Cao Van Vien | 1921-2008

In March 1964, Vien and his troops were out on a raid near the Cambodian border, set on attacking a major Viet Cong base. In Kien Phong province, as they crossed open mud flats on a hot, clear morning, they were surrounded on three sides by enemy forces. They had no place to take cover.

Casualties mounted quickly. Though he was shot in the upper arm and shoulder, Vien moved decisively, rallied his men and "salvaged a victory from a threatened defeat," according to a U.S. citation. The battle would be remembered for Vien's courage and skill by both American and Vietnamese military leaders, who felt that a lack of combat leadership was a major shortcoming in South Vietnamese armed forces.

Vien was decorated with a South Vietnamese award for valor and honored with a U.S. Silver Star. He later received a Legion of Merit for leading more than 50 assaults that helped repulse the incursion of enemy troops. "Unlike some other officers, his road to the top was based on professional competence, courage on the battlefield and the high regard of his fellow soldiers," said historian Lewis Sorley, who wrote "A Better War" about the later years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

As Vien was promoted, he worked closely with top U.S. military leaders in Saigon. In his memoir, "A Soldier Reports," Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam,wrote that he conferred and traveled with Vien often. "Never have I known a more admirable man: honest, loyal, reserved, scholarly, diplomatic," he wrote.

Westmoreland noted in his memoir that he persuaded Vien to give up skydiving after strong winds blew Vien off course one day, and he landed in downtown Saigon. "I chided him that he was too important to his country to engage in that kind of daredeviltry," Westmoreland wrote, "but he said it was good for the morale of the airborne troops."

Vien by then had become chairman of the Joint General Staff in South Vietnam. He was deeply involved in defending Saigon when the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong struck during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

Vien would later conclude that although he and others in South Vietnam had done what they could for their country, "it still proved inadequate for this most difficult episode of our nation's history."

At least three times after 1970, Vien tried to resign from his post. His rheumatoid arthritis had worsened, and it was no secret that while President Nguyen Van Thieu valued Vien's service, he also chose to deal directly with the officers below him. Vien's critics have said Vien should have been more forceful in shaping the direction of the war.

Each of Vien's requests to resign was turned down -- until April of 1975, just before the fall of Saigon. Vien told then-President Tran Van Huong he could not serve under the man soon to be his successor, Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had been central in the coup of 1963 and whose aide had pointed a gun at Vien.

Two days before Saigon fell, the four-star general left his country and, through the sponsorship of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Fritz Freund, a close friend, settled with his family in Falls Church.

There, Vien wrote about what had transpired in Vietnam for the U.S. Army as part of a series of war monographs, and he returned to the Buddhist practices that had always helped him focus on the present as it was, rather than all he wished for or had lost in the country he left behind. He liked to say what was important was not happiness, so fleeting, but serenity.

He spoke often of the lotus flower, which opens completely to the sky with the most beautiful blossom, even though its roots are mired in mud.

Donna St. George is a reporter for The Post's Metro staff.