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 clinical eye for relevant details. It received a favorable book review on the weblog of Orville R. Weyrich Jr. A summary of the book was published in the March–April 2010 issue of The Futurist magazine, under the headline: "Alarmingly Practical Advice For Doomsday."Syndicated radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy interviewed <mask> and said that his book "posits a collapse of civilization." When <mask> was interviewed by radio host Laura Ingraham, she described the book as going "through point-by-point the basics of being prepared and heightening your chances of surviving some type of major crisis." Ingraham said that "there is a thin line between order and total anarchy in time of a crisis, when peoples' lives are on the line—and all the niceties and the rules go out the door." How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It has 14 chapters and three appendices, 336 pages, . September 2009. First Printing (September 2009): 20,000 copies. Second Printing (October 2009): 6,000 copies.Third Printing (October 2009): 25,000 copies. An unabridged audiobook edition is also available (), produced by Brilliance Audiobooks. It was narrated by Dick Hill. As of March 2011, there were 132,000 copies of the book in print, and it had gone through 11 printings. As of April 2012, there were 12 foreign publishing contracts in place to produce editions in 11 languages, and the book was still in Amazon.com's Top 250 titles, overall. The German edition, Überleben in der Krise was translated by Angelika Unterreiner and published in 2011 by Kopp Verlag. The French edition, Fin du Monde: Comment survivre?was translated by Antony Angrand. It was released in September 2012. The Spanish edition: Cómo Sobrevivir al Fin del Mundo tal Como lo Conocemos was translated by Juan Carlos Ruiz Franco in Spain and Javier Medrano in the United States. It was released in April 2012. A Romanian translation (Ghid De Supravietuir) from Editura Paralela 45 in Bucharest was released in November 2013. It was translated by Ioan Es. Pop, a well-known Romanian poet, political figure, translator, and academic.Tools For Survival

His Tools For Survival: What You Need to Survive When You're on Your Own (2014) is another non-fiction book drawn primarily from his SurvivalBlog.com posts. The publisher describes the book as "a guide to the selection, use, and care of tools." It was released on December 30, 2014, by Penguin Books, and immediately jumped to #1 in Amazon's Survival & Emergency Preparedness books category. The paperback book's ISBN is 978-0-452-29812-5. It is also sold as an e-book and audiobook. Land of Promise
On December 1, 2015, <mask> released the novel Land of Promise, the first book in the Counter-Caliphate Chronicles novel series. This science fiction novel is a geopolitical thriller that is a considerable departure from his previous Patriots thriller novel series.Set in the late 2130s,  Land of Promise fictionally describes the world under the economic and military domination of a Global Islamic Caliphate, brought about by a fictional new branch of Islam, called The Thirdists. The novel also describes the establishment of a Christian nation of refuge called The Ilemi Republic, in East Africa. This is the first book in a planned six-novel series. It is the first release from Liberty Paradigm Publishing, a publishing venture launched by <mask> in partnership with his literary agent Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group. The Ultimate Prepper’s Survival Guide
On October 20, 2020, <mask> released his book "The Ultimate Prepper's Survival Guide" (). Philosophical, political and economic views
<mask> is an proponent of family preparedness, especially regarding food storage and advocates relocating to lightly populated rural "retreat" areas. His preparedness philosophy emphasizes the fragility of modern society, the value of silver and other tangibles for barter, recognition of moral absolutes, being well-armed, maintaining a "deep larder," relocation to rural retreats, and Christian charity.In an interview in The New York Times, <mask> identified himself as a "guns and groceries" survivalist. <mask> interprets the 2nd Amendment as supporting citizens' individual rights to bear and keep arms. He believes they should be able to take arms to public events. <mask> is opposed to racism, for which he has received scorn from the far-right (he published a defense of his anti-racist views in a blog entry entitled "Race, Religion, and Reason" in 2010). He supports abolition of modern slavery in the world. <mask> is opposed to military interventionism. American Redoubt movement

In March 2011, <mask> formulated the American Redoubt  movement.<mask> proposes five western states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, and eastern Washington) as a safe haven for conservative Christians and Jews. The concept was endorsed by former Presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin, who had recently relocated his entire extended family to western Montana. One of its adherents, John Jacob Schmidt, started a weekly podcast called Radio Free Redoubt to help further the movement. Citizen Journalism facilitator
