OPERATION EMBANKMENT: THE STORY OF AMERICA'S FIRST CASUALTY IN VIETNAM - 1945 - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

In the summer of 1945, the war against the Japanese was still raging. The turning point in the war against Japan came in early August. The first atomic bombs were dropped and shortly thereafter the Japanese surrendered. The primary task, once the fighting stopped, was the disarmament of the Japanese Army. The British Army was designated to head up this process. With the bulk of their forces located in India, Burma and Malaya; they had insufficient military units available in Thailand and Indochina to carry out the disarmament.
Although there were French military units present in Indochina, they were all imprisoned as a result of a Japanese coup carried out in March 1945. The only credible military forces belonged to the Vietnamese Liberation Front, commonly known as the Viet Minh. The leader of the Viet Minh was Ho Chi Minh. On September 2nd, he declared Vietnamese independence. With neither the British nor the French Army able to restrain them, the Vietnamese nationalists quickly consolidated their power in Hanoi and made similar preparations to do so in Saigon.
In August of 1945, Lieutenant A. Peter Dewey was assigned to lead the first OSS team into Saigon, Indochina. The mission was named Operation Embankment. It was anticipated it would be a typical OSS operation, involving ambushes and sabotage. However, with the war finished, its mission changed. Operation Embankment would collect top-secret information for the U.S. State Department.
On September 1st, the first contingent of Operation Embankment, under Lieutenant Emile Counasse, arrived in Saigon. They were overwhelmed by the rampant disorder and random violence they witnessed. Attacks against the French Colons occurred daily and the majority of French citizens were terrified.
Dewey and the rest of the Embankment team arrived on September 4, 1945. They hit the ground running. Within days, Dewey and his team were sending reports back to OSS Headquarters in Kandy, Ceylon. Most of his information came from French and Vietnamese informants, especially the Viet Minh. When the French discovered Dewey was meeting with their avowed enemies, the Viet Minh, they were furious. They felt betrayed. After Dewey’s heroics in Southern France, they had considered him to be one of their own.
Into this explosive atmosphere a new element was added, General Douglas Gracey. On September 13, 1945, Gracey, along with a small expeditionary force, landed in Saigon. Gracey was a believer in “Old School” military discipline. Almost immediately, he clashed with the less formal OSS and its leader, Peter Dewey. Gracey wanted to crush the Vietnamese independence movement and restore Indochina to French colonial rule. Dewey, on the other hand, realized the British and French would never be able to regain control over Indochina. He presciently described the futility of trying to restore French colonial rule when he stated, "Cochinchina is burning, the French and the British are being destroyed here and we should stay out of Southeast Asia.” In their ongoing duel, Gracey was continually frustrated by Dewey’s intellect and wit. After a particularly rancorous conference with Dewey, Gracey decided he had enough. On September 23rd he ordered Dewey out as a “persona non grata”. He was ordered to leave on September 26, 1945.
On the morning of September 26th, after waiting several hours his flight, Dewey and his executive officer, Major Herbert Bluechel, returned for lunch to Embankment’s villa adjacent to Tan Son Nhut Airfield. As they were approaching the villa, they were ambushed. In the ambush, Dewey was murdered. Luckily, Bluechel managed to escape back to the villa. Dewey’s body, along with his jeep, disappeared. They were never found nor was the group responsible for Dewey’s death ever identified.

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