Vietnam Mass Grave Of Communist Soldiers Found

In this April 1969 file photo shot by Associated Press photographer Horst Faas, a South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband, found with 47 others in a mass grave near Hue, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Horst Faas, File)

HANOI, Vietnam -- Farmers have found a grave containing the remains of at least 20 communist soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.

Military officer Nguyen Van Phat said Tuesday that the bodies were recovered from a rubber plantation in the southern province of Dong Nai. Farmers hunting for scrap metal there found the bodies last week.

The remains have not been identified. Phat says authorities also found 17 pairs of rubber sandals and 23 hammocks among the remains.

He says the soldiers were believed to have been killed while attacking an airport in 1969.

Some 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died during the war, which ended in 1975 when communists overran Saigon, then capital of South Vietnam.

The remains of around 300,000 North Vietnamese soldiers have yet to be recovered.

Loading Slideshow

• Algeria

  Photo: A landscape view dated May 2003 shows the Saharan desert in southern Algeria, near the city of Illizi. (HOCINE ZAOURAR/AFP/Getty Images)

• Central African Republic

  Children by the side of the road cheer as a convoy of troops from the Central African Republic, Uganda, U.S. Army special forces, and media, drives through Obo, Central African Republic, Sunday, April 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

• Democratic Republic of Congo

  Photo: A picture taken on June 17, 2003 shows a UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots) child fighter standing by a machine gun fixed on a pickup at a military camp in Bunia, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. (ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GettyImages)

• Cuba

  Photo: Back dropped by an image of Cuba's revolutionary hero Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Cuba's national flag, faithful wait for the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI at Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday March 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

• Equatorial Guinea

  Photo: Kids play soccer in the Ela Nguema neighborhood of Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

• Eritrea

  Photo: A man leans on a tree in the disputed Horn of Africa border town of Badme between Ethiopia and Eritrea on November 5, 2008. (STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

• Iran

  Photo: Iranian women wave national flags and hold posters showing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before Ahmadinejad's speech on the strategic Persian Gulf island of Abu Musa, Wednesday, April 11, 2012. (AP Photo/ISNA, Hamid Foroutan)

• North Korea

  Photo: In this photo taken on Sunday, April 8, 2012, North Koreans stand in a field as they watch a train pass that was heading to North Phyongan Province, about 50 kilometers (35 miles) south of the border town of Sinuiju along North Korea's west coast. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

• Kuwait

  Photo: A view of a desert camp with Kuwaiti flags flying in the wind during a severe dust storm in Rawdatein, 120 Km North of Kuwait City on Saturday, March 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Gustavo Ferrari)

• Libya

  Photo: Nasgb Abd, 20, a medicine student, has her face painted with the colors of the pre-Gaddafi flag during a demonstration against at the Green Square in Tripoli, Libya, late Monday, Aug. 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

• Madagascar

  Photo: Madagascans wave the national flag during celebrations of the 50 years of independence in Antananarivo on June 26 2010. (GREGOIRE POURTIER/AFP/Getty Images)

• Papua New Guinea

  Photo: Villagers search the site of a landslide that struck villages in the Southern Highlands mountainous region of central Papua New Guinea, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Post-Courier)

• Saudi Arabia

  Photo: The sun sets over an old Saudi archaeological palace in Al-Diriyah city on the northwestern outskirts of the Saudi capital Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, June 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

• Sudan

  Photo: Refugees from South Kordofan, in the Republic of Sudan, await distribution of basic goods in the Yida refugee camp in Unity State, South Sudan on Saturday May 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Pete Muller)

• Syria

  Photo: In this Tuesday, June 12, 2012 file photo, a Syrian revolutionary flag waves on top of a building on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, File)

• Yemen

  Photo: A Yemeni female protestor holds an infant with Yemen's flag painted on his face and Arabic writing that reads "Leave" during a demonstration demanding the resignation of of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa, Yemen, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

• Zimbabwe

  Photo" Supporters of six Zimbabwean civic activists found guilty of conspiring to commit public violence in Harare, picket outside the Zimbabwean consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, Tuesday March 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Comments

[pangere]

10:31 PM on 09/27/2012

I would love to know more about this hidden war, I was born in 59, so I grew up and remember older dudes in their teens leaving our neighborhood and not comming back and when they did come back where outcasted for some reason. I had copper pow bracelet, and copper mia bracelet, when the last soldier got off 747 and the were reading there names off, after they disembarked, the pow who's bracelet I was wearing was called out and I removed my bracelet. he was HOME. I knew that day I would later serve and also what it was like to be american.

