Ex-Comrades in Arms Will Meet Again

Over the last 28 years, Frank Norwood had often wondered about the South Vietnamese Army captain he advised during his 1968 combat tour.

He assumed that his counterpart, Capt. Le Tan Lao, did not survive the war and perished either on the battlefield or in a Communist prison camp after South Vietnam’s defeat in 1975.

Earlier this year, Norwood was “shocked” to learn that Lao was alive and living in Minnesota. He obtained Lao’s address and telephone number from a veterans’ group and renewed their bond over the telephone.

The two former professional soldiers will be reunited this weekend when more than 1,000 former U.S. military advisors and their Vietnamese counterparts, also known by the military term “X-Rays,” meet during a reunion at the Orange County Airport Hilton.

The annual meeting, which begins today and ends Saturday, marks the first time that South Vietnamese veterans have participated in the event, organized by Counterparts, a group of U.S. veterans who served as advisors with Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, or MACV, from 1964 to 1973.

“This is going to be the most emotional convention we’ve ever had,” said Norwood, 56, of Katy, Texas.

“This time, the guys we fought with will be with us. This war is real, again.”

In a telephone interview from his Minneapolis home, Lao, 57, said he arrived in the United States earlier this year after serving more than 20 years in a Communist prison camp.

“I won’t get there until Friday, but I am excited about seeing Mr. Norwood again,” Lao said. “It has been a long time, and I never forgot about him.”

Although the Army advisors’ role in Vietnam is not as well known as that of the combat units like the 1st Cavalry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade, field advisors played a key role in the ground war, particularly at the “subsector,” or district, level. A district was roughly equivalent to a U.S. county.

Working in teams of three or four enlisted men, usually commanded by a captain or major, U.S. advisors led, trained and lived in isolated camps with local South Vietnamese units called Popular and Regional Forces that were not part of the army. Those Vietnamese units seldom numbered more than 100, and it was not uncommon for Viet Cong and Communist sympathizers to infiltrate the ranks.

“The U.S. Army advisors served with great distinction in the dangerous and hostile circumstances to which they were constantly exposed . . . and often rallied their South Vietnamese units, saving them from destruction on the battlefield,” wrote Shelby L. Stanton, a military historian in the Vietnam Order of Battle.

Because most field advisory teams were intimately familiar with their districts and many times knew the local Viet Cong by name, some teams were inevitably drawn into CIA-sponsored operations that even now remain classified.

The unique nature of the advisors’ role--many Americans were also known by name to local Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army units--was illustrated in a chilling experience recalled by Norwood.

The troop of 22 armored personnel carriers commanded by Lao--part of the South Vietnamese Army’s 4th Cavalry Regiment--had operated successfully around Tam Ky in numerous engagements with the Viet Cong. Too successfully, as it turned out.

“At some point, the VC told five of the South Vietnamese soldiers they had to kill Lao and me, or they would kill [the soldiers’] families,” said Norwood, who retired as a major in 1978 after 20 years in the Army. “They were supposed to lob grenades or shoot us during an enemy mortar attack, but Lao found out about it and prevented it.”

While Norwood and Lao will have an opportunity to renew old acquaintances, others will never see their “X-Rays,” many of whom died in the war or in Communist prison camps afterward.

Some South Vietnamese veterans like Cong Vo of Garden Grove also are looking forward to seeing their U.S. counterparts again.

But Vo, 54, will have to wait for another time because his advisor, John Ozaki of El Paso, Texas, will not be able to attend. The two men have not seen each other since 1967 but began renewing old ties two months ago through letters.

In a letter to the veterans’ group earlier this year, Vo asked for help in locating Ozaki. He noted that Ozaki, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel and now lives in El Paso, was his advisor in I Corps for the Chieu Hoi (Open Arms) program--a propaganda effort by the U.S. military to get enemy soldiers to defect.

Vo, a former officer, arrived in the United States in 1990 after escaping a prison camp.

“I’m so sorry that I can’t make the reunion,” said Ozaki in a telephone interview. “Vo is a good man and was a good soldier. I’m so happy he came here. He had to destroy all of his photos when the war ended, so, I’m going to be sending him photos from my album.”

There is huge local interest among Vietnamese veterans in the reunion, and the Vietnamese media have reported a number of stories about the conference. A large number of Vietnamese veterans are expected to attend the conference.

U.S. advisors served with all branches of the South Vietnamese armed forces, but it was the Army field advisors, including those who served with Vietnamese infantry, airborne, armored and marine units, who experienced most of the combat.

U.S. veterans expected at the weekend reunion also served with other South Vietnamese units, including artillery, engineers, signal and support.