Embedded Files
Have you ever seen so many elephants?
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From: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 11:34 PM
To: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
George Burchett is an artist friend who lives in Ha Noi with his wife Ilza, also an artist, and son George who is following in his parents' creative footsteps. George is the only foreigner I know who was born in Ha Noi. (He has a photo of himself as a toddler, in short pants, standing in front of the old French villa which was home for a couple of years.)
George's father, the famous Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, was one of the few -- perhaps the only -- foreign correspondent to report the American war from the side of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. For his independence and his determination to tell the untold story of the war to Americans and other foreigners, Wilfred was denied a passport by the government of Australia for nearly two decades.
As George notes in this fascinating account from Viet Nam News, the loss of Viet Nam's wild animal population is emotionally a sad development to ponder, but the implications for the planet are real and severe.
CS
June, 18/2017
Have you ever seen so many elephants?
National heroes: Somewhere in the Central Highlands around 1963 as captured in a still frame by journalist Wilfred Burchett on a visit to the liberated zones of South Việt Nam. Photo courtesy of George Burchett
by George Burchett
In April 2015, I was invited by the Cercle des Francophones (Francophone Association) of Hà Nội to present the film Loin du Vietnam (Far from Việt Nam) at the Hà Nội Cinémathèque. The film was made collectively in 1967 by some of the great names of new French cinéma: Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, in support of Việt Nam’s resistance to US aggression.
I was familiar with the film, but decided to do some extra research for the occasion.
Quite by chance, I stumbled upon the website of a film festival at Casa de Cinema at the Villa Borghese in Rome titled, Il vietnam e il cinema francese – Việt Nam and French Cinéma. One of the presented films was Wilfred Burchett in Việt Nam, France/Việt Nam, 1963, 44min.
Wilfred Burchett is my father, the Australian journalist, the first to visit the liberated zones of South Việt Nam (Việt Cộng controlled) in late 1963, early 1965.
I knew a film had been made of his visit but had never seen it and had never been able to track it down. And there it was, on the program of a film festival in Rome.
I e-mailed the organisers at Casa de Cinema, who put me in touch with the AAMOD (Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico) film archive in Rome. I contacted them and they kindly made the film available to me.
So I finally watched it for the first time in my life at home in Hà Nội. It was a highly emotional experience to watch the almost half-century-old black and white footage, first downloaded on my laptop, then on my TV screen.
Eight minutes into the film, a VC postman delivers my father his mail. The commentary says:
"From Europe, your son sends drawings of the jungle and wild animals. He is a little afraid for you, but he doesn’t yet know that here the most dangerous animals are American imperialists."
Well, that son is me, artist George Burchett. Yes, these were my drawings "of the jungle and wild animals", inspired by the letters my father sent my brother, sister and me – then living in Moscow – in which he explained why he was away for so long. To make it more interesting for us, he told stories of tigers, elephants, monkeys and other exotic creatures from the jungles of South Việt Nam.
Jungle stories: Mail delivery somewhere in the jungles of
South Vietnam. Still photo of journalist Wilfred Burchett on
a visit to the liberated zones of South Việt Nam,1963-64.
Photo courtesy of George Burchett
Motorised cavalry
Sixteen minutes into the film, my father crosses a river on horseback – very heroic-looking, like Indiana Jones – and suddenly this extraordinary panorama fills the screen. The narration says:
"After an arduous journey you are now in the Central Highlands.
Have you ever seen so many elephants?
Did you know they are the heavy motorised cavalry of the local guerillas?"
Extraordinary. Like some lost world suddenly re-discovered. When this scene was filmed, thousands of elephants, tigers, panthers and other wild animals roamed the jungles of South Việt Nam. Elephants played a special role.
From my father’s letters from the jungles of South Việt Nam:
"There are lots of tigers and elephants; lots of deer and wild pigs around where I am. I found out lots of interesting things about elephants and the more I hear about these animals, the more I like them. They are very, very intelligent and very sensitive. They worry about things just like human beings. I heard of one the other day who loved his master very much. They had worked together in the forest for many years together, the elephant pulling the trees away from the land being cleared for cultivation and afterwards, carrying the grain and master together back to the village. The master got quite old and died and the elephant wept and was very unhappy. For a whole week he would not eat and then he died.