[emanafunk]

12:02 PM on 09/27/2012

War. Friend only to the Undertaker. I served in Nam '69-70' grunt and my soul cries everday for my lost brothers/sisters and I continue to ask myself "What is war good for? absolutely nothing-- Edwin Starr..

[Unum]

06:21 PM on 09/27/2012

Liberty

[emanafunk]

11:17 PM on 09/27/2012

Wgo's liberty

[pangere]

10:16 PM on 09/27/2012

I agree and thank you,america loves very much for your sacrifice. only the dead see the end of war

[BlairCase]

05:42 PM on 09/26/2012

The picture of the woman grieving over the body of her dead husband in the article is a famous photo. It was taken by famed photographer Horst Faas at Hue in 1968. After the NVA captured the city during the 1968 Tet Offensive, the communists executed thousands of civilians and buried their bodies in mass graves outside the city. Estimates range from 2,000 to 6,000, with most of the executions occuring after it became apparent that the NVA wouldn't be able to hold the city.

[June25]

06:16 PM on 09/26/2012

Fanned for spotting the truth.But there was little chance any of these people were meant to live.They just rounded them up in groups so as to document those they murdered.Wouldn't do to let children or wives escape due to poor record keeping.

[yearnd]

01:37 PM on 09/26/2012

the comments bring Afghanistan to my mind. No matter how hard the battle is fought how costly the victories when we do leave it will still be up to the people who live there to decide what the final outcome really is.

[Hohenstaufen]

09:09 AM on 09/26/2012

By "North Vietnamese soldiers" do they mean only NVA or are they also including Viet Cong, who were South Vietnamese?

[montgomeryjhn]

12:27 PM on 09/26/2012

Something on them would indicate they were North Vietnamese. NVA soldiers fought harder when they knew they were going to be taken care of. They drag bodies away so you wouldn't know how many killed. Basically they were fodder for their government. Hammocks served in several ways, transport supplies , wounded, killed and sleep in. NVA were communist. Viet Cong Nationalist. The Viet Cong were destroyed.

[BlairCase]

04:33 PM on 09/26/2012

Viet Cong units attacked the air base at Bien Hoa, which is in Dong Nai, as part of the 1968 Tet Offensive and again in 1969. Unless they were integtrated into Viet Cong units as cadre, North Vietnmese soldiers wore standard North Vietnamese Armyh (NVA) uniforms with unit and rank insignia.

[aeweidman]

08:50 AM on 09/26/2012

Horrible , thankless war, no one wanted and no one wanted to acknowledge that you served , or were a good soldier, we were forgotten and we were told to remain in the background and for God's sake don't tell people you went to Nam, it's just a downer.

[barricades]

03:04 PM on 09/26/2012

3 MILLION DEAD AND MILLIONS MAIMED FOR LIFE DEFORMED BIRTHS EVEN TODAY CAUSED BY CHEMICAL WAR FARE THANK YOU AMERICA
CLUSTER BOMBS CARPET BOMBING NAPALM CHEMICAL AGENT ORANGE
THANK YOU AMERICA

[pangere]

10:20 PM on 09/27/2012

republicans

[BacSi]

07:03 AM on 09/26/2012

I still have friends lost over there. And just a few years ago a friend of mine and a guy who replaced me were found along with two others.

Found 40 years after they were killed.

It's a heck of a country.

And if you have ever spent quality time up in those thick mountains like Charlie Ridge or deep in those jungles you know a lot of those bodies will stay lost for a,long time to come.

Vietnam is the war that will never stop. It just keeps on giving and giving.

What a waste

The best to everyone that fought that one. No matter the uniform they wore.

S/F

[montgomeryjhn]

12:02 PM on 09/26/2012

Whole Teams just went missing. Charlie knew what bothered us most above wounded and killed, is not knowing where our men were.

[BacSi]

12:26 PM on 09/26/2012

Yea those small teams.

We had several where they were all killed.

That was the biggest fear. That there would be no one left to tell the world what happened.

It was a heck of a way to earn an extra $55 a month

[Jerry Frey]

05:07 AM on 09/26/2012

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh = Saigon

[mamacat]

03:49 AM on 09/26/2012

Over 3 million casualties, most of them civilians. Not surprising that bodies continue to be found.

Mass graves from Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and from the War of the Roses, have been found in the last few years. We sure do seem to love our wars.

[Jerry Frey]

05:10 AM on 09/26/2012

Many of the European soldiers died from typhus.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/archaeology/napoleon_army_01.shtml

[George McAulay]

05:56 AM on 09/26/2012

That's very true.

I was surprised to read about how disease often ravaged and killed more soldiers than the enemy

[montgomeryjhn]

12:04 PM on 09/26/2012

Slulls are still be dug up on the Verdun battlefield. 100 years later.