<mask> is a proponent of Citizen Journalism. In April 2014, along with his son Robert, <mask> co-founded The Constitution First Amendment Press Association (CFAPA), a private free press advocacy group that distributes press credentials to any literate adult U.S. Citizen, free of charge. Secret ranch location
<mask> has lived in San Jose, California; near Orofino, Idaho; near Smartsville and Fremont, California; and near New Washoe City, Nevada. <mask> notes that the location of his ranch in the United States is kept secret, but that he lives somewhere west of the Rockies.The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung asserts that the ranch is in northern Idaho. Others have claimed that the "undisclosed location" of the ranch is in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming or even in Central America. A CNN Europe article written before his first wife died noted that <mask> "... lives on a ranch in an undisclosed location with his wife (who he refers to in his blog affectionately as 'the Memsahib') and their children. Their life is almost entirely self-sufficient: They keep livestock, hunt elk and the children are schooled at home. Stored away in the ranch somewhere is a three-year supply of food." In an article titled "The Most Dangerous Novel in America", <mask> told The Daily Beast: "I'm not at liberty to discuss where I live. It's part of an agreement I made with my wife.I really can't go into the details. We live in a very remote area. I embrace technology. We don't live in a cellphone area, but I'm online constantly. We're just prepared to live off-grid, if the power grid goes down. Because of the nature of my blog and my novel, I don't just want anonymity, I need anonymity. I could wake up some morning in the aftermath of some crisis and look out in my barnyard and see five Winnebagos and some television news crews.I don't want fans of my books to descend on my property, so I have to be perspicacious." In 2009, <mask> told an Agence France-Presse reporter: "I'm surrounded by national forest. A river runs through the back end of the property, so there's no shortage of water and no shortage of fish or game to shoot. If Western civilization were to collapse tomorrow, I'd have to read about it on the Internet. I just wouldn't notice." His U.S. mail address is a post office box in Newcastle, Wyoming, but his main web site server is in Sweden. Bibliography
<mask> on Retreats and Relocation, Print on demand from CafePress, No ISBN (January 2007)
SurvivalBlog: The Best of the Blog, Volume 1, Print on demand from CafePress, No ISBN (February 2007)
 Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, Ulysses Press, Berkeley, California,  (April 2009),  (November 1998),  (December 2006)
 How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York,  , (September 2009)
 Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse, Atria Books, Simon & Schuster, , (October 2011)
 Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse, Atria Books, Simon & Schuster, , (September 2012)
 Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse, E.P.Dutton, ,  (October 2013)
 Liberators: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse, E.P. Dutton, ,  (October 2014)
 Tools For Survival, Plume, New York,  , (December 2014)
 Land of Promise, Liberty Paradigm Publishing, Moyie Springs, Idaho,  , (December 2015)
 The Ultimate Prepper’s Survival Guide, Thunder Bay Press,  , (October 2020)

See also
 Survivalism
 Kurt Saxon
 Ragnar Benson

References

External links

 SurvivalBlog.com
 The Rawles Home Page
 <mask> <mask> on Survival Firearms: The End of the World as We Know It at Y2KChaos

1960 births
Living people
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American novelists
Activists from California
American gun rights activists
American magazine editors
American magazine writers
American male bloggers
American bloggers
American male journalists
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
American military writers
American spy fiction writers
Christian libertarians
Citizen journalism
Gun writers
Non-interventionism
American opinion journalists
San Jose State University alumni
Survivalists
United States Army officers
United States Army reservists
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<mask> (, , 1961 – 12 July 2011) was a politician in Afghanistan who served as Chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council from 2005 until his death. He was the younger paternal half-brother of former Afghan President <mask> and an elder of the Popalzai tribe. <mask> formerly lived in the United States, where he managed a restaurant owned by his family. He returned to Afghanistan following the removal of the Taliban government in late 2001. He has been accused of political corruption and was allegedly on the CIA payroll. He was assassinated by one of his close bodyguards, Sardar Mohammad, on 12 July 2011. Early life and political career
