to have had as many other interviews to use for that book as there might be men to give them, but as he was writing in 1995 he was unable to find anyone. Now is our opportunity to come forward, to step from within the Corn, so to speak; to do all we can to help Mr. Nolan avoid such controversy from happening again as a result of his new book, because he seems to have shown himself to be a man who fully intends to go the distance!] (EA)

IN ORDER FOR THE WHOLE STORY TO BE TOLD THIS TIME,
HOTEL BRAVO MANAGEMENT URGES ALL WHO CAN TO CONTACT MR. NOLAN;
TO SHARE YOUR MEMORIES WITH HIM!]