The elephant becomes very affectionate towards everyone in the family with whom he works. If there are some big rows, between Mummy and Daddy for instance, or between Annichka and George, the elephant simply cannot stand it. He stalks off, deep into the forest and someone must go after him, blowing a certain note on a buffalo horn, and then talk to him nicely and explain that there will be no more quarrelling. Then he agrees to come back."
My father’s words merged with the scene of elephants in the shimmering water. It took a long time for this image to reach me, and it reached me in a strange, round-about way. So I invite you, who read this, to look at it very carefully. I’ve counted about 60 elephants, each with a man riding it.
Verge of extinction
There are about 60 wild elephants left in Việt Nam today. Not in one big group like in the image I am sharing with you, but scattered around the few remaining wilderness areas of Việt Nam. Another 100 or so lead a miserable existence carrying tourists, mostly in Đắk Lắk Province in the Central Highlands. These figures are provided by Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. And they are dire. The number of wild elephants in Việt Nam is unsustainable and the elephants are on the verge of extinction. Yes, extinction.
What bombs and defoliants could not accomplish, modern man is on the verge of achieving: the total elimination of elephants in Việt Nam. The main causes are deforestation and loss of habitat, man-elephant conflict, poaching. Elephants do not reproduce in captivity. Those who die from exhaustion, malnutrition or disease cannot be replaced. So domestic elephants are also doomed.
Elephants have played an important role in Việt Nam’s long history of resisting invaders. Elephants carried the Trưng Sisters into battle against the Chinese invaders. The virgin lady warrior Bà Triệu also rode an elephant into battle. As did many other great Vietnamese heroes. And elephants were the "heavy motorised cavalry" at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ during the war of resistance against French colonialism and in the jungles of Central and South Việt Nam during the war of resistance against US imperialism. They should be treated like national heroes, with the respect due to war veterans.
Saving the elephants of Việt Nam should be a national duty and a matter of national pride. Elephants, tigers, rhinos and many other species are being hunted and exterminated to satisfy man’s vanity.
Yes, there are economic and social realities that mean that wilderness areas are shrinking to make way for crops and other forms of land exploitation. Everybody understands that. But everybody should also understand that unless we embrace models of sustainable development, not only the elephants of Việt Nam will be doomed, our whole planet will be doomed.
The jungle and its animals were Việt Nam’s allies in the wars against invaders, colonisers and imperialists. They are now crying for help. But are we listening? VNS
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From: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 1:13 AM
To: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks for a quick correction from a friend to my carelessness and haste:
George and Ilza Burchett's son is Graham, not George. Graham has also found a nice creative niche for himself in the Ha Noi community with an artistic array of t-shirt designs.
CS
========================
CHUCK SEARCY
Hà Nội, Việt Nam
Email chuckusvn@gmail.com
Skype chucksearcy
Cell VN +8 490 342 0769
Cell US +1 404 740 0653
========================
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From: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 8:47 AM
To: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Graham's father, Wilfred Burchette, was a paid Soviet agent.
KGB request to Council of Ministers in July 1957 for twenty thousand rubles and a monthly subsidy to Burchette since “by our instructions Burchette was asked to penetrate the American and West European press,” e.g. the National Guardian. This found by Vladimir Bukovsky in Russian Presidential Archives. Herbert Romerstein,
“Counterpropaganda…” in J. Michael Waller, Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare, Washington: The Institute of World Politics, 2009, 158.
He "reported" things like this: “One of the gentlest and peace-loving people in the world (Cambodians) have been used as guinea-pigs in experiments with the latest weapons in the US arsenal.”
And this: "armed forces solemnly undertakes not to encroach upon an inch of the territories of Cambodia and Laos….It is a fact, incidentally, that North Vietnam, although a member of the socialist camp, does not have any military alliances."
Hanoi Hannah once broadcast "The Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett helped us"
In his "The Furtive War" he spread the lie that the NLF was a grassroots organization brought about by opposition to the Diem regime, which we now know is completely laughable.
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/burchett/1963/the-furtive-war/ch05.htm>
During the Korean War he tried to extract false confessions from American POWs that they had used germ warfare.