<mask> was born in 1961 in the village of Karz in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.He is the son of Abdul Ahad <mask> and brother of Hamid <mask>, Mahmud <mask> and Qayum <mask>. He attended Habibia High School in Kabul but was not able to finish his studies due to the Soviet–Afghan War. He travelled to neighbouring Pakistan and then immigrated to the United States. <mask> <mask> managed an Afghan restaurant in Chicago that was owned by his family. <mask> returned to Pakistan in the late 1980s to help his father, Abdul Ahad. He came to political prominence in Afghanistan following the US occupation of the country in 2001, where he was a key ally of the US military in the country's south. He was elected to the Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005 and exercised influence in the province to the extent that he was described as "effectively the governor".At the time of his death, he was the council's chairman. A few days before his death, <mask> <mask> appeared on a British television programme, "Afghanistan: The Unknown Country," presented by Lyse Doucet, at his home in Kandahar, talking about public perceptions of him. Doucet said: "Like most strong men, he depended on family and fellow tribesmen to protect him." Allegations of corruption
A June 2009 U.S. embassy cable alleged that much of the actual business of running the Afghan city of Kandahar "takes place out of public sight, where <mask> <mask> operates, parallel to formal government structures, through a network of political clans that use state institutions to protect and enable licit and illicit enterprises." In addition, James Risen of The New York Times and others stated that <mask> <mask> may have been involved in the Afghan opium and heroin trade. This was denied by <mask>, who called the charges political propaganda and stated he was a "victim of vicious politics." In meetings with Afghan President Hamid <mask>, including a 2006 session with former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald E. Neumann, the CIA's station chief and their British counterparts, American officials talked about the rumors in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks."We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there," one official said. President <mask> has resisted, however, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. "We don't have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment," a White House official said. <mask> <mask> dismissed the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime rival groups in his country. Before the 2009 Afghan presidential election, <mask> <mask> and Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, former governor of the Helmand Province and a member of the Upper House of the Afghan parliament, were accused of vote rigging. After the election, reports mentioned that all those running in the election were involved in electoral fraud. CIA connections
In October 2009, The New York Times reported that <mask> <mask> received payments from the CIA for "a variety of services", including the recruitment of the Kandahar Strike Force, an Afghan paramilitary force run by the CIA in the Kandahar region.It also stated that he was paid for allowing the CIA and U.S. special forces to rent the former residence of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar. However, <mask> has denied taking any payment from the CIA. U.S. Senator John Kerry and former Afghan Ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, defended Karzai in recent years, Kerry saying "We should not condemn <mask> <mask> or damage our critical relations with his brother, President <mask>, on the basis of newspaper articles or rumors" and Jawad saying, "There is presence of the intelligence, there's presence of many institutions of the United States and NATO countries in Afghanistan, why don't they come up with a clear evidence of any corruption involving the president or his family?" Assassination
<mask> survived a number of assassination attempts by Taliban militants and at least two attacks against his office in Kandahar: one in November 2008 and the other in April 2009. According to <mask> himself, he had survived a total of nine assassination attempts. On 12 July 2011, <mask> was assassinated by his long-time head of security, Sardar Mohammad.Reports say that <mask> was shot twice with a pistol, once in the head and once in the chest, as he was coming out of the bathroom inside his residence. Abdul Raziq, Police Chief of Kandahar, stated that the assailant Sardar Mohammad was well known by the Karzai family. He had served as <mask> <mask>'s most trusted security guard for the last seven years. "As he entered <mask>'s room, <mask> came out of his bathroom. Mohammad fired twice at <mask> without any conversation passing between the two. <mask> received one bullet in the chest and second in the head," Abdul Raziq said. The assailant was immediately killed by other bodyguards and then his body was hanged at a city square on public view.In the meantime, <mask>'s body was taken to Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar. Thousands of people turned up for his funeral the next day, led by Afghan President Hamid <mask>, and many more waited in buses where his body lay to be taken to his hometown of Karz. Security was tightened around the funeral procession and some reports indicated Hamid <mask>'s elite security team were deployed to secure Kandahar, where the funeral was held. At the funeral procession Hamid <mask> issued a message to the Taliban: Hamid <mask>'s spokesman Waheed Omer said that "We know we live in a dangerous country. We know that security has to be tight all the time and the president knows [this]. He's got good security and that is not a worry for the president. The president is upset, he is still in grief, about the death of his brother.