Green Beret commander with new Montagnard recruit in tribal garb in 1966. Image:yesweekly

Ian McDowell
February 19, 2019

Often operating out of Cambodia, Ayun fought the army of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam until his capture in 1991. His Vietnam war lasted a quarter of the 20th Century.

"A Montagnard of the Rhade tribe, Ayun was trained by Green Berets.... As a member of the Civilian Irregular Defense Forces (CIDF), he fought alongside and under the command of U.S. Army Special Forces from 1967, when he joined at the age of 14 until the U.S. withdrawal in 1973. But unlike the U.S. soldiers who trained and initially commanded him, his war didn’t end then."

"FULRO was originally a political nationalist movement seeking freedom for not just the overwhelmingly Christian Montagnards, but the Muslim and Hindu Cham and Buddhist Khmer Krom, all of whom had been long oppressed by the ethnic Kinh Vietnamese. After 1969, it evolved into a fragmented guerrilla insurgency against both the communist South and anti-communist North, being opposed to all forms of Vietnamese rule. Cambodia was the primary supporter of FULRO, although some aid was sent by China."

"When I interviewed Ayun on Jan. 29, I asked him if he any idea why they didn’t kill him, as the special forces veterans I’d interviewed last Fall claimed was routinely done by North Vietnamese soldiers to Montagnard prisoners. Through his interpreter, Ayun indicated he didn’t know why he was spared,...For whatever reason, he was not shot in the head and dumped beside a jungle trail like his sibling, "

"The first he said, came in 1971 from “a communist B40 shell,” citing an alternate name for the RGP-2, a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon supplied by the Soviets.Shrapnel went through the right side of my thigh and emerged on the left. And then on the left shoulder. That one incident got me twice, both times shrapnel.Later that year, he said he was hit in his left thigh. “Again, shrapnel.” Then, in March of 1974, “that one still fresh in my head,” he was hit again in the abdomen. “That fragment is still inside.”

Full https://yesweekly.com/fighting-longer-t ... hiem-ayun/