Report of the Committee on Government Operations, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Communist
Interrogation, indoctrination and Exploitation of American Military and Civilian Prisoners, December 312, 1956, 15,
17.
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From: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 9:45 AM
To: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Well, some people have problems with the sort of work I did back in the day, too. And, in spite of the fact that Wilfred Burchett was on Moscow's payroll, rather fervently attached to Hanoi's cause, shaped his reportage to fit the party line and never repented, he emerges here as a loving and humorous father.
David Brown
Writer on contemporary Vietnam
Fresno, California USA
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From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Date: Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 11:47 AM
To: David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sure Burchett was biased. No argument there. But I liked the article.
That being said, what is incorrect about this statement of Burchett's: :“One of the gentlest and peace-loving people in the world (Cambodians) have been used as guinea-pigs in experiments with the latest weapons in the US arsenal.”
We can argue about how peace-loving the Cambodians were from 1969 onwards, but American bombing of Cambodia probably killed over 100,000 civilians. Even if you dispute that number, and say is was less, Cambodian civilians were guinea pigs, "collateral damage" in a war that was not even targeted at them.
Shawn McHale
George Washington University
--
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History
George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
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From: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 18, 2017 at 12:53 PM
To: mchale@gwu.edu, David Brown <nworbd@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I'm at a loss to know how you can say this - "collateral damage" in a war that was not even targeted at them."
The NVA targeted them from the beginning. They invaded Cambodia in 1959, assisted the Khmer Rouge, used their land for bases and drove the people out of those areas. The allies conducted operations in Cambodia because that's where the NVA were, not because that's where the Cambodians were.
If the NVA hadn't invaded Cambodia and used it as a base of operations into South Vietnam, the allied forces never would have gone into Cambodia.
Characterizing Cambodian operations by the allies as using the Cambodians as guinea-pigs in experiments with the latest weapons doesn't just miss the point. It completely ignores it.
The Lao Dong party is directly responsible for the loss of 1.5 million (or more) lives of innocent people in Cambodia after the war was finally over. Even if you accept the figure of 100,000 deaths from allied bombs, that pales in comparison to the loss of life caused by the communists, and that doesn't count one single loss in the more than 10 years of war caused by them.
Paul Schmehl (pschmehl@tx.rr.com)
Independent Researcher
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From: Pamela McElwee <pdmcelwee@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 11:37 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list:
Several of Chuck’s respondents raised questions of other memoirs from the war which mention or refer to elephants. I am currently working on a new book on animal-people relations in Vietnam, and if others have anecdotes they remember, either from written accounts or personal experience, I would welcome folks contacting me off list so I might make reference to them in this project. I’m especially interested in tiger encounters & stories, as those were the most frequent ‘dangerous’ mammal interactions recorded from French colonial times.
One of the goals of the project is to document the very question of ‘where did these animals go’ - the decline of wild elephant herds is just one measure of the rapid loss of biodiversity experienced in Vietnam since the mid 20th century. Documenting how much decline is due to habitat conversion, how much to direct hunting, how much to war impacts, etc, is something I’m trying to make sense of.
Thanks much,
Pam McElwee
Dr. Pamela McElwee
Associate Professor, Department of Human Ecology
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Affiliated graduate faculty: Department of Anthropology, Department of Geography, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
From: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 10:19 AM
To: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Over the past couple of days there have been a number of responses to George Burchett's article, "Have you ever seen so many elephants?" about George's father, Wilfred, the Australian journalist. All respondents I have queried have agreed that their comments may be shared. With apologies for the delay, and a mea culpa to those whom I did not ask permission to do this, the comments received so far are collected below for convenience. CS
June, 18/2017
Have you ever seen so many elephants?
National heroes: Somewhere in the Central Highlands around 1963 as captured in a still frame by journalist Wilfred Burchett on a visit to the liberated zones of South Việt Nam. Photo courtesy of George Burchett
RESPONSES
Carl Robinson
Jun 18
Vietnam Old Hacks
I had the great pleasure of meeting George Burchett in Hanoi last year -- and what a fascinating character he is.