<mask> was a very close brother of the president." En route to the funeral Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal escaped an assassination attempt, while later in the evening two more blasts went off in Kandahar. Though Hamid <mask> led the funeral procession, he was not present at a memorial service which was attacked by a suicide bomber killing the senior cleric of the mosque Hikmatullah Hikmat, the head of the Provincial Ulema Council, who died along with three others while 13 others were also wounded. Reactions
President Hamid <mask> issued a statement on the day his brother died, saying: "My younger brother was martyred in his house today. This is the life of all Afghan people, I hope these miseries which every Afghan family faces will one day end." Afghan families, every one of us, have suffered from it, and we hope, God willing, for our suffering to be over. US General David Petraeus, other top NATO personnel serving in Afghanistan, officials at the White House and many world leaders condemned the assassination.Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed that one of their agents was behind the assassination saying, "Today in Kandahar city, Hamid <mask>'s brother was killed during the Operation al-Badr... We hired a person by the name of Sadar Mohammad, who was hired for this job for some time now. <mask> <mask> was punished for all his wrongdoings." However, according to The Christian Science Monitor, the Taliban has "a dubious record of claiming responsibility for attacks it had nothing to do with", and its claim has been denied by several sources. Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, head of the counter-terrorism department at the Interior Ministry, told Reuters that "It appears <mask> <mask> has been killed by one of his bodyguard, and there was nobody from outside involved." The news was confirmed by Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for Kandahar province, as well as by Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. Following the killing, police were mobilised in Kandahar and helicopters were seen overhead as checkpoints were locked down leading towards the hospital his body was taken to. Investigations
Investigators believe that Sardar Mohammad may have been a Taliban sleeper agent or a government defector.Mahmud <mask>, <mask>'s other brother, stated that Sardar Mohammad traveled to the Pakistani city of Quetta within the past three months to meet with the Shura Council of the Taliban. Mahmoud <mask> claimed that he has been acting very erratically in recent weeks, including sleeping poorly, moving from house to house during nights, acting suspiciously toward his men and demanding to know who they were talking to on their mobile phones. References

See also Astri Suhrke, When More Is Less: The International Project in Afghanistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 135, 137. External links

"<mask> <mask>". Time by Dan Fletcher. October 28, 2009. Karzai Family Secrets
<mask> <mask> Denies CIA Pay
<mask> <mask> and the CIA: America's conundrum in Afghanistan
Politics and Power in Kandahar

Afghan businesspeople
Afghan politicians
Assassinated Afghan politicians
1961 births
2011 deaths
Afghan expatriates in the United States
Afghan Sunni Muslims
Pashtun people
Deaths by firearm in Afghanistan
People murdered in Afghanistan
<mask> <mask>
Corruption in Afghanistan
21st-century Afghan politicians
2011 crimes in Afghanistan
2011 murders in Asia
2010s murders in Afghanistan

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<mask> (December 21, 1921 – January 22, 2008) was one of only two South Vietnamese four-star army generals in the history of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He rose to the position of Chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff. Considered one of "the most gifted" of South Vietnam's military leaders, he was previously called an "absolute key figure" and one of "the most important Vietnamese military leaders" in the U.S.-led fighting during the Vietnam War. Along with Trần Thiện Khiêm he was one of only two four-star generals in the entire history of South Vietnam. Early life
Viên was born to Vietnamese parents in Vientiane, Laos, in December 1921. His father was a merchant. Hearing rumors of a gold rush in the Mekong Delta, he moved to what was then called Cochinchina to become a prospector.Although he became a follower of Ho Chi Minh and fought as a guerrilla against French colonial rule, he soon concluded that Hồ’s movement was more communist than nationalist, and joined independent fighter groups. He was captured by the French, released, and enrolled at the University of Saigon where he obtained a bachelor's degree in French literature. His schoolmate was Lâm Quang Thi. Military career