[GoldenGateCA]

03:22 PM on 09/26/2012

Even worse, a few years back I saw a story about a military unit that was STILL dealing with unexploded chemical and explosive rounds found in the WW I battlefields all these years later. Mines from old wars still kill and main people regularly around the world.

[Erno L]

03:43 AM on 09/26/2012

One very descriptive case about "body count" was Operation Speedy Express in Mekong Delta 1968-69.

As peace talks in Paris got under way in earnest, US officials launched a "land rush" to pacify huge swaths of the Delta and bring the population under the control of the South Vietnamese government in Saigon. To this end, from December 1968 through May 1969, a large-scale operation was carried out by the 9th Infantry Division, with support from nondivision assets ranging from helicopter gunships to B-52 bombers. The offensive, known as Operation Speedy Express, claimed an enemy body count of 10,899 at a cost of only 267 American lives. Although guerrillas were known to be well armed, the division captured only 748 weapons.

Later all documents and interview have propped the claims of killed "enemy soldiers" by 9.D were enormously exaggerated. However the "body count" remained the number one measurement of military success in Vietnam. Even today too many historians believe in these foggy numbers. Majority of military casualties of Vietnamese were not KIA or DIW but diseases, hunger, poison, destruction of infrastructure etc...

[skyshoes]

06:59 AM on 09/26/2012

I remember getting pissed off as a kid nearing the sacrificial eighteenth year, watching Walter Cronkite drone on night after night in that ghoulish voice random numbers. The ratio always seemed similar though...

"and today.. three Americans dead, two hundred thirteen South Vietnam troops, three thousand four hundred and twenty Viet Cong and ten thousand four hundred and sixty eight North Vietnamese soldiers..."

After about three years of these insane ratios, I mentioned to my old man, who was a staff sergeant in WWII with Patton, if they had wiped out the entire population of North Vietnam at this rate yet. I started to keep a tally (pure bullshit).

Too bad it took six years or so for Cronkite and the other news drones to do their own body count.

My old man said "they got the French at Dien bien phu and they will get us eventually too. Unfortunately they had my older brother over there by this time, a sergeant leading his paratroopers up and down the same hill three times to "win it". He said every time they fought their way to the top.. The NVA were gone..

[montgomeryjhn]

12:46 PM on 09/26/2012

He did more than the NVA to cause us to lose the war. This the only war in history tom win every battle and lose the war. The French were stupid. They sat there and got beat up. They sat in the valley while Viet Minh had Artillery in the hills. No offense whatsoever. Older bother on Hamburger Hill? South Koreans stop that. They use gas. When they cleared a hill, it stay that way.

[montgomeryjhn]

12:38 PM on 09/26/2012

Most cases if they could, VC would drag their bodies away and bury the bodies. you could count blood trails. . Whereby the body count would be much higher. After a B-52 strike, there wouldn't be much to count.

[fedup7777]

02:28 AM on 09/26/2012

JPETERB!!!!

[MiddletownHal]

02:18 AM on 09/26/2012

And the war against Vietnam rages on! Agent Orange is still poisoning thousands of U.S. veterans AND Vietnamese, three generations removed from U.S. herbacide spraying! The war will NOT be over for thousands of us until the United States government addresses the issues of Agent Orange in the U.S. and Vietnamese population AND FUNDS a massive cleanup of ALL sites where this toxic stuff was stored and handled. If you are a veteran of this war and have NOT done the AO survey, get with the program. If you somehow managed to avoid service during America's unwanted war and happen to have several million dollars. . .

[Palaver]

01:28 AM on 09/26/2012

The world we remember the senselessness of THAT war the more we resent the stupidity of this war. America fights on a short memory.

[montgomeryjhn]

12:48 PM on 09/26/2012

There are those out there refresh our memory. They keep trying us.

[Abigaill Tomsen]

12:09 AM on 09/26/2012

Some 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died during the war and a hole with 20 bodies is considered a "mass grave"?

[montgomeryjhn]

12:59 PM on 09/26/2012

More than one?

[tommy b]

09:52 AM on 09/28/2012

Why are you debating the symantics Its the waste of human life that is important

[Abigaill Tomsen]

01:41 PM on 09/28/2012

Exactly - it was important that we killed them all and we failed.

[JPETERB]

01:29 AM on 09/26/2012

Now, if they were Real American soldiers and certified human beings and proud capitalist loving heroes who are raised and paid kill any and all worthless commies, then...it would be real American news here on FOX News, Inc.

[montgomeryjhn]

12:51 PM on 09/26/2012

Don't get it. If anything, they would be classified as heroes by MSNBC

[fedup7777]

02:27 AM on 09/26/2012

Wow..................... Someone needs to go to grammar school.