Son of the legendary -- and controversial -- Australian foreign correspondent, Wilfred, who covered the war from the Other Side, George has made Hanoi his home. (His mother was Bulgarian and, as the story notes, George grew up in Moscow, among other places.)
George showed up a bit late for our 'bia hoi' dinner and told our group somewhat cryptically that he was working on elephants. Now, I know why.
With thanks to mutual friend Chuck Searcy who introduces the item.
Best,
Carl
bui giang
Jun 18
Thank you a lot, Chuck!
This is another reminder for me of Wilfred Burchett, THE person I have admired, since my secondary school time. As an adult, and together with my former boss Pham Van Chuong, whom I believe you know, I translated Wilfred Burchett's book "China - Cambodia - Vietnam Triangle" from English into Vietnamese in 1986. This book served well as an eye-opener for many through providing solidly-grounded materials and analyses of the China-Cambodia (under the Khmer rouge) relations behind the killing fields.
Best,
BTG
Eric & Hoa Herter
Jun 18
Amazing photo and ariticle, Chuck. Thanks.
vdruhe
Jun 18
Beautiful!
Jerry Lembcke
Jun 18
Wow - this is a spectacular posting both for its historical value and alarm for Viet Nam's elephant population. What is to be done?
Jerry Lembcke
Associate Professor Emeritus
Department of Sociology/Anthropology
Holy Cross College
Worcester, MA 01610
508-793-2288
http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/jlembcke/
H. Bruce Franklin
Jun 18
Wilfred Burchett was our guiding light in seeing through the lies of the corporate media about the military situation, especially in 1967-68 (as I explain in Chap. 5 of Vietnam and Other American Fantasies).
In Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers, there is dialogue about "the great elephant hunt" designed to kill all the elephants in South Vietnam. I know of no other reference to this. Does anyone know other references to this particular feature of US ecocide in Vietnam? (Of course the systematic attempts to defoliate and burn down the rain forests must have taken a dreadful toll of the elephants as "collateral damage.")
Bruce
Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Jun 18
Graham's father, Wilfred Burchette, was a paid Soviet agent.
KGB request to Council of Ministers in July 1957 for twenty thousand rubles and a monthly subsidy to Burchette since “by our instructions Burchette was asked to penetrate the American and West European press,” e.g. the National Guardian. This found by Vladimir Bukovsky in Russian Presidential Archives. Herbert Romerstein,
“Counterpropaganda…” in J. Michael Waller, Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare, Washington: The Institute of World Politics, 2009, 158.
He "reported" things like this: “One of the gentlest and peace-loving people in the world (Cambodians) have been used as guinea-pigs in experiments with the latest weapons in the US arsenal.”
And this: "armed forces solemnly undertakes not to encroach upon an inch of the territories of Cambodia and Laos….It is a fact, incidentally, that North Vietnam, although a member of the socialist camp, does not have any military alliances."
Hanoi Hannah once broadcast "The Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett helped us"
In his "The Furtive War" he spread the lie that the NLF was a grassroots organization brought about by opposition to the Diem regime, which we now know is completely laughable.
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/burchett/1963/the-furtive-war/ch05.htm>
During the Korean War he tried to extract false confessions from American POWs that they had used germ warfare.
Report of the Committee on Government Operations, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Communist
Interrogation, indoctrination and Exploitation of American Military and Civilian Prisoners, December 312, 1956, 15,
17.
David Brown
Jun 18
Well, some people have problems with the sort of work I did back in the day, too. And, in spite of the fact that Wilfred Burchett was on Moscow's payroll, rather fervently attached to Hanoi's cause, shaped his reportage to fit the party line and never repented, he emerges here as a loving and humorous father.