Viên attended the French-run Cap Saint-Jacques Military School, graduating with a commission in the Vietnamese National Army as a second lieutenant in 1949. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a battalion commander in 1953 and major in 1954. He attended the Vietnamese National Military Academy as a lieutenant, where he met and became friendly with many of South Vietnam's later military leaders. He twice served in military intelligence (in 1953 and 1954), and twice as a military logistics officer.After the formation of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in 1955, he was appointed chief of military logistics for the ARVN Joint General Staff. He graduated from the United States Army Command and General Staff College in 1957. By 1960, he had completed parachute training with both the Vietnamese and American military, earned his Vietnamese combat pilot's license, and earned his American combat helicopter pilot's license. Viên was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed Chief of Staff of the Special Military Staff in the office of the President of the Republic in 1956. He and his family moved to a modest home in the Cholon neighborhood of Saigon (where he lived until April 1975). He was promoted to colonel in 1960 and named Commander of the Vietnamese Airborne Division in November 1960. This came after Colonel Nguyễn Chánh Thi and Lieutenant Colonel Vương Văn Đông, the two highest-ranking paratroopers led a failed coup attempt against Diem and fled into exile in Cambodia.Based on his experiences, Viên concluded in 1961 that the Viet Cong were no longer acting alone but were being led and reinforced by regular units of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Viên refused to participate in the 1963 coup against South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm. He was one of several military leaders who were unaware of the coup. When called to a lunchtime meeting with other senior officers and informed of the coup d'état, he reportedly broke down in tears and resigned, refusing to go along with the putsch. Vien was not aware of the plot, and the generals had discussed whether to assassinate him during their planning phase because they knew he was a Diem admirer. His loyalty to the conspirators now suspect, a rifle was thrust into his back and he was moments from being killed. But Major General Tôn Thất Đính had spoken with General Dương <mask> Minh during the planning for the coup and convinced Minh to save Viên's life.Dinh played mahjong with Vien's wife, and had convinced Minh that Vien would not oppose the coup. Vien had planned with Diem to allow the president to take refuge at his home in the event of a coup, but the offer could not be taken up because the rebels surrounded Vien's house after taking him into custody. Another account has him accepting the coup after being informed of it. General Lâm Quang Thi later recalled that Viên was a Diem loyalist, but remained neutral during the coup. Viên was briefly imprisoned and stripped of his command, but reinstated a month later. Col. Viên was a critical supporter of the January 1964 South Vietnamese coup in which President Dương <mask> Minh was toppled by General Nguyễn Khánh, plotting with him to overthrow Minh and successfully ordering his Airborne Division troops to help secure the capital. By March 14, Viên had been promoted by the new regime to brigadier general.Viên was named Commander of III Corps, which held the critical region around Saigon. While commanding troops during action in Kiến Phong Province (now Đồng Tháp Province) in March 1964, his unit was ambushed and surrounded on three sides. Viên was wounded in the upper arm and shoulder, and was decorated by the United States with the Silver Star and by the Republic of Vietnam with the National Order of Vietnam (Knight). The Silver Star citation said that while leading his men in an anti-communist assault, and despite "the confusion and inferno of enemy fire" from both sides and an arm and shoulder wound, Vien "continued to exercise command vigorously and effectively until the enemy had been routed". Viên was the first senior South Vietnamese military officer to be wounded in the field. His actions won him widespread respect from American military officers. Viên was appointed Chief of Staff of the Joint General Staff (JGS) on September 11, 1964, after President Khanh dismissed General Nguyễn <mask> Thiệu in order to win Buddhist support for his government.As Chief of Staff of the JGS, he controlled troop movements around the capital and assigned officers to a few critical positions. He supported Khanh and helped suppress a counter-coup by Major General Dương Văn Đức on September 14, 1964. He helped put down another coup on September 27. Along with General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, Air Commodore Nguyễn <mask>, General Nguyễn <mask> Thiệu, and Admiral Chung Tấn Cang, he supported a coup against Prime Minister Trần <mask> Hương in December 1964. He led the then-biggest helicopter attack of the war in February 1965. When Viet Cong forces launched a mortar attack on the city of Đồng Xoài on June 10, 1965, Viên held U.S. forces from attacking—keeping the U.S. out of the war at a time when the United States was still attempting to avoid active involvement in the war. When President Phan Khắc Sửu resigned on June 17, 1965, and now-Air Marshal Nguyễn <mask> succeeded him, Viên was made a member of the military council which acted as a de facto cabinet.Joint General Staff
Viên was promoted to Chief of the Joint General Staff (JGS) on October 1, 1965. He was promoted to major general on November 1, 1965, during the celebrations accompanying the second anniversary of Diem's assassination, and by January 1966 had been promoted again to lieutenant general. Viên seemed an unlikely choice for such a high position, but he was one of the few generals who could not be accused of having cooperated with the French colonial regime, his loyalty to the Diem regime and his role as a coup leader made him acceptable to conservatives and liberals alike, and he was remarkably apolitical. The appointment may also not have been as important as it appeared, for the JGS was almost routinely excluded from command decisions (which were often made by South Vietnam's military presidents).<ref name="Schreadley">Schreadley, Richard L. "From the Rivers to the Sea: The United States Navy in Vietnam Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press, 1992. </ref> He had no authority to promote colonels to general, or promote generals to higher rank.Fulghum, David and Maitland, Terrence South Vietnam on Trial, Mid-1970 to 1972 Boston: The Company, 1984. At least one historian has characterized his tenure as JGS Chief as "ineffectual".An American general later said he believed that Viên used presidential interference in JGS decision-making as a means of avoiding blame and therefore did not challenge presidential decisions as much as he might otherwise have done. Major General Hoàng Xuân Lãm (Commander, I Corps) and Lieutenant General Lê Nguyên Khang (Commander, III Corps) were both particularly loyal to Viên, and helped the South Vietnamese government retain some degree of political stability. His control over the Corps was further strengthened when Prime Minister Kỳ appointed Brigadier General Nguyễn <mask> Mạnh, another Viên loyalist, Commander of IV Corps in November 1966. With this appointment, Viên (along with Kỳ, Khang, and director of information Lt. Gen. Nguyễn Bảo Trí) was considered by American observers to be one of the most powerful people in the government. Viên nonetheless attempted to be an active strategic thinker and reformer as JGS Chief. In 1965, he proposed invading Laos and establishing a defensive line across the southern portion of that country in order to cut off the Viet Cong's flow of supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail.Prados, John The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War Reprint ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley, 1999. Wiest, Andrew A. Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited Westminster, Maryland. : Osprey Publishing, 2006. He met with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in Guam in February 1966 to discuss the plan, but Johnson refused to authorize U.S. military support for the campaign and it never went forward. In September 1966, Viên sought and won command of the Vietnamese Navy and for the first time integrated naval plans into JGS planning, but this arrangement lasted only two months.Eckhardt, George S. Command and Control, 1950-1969 Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Army, 1974; "Saigon Names Navy Head" Reuters; September 16, 1966 Viên also worked to improve the relationship between his military leaders and their American advisors. When a leading general complained that American advisors were interfering in the chain of command, Viên held a meeting of all senior military leaders to smooth over the differences and reassure his commanders.Unlike many senior South Vietnamese military leaders, he was not shy of strongly criticizing units and commanders which he felt did not perform well. He said the 25th Division, led by Brigadier General Phân Trường Chinh, was "the worst division in ARVN, and possibly the worst division in any army." He instituted modern accounting systems to improve the payment of salaries and benefits, and fought for and won a harsh new law designed to catch and punish deserters. He also retained a limited role in commanding troops in the field. At the command of Prime Minister Kỳ, he personally led troops to Da Nang and Huế during the Buddhist Uprising of April 1966 and helped crush the rebellion of General Nguyễn Chánh Thi. He also instituted new fire control procedures designed to reduce air and artillery strikes against civilian targets. Even as late as 1968, he was in the field assessing the use of modern weapons (such as heavy helicopters and advanced missiles) by the enemy.Defense Minister