David Brown
Writer on contemporary Vietnam
Fresno, California USA
Ray Wilkinson
Jun 18
hi chuck. i am currently in africa, following my other passionate love affair...wildlife. and the plight of african elephants is also totally dire. a few more years and there will be a few left in the wild....only in zoos. at one point i had decided to fill my retirement with working with wildlife rather than teaching english in vietnam. that fell through. and i am glad really. i admire the people devoting their time and energy to wildlife, but it is obviously a doomed cause and i find it so distressing i dont even want to read stories any more. just enjoy the scene whenever possible and shut out the implications. sad. as a good friend is often quoted as saying. back in vietnam the end of august. ray
Cora Weiss
Jun 19
In 1972, maybe 3, Elise and Simon Spivak (French) had a baby in Hanoi. Simon was the UNICEF res rep. Elise continued and I believe, continues her relationships with many Vietnamese friends. Simon unfortunately died of cancer some years ago. I am copying her so she can give you more precise information. They were a remarkably wonderful couple and such a good UN representative, and Elise still is. Thanks for the news about Burchett's grandson. His grand dad briefed us in Paris before we went to Hanoi to pick up three POW's, 1972.
Cora Weiss
Greg Laxer
Jun 19
Chuck--Thank you so much for sharing this!! I devoured Wilfred Burchett's books about Viet Nam while on active duty; very influential for me (though I was opposed to the war the day I enlisted). Wilfred also wrote important books about "north" Korea, making him persona non grata for the USA Establishment. Or, more precisely, putting him on the Enemies List!
All the best,
GREG
Kenneth Mayers <kenmayers@vfp-santafe.org>
Jun 19
Terrific !!!
Ken
Nelson
Jun 19
Hi Chuck,
We are hardly stewards of the natural world as some like to say, but rather managers of a vast slaughterhouse that knows little or no restraint. Meanwhile, rarely mentioned anymore is the foremost cause of all that ails us and the rest of the animals on this planet; overpopulation. There is no plan at all to rein ourselves in. Every time I read about our 'stewardship' of what's left of Earth's former bounty I think of the late professor Al Bartlett, of the University of Colorado, who traveled around the country for years giving the exact same speech on population. His primary point was, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Not to not understand it utterly but to not understand the ramifications of it. We've made no progress at all with the one problem that either causes or exacerbates every single problem threatening life on this planet primarily because we've made no effort to do so.
http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html
Take care,
Nelson
Mike Boddington
Jun 19
Dear Chuck
As in Vietnam, so in Lao PDR.
It is a tragedy.
I cannot recall where I first heard the name of Wilfred Burchett, but James Bradley drew my attention to his book, The Furtive War, which I acquired as a download from the web. He was an heroic individual: he stood against the mainstream for what he knew in his heart was right. There are few like him.
Best wishes
Mike
Doug Rawlings
Jun 19
I agree. Amazing. Especially the intergenerational activism underlying it. Father to son to father. Beautiful gift on Father's Day, by the way. Best, Doug
Doug Rawlings
Veterans For Peace
Kyle Horst
Jun 19
Thanks for posting this, Chuck: really wonderful!
K
Jun 19
What a wonderful true story that might have been lost except for those ever-searching souls like George - and you.
Thanks to all involved for sending out this experience.
Sieg
- end -
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From: Joe Berry <joetracyberry@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 11:24 AM
To: Chuck Searcy <chuckusvn@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Chuck,
Thanks so much for the original article and for compiling these responses. Of course, Wilfred was not an “objective” journalist, (and none of the others are either, despite their protestations). I know of not of his signifitcant reporting that has ever been substantially disproved, even by those who most violently disagreed with him. All journalists are paid by someone, or they can’t stay in the work as professionals. I remember distributing/selling the (National) Guardian in the US in the 1960’s with his articles. They were some of the best stuff in that lamentably disappeared paper.
Joe Berry
_______________________
Joe Berry
510-527-5889 phone/fax
21 San Mateo Road,
Berkeley, CA 94707
cell: 802-380-0193
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From: Dan Duffy <vietnamlit@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 4:10 PM
To: Joe Berry <joetracyberry@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks for the wonderful report. I forwarded it to Ben Kiernan who wrote on Wilfred.
Bruce, the only specific account I have heard of targeting elephants was of a fire mission called in on a particular elephant spotted working as heavy equipment or transport on the supply route. The man who recounted doing this told it as an instance of something that came up routinely, in that case in 1970.
--
Dan Duffy
Editor, Viet Nam Literature Project
Chair, President, Staff. Books & Authors: Viet Nam, Inc.
108 East Hammond Street
Durham, NC 27704
USA
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