On January 26, 1967, Prime Minister Kỳ announced that Lt. Gen. Nguyễn Hữu Có had been replaced as Defense Minister by Lt. Gen. Viên.Randal, Jonathan. "Premier Ky Back From Trip Abroad", New York Times January 27, 1967; Tuohy, William. "Ky Returns to Saigon, OKs General's Ouster", Los Angeles Times January 27, 1967; Randal, Jonathan. "Chief of Defense Named By Saigon", New York Times January 28, 1967. Viên did not, however, assume the post of Deputy Prime Minister as the Defense Minister usually did. Viên was promoted to full General on February 5, 1967. In his role as Defense Minister, General Viên and Lt. Gen. Nguyễn <mask> Vy were appointed to a committee to investigate and root out corruption among the top South Vietnamese military leadership.More than 50 ARVN officers were removed from service in the campaign's first push. (After the war ended, however, Viên was accused of refusing to act on accusations of corruption presented to him.) Viên also strongly criticized in a letter to General William Westmoreland (the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam) what he saw as an over-pessimistic and derogatory article by the U.S. news media about South Vietnamese troops and combat actions. Gen. Westmoreland subsequently assigned "military-information advisors" at the corps and division level to smooth over relations. The summer of 1967, Viên played a critical role in helping overcome a political crisis in the government. In September 1966, South Vietnamese voters elected a Constituent Assembly which was charged with writing a new constitution for the Republic of Vietnam.Tucker, Spencer Vietnam Florence, Ky.: Routledge, 1999. The new constitution was promulgated in March 1967, and local elections held.A presidential election was scheduled for September 3, 1967, but Air Marshal and Prime Minister Nguyễn <mask> and Head of State Gen. Nguyễn <mask> Thiệu both sought the presidency.Randolph, John. "Ky Drops His Presidential Bid, Takes 2nd Spot on Thieu Slate", Los Angeles Times July 1, 1967 With the U.S. military preparing for a major expansion in its armed forces in Vietnam, American diplomats and senior military officers made it clear that they would not tolerate another military coup or interference in the electoral process.FitzGerald, Frances Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam Reprint ed. Boston: Back Bay, 2002. Under the pretense of holding a meeting of the Armed Forces Council (an informal body of senior army, navy, and air force leaders to discuss military policy), Lt. Gen. Viên forced the military to resolve the crisis by unofficially backing one of the two candidates. With the assent of Prime Minister Kỳ, the support was unofficial so that if the military's candidate did not win the loss would not be seen as a public lack of confidence in the armed forces. After a three-day meeting, the military agreed to support Thiệu for president and Kỳ for executive vice president.Apple, Jr., R. W. "Junta in Saigon Drawing Up Plan to Retain Power",

masks:
Cao Văn Vin
Văn
Văn
Văn
Cao Kỳ
Văn
Văn
Cao Kỳ
Văn
Văn
Cao Kỳ
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 New York Times August 2, 1967 Viên may have supported a Kỳ candidacy at first. According to Ky, Viên was for a short time considered for the presidency, but Viên refused and no majority formed behind his candidacy."Power Struggle", Los Angeles Times June 30, 1967. Viên subsequently traveled to Thailand and met with exiled general Dương Văn Minh, warning him not to return to South Vietnam in an attempt to seek the presidency. On August 10, 1967, Viên held his first press conference since becoming Chief of the JGS or Defense Minister, and accidentally revealed the existence of a secret, major bombing campaign against Viet Cong and PAVN troops in Cambodia. Since 1965, the United States had been making increasingly regular bombing raids on suspected Viet Cong and PAVN staging and supply areas throughout Cambodia. In his press conference on August 10, Gen. Viên briefly discussed the existence of the secret bombings, and declared them a failure. The U.S. government immediately and categorically denied that any such bombings had taken place. Gen. Viên was the first high military official in either South Vietnam or the United States to admit that the U.S. was bombing Cambodia.Thiệu had initially signalled that he would replace Viên as Defense Minister with Lt. Gen. Vy if he won the presidency. But when Thiệu won the presidential election on September 3, he agreed to keep Viên as Defense Minister even though most of the cabinet would now be civilians rather than military personnel. He was also a member of the National Security Council, a body created by the new constitution to advise the President and Prime Minister on issues of national importance. He continued to act as a chief military strategist for the government, working with Gen. Westmoreland on the Combined Campaign Plan for 1967. In his role as Chief of the JGS and Defense Minister, Viên was the highest-ranking government official to greet President Johnson at Cam Ranh Bay when he made his second battle-zone trip to Vietnam in December 1967. As Defense Minister, Gen. Viên also attempted to reform the government's pacification campaign. The failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program (an attempt to separate peasants from the Viet Cong by moving the population into fortified villages) by 1963 led to a re-emphasis on a military solution by 1965.Anderson, David L. The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.The Phoenix Program, designed to identify and either capture or kill Viet Cong insurgents, was implemented and the South Vietnamese government began to focus on the "Revolutionary Development" program of economic development. In 1966, Viên and Westmoreland agreed to train ARVN troops in "clear and hold" pacification tactics. Although the American and South Vietnamese governments both realized the importance of pacification, the pacification program showed few results and was close to collapse by mid-1967. In September 1967, Major General Nguyễn Đức Thắng, Viên's deputy at the JGS, was appointed Minister of Construction and Development to revitalize the pacification program.Mohr, Charles. "High Saigon Aide Likely to Get Job of Revitalizing the Military", New York Times September 26, 1967 Thắng proposed and Viên approved a plan for reform that would: 1) Require provincial chiefs to report to the Ministry of Construction and Development and the Minister for Pacification in Saigon and not military Corps commanders; 2) Strip Corps commanders of their ability to appoint province chiefs; 3) Transfer the role of Government Delegate for each province from Corps commanders to civilian political leaders; and 4) Transfer control of ARVN battalions engaged in pacification campaigns from Corps commanders to the Minister for Pacification. Viên sought the advice of Gen. Westmoreland, who agreed that the plan should be implemented. But President Thiệu repeatedly refused to implement the plan, fearing the loss of political support.Angry at Thiệu's action, Maj. Gen. Thắng resigned in January 1968 and became Viên's personal assistant. Thiệu replaced Viên as Defense Minister with Lt. Gen. Nguyễn Văn Vy on November 98, 1967.Randolph, John. "Saigon Cabinet List Wins Public Approval", Los Angeles Times November 9, 1967 Viên's departure was not seen as a snub or loss of political power, but rather as a way of relieving him of the less important duties of Defense Minister so that he could focus on prosecuting the war. Role during Tet Offensive

Viên played a critical role in the Tet Offensive of January 31, 1968. Fearing an attack during Tết (the Vietnamese New Year), Westmoreland had advised Viên to limit the traditional Tết cease-fire to just 24 hours. Viên tried but failed to win approval for this limitation. Viet Cong and PAVN forces attacked I and II Corps shortly after midnight on January 31, and Saigon and III Corps at about 3 AM local time.Not alerted to the extent of the battle but realizing after several hours that a major attack on Saigon was under way, Viên was forced to drive himself through the back streets of Saigon at 7 AM to reach JGS headquarters at Tân Sơn Nhứt Airport. JGS Headquarters was one of six critical targets for the communist forces, and elements of the C-10 Sapper Battalion were assigned to attack the building. Shortly after his arrival, enemy combatants seized control of Gate 4 at the airport and were threatening to attack JGS Headquarters.Woodruff, Mark W. and Jones, James L. Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973 Reprint ed. New York: Random House, Inc., 2005. By sheer luck, two armed and supplied battalions were at Tân Sơn Nhứt awaiting transport to I Corps. Viên immediately ordered their dispersal throughout the city of Saigon, preventing a collapse in the city's defense. Retaining two companies, he ordered a counter-attack against the enemy elements controlling access to the airport and threw them back.Due to the severe lack of personnel, Vien used almost his entire staff as combat personnel and took personal command of them in the field to repel the communist attack on the air base. Majors and colonels led platoons and captains and lieutenants acted as privates. Thanks to Viên's actions, JGS Headquarters remained the only secure military location in Saigon. Kỳ and most of the top generals in the city spent the next several days in Viên's office coordinating the counter-attack, sleeping on his office rug at night. Viên coordinated the city's defense throughout the first critical hours of the Tet Offensive, ordering JGS officers and staff into the streets to personally lead combat divisions throughout Saigon. Most of the fighting in the city ended by dawn the next day, although small elements of communist forces held out until March 7. Viên personally led troops in Operation Tran Hung Dao, the counter-offensive which began on February 3.In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, Viên became convinced that North Vietnam intended to cut South Vietnam in two by occupying the Central Highlands. Westmoreland disagreed, and reinforced Khe Sanh Combat Base more than 185 miles (300 km) to the north.The Americans would abandon Khe Sanh by June 1968. See: Krulak, Victor H. First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press, 1999. ; Pisor, Robert The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh Reprint ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. On April 1, 1968, Viên attended a meeting at Nha Trang called by Westmoreland and attended by Westmoreland, Lt. Gen. Lê Nguyên Khang (Commander of III Corps), General Creighton Abrams (who was due to succeed Westmoreland on June 10, 1968) and Deputy Ambassador to Vietnam Samuel D. Berger. Berger made an impromptu speech declaring the Tet Offensive a great victory for South Vietnam and urging support for President Thiệu (rumors of another coup were rife).But angry at what he perceived as Thiệu's lack of aggressive prosecution of the war and exhausted by his duties, Viên allegedly attempted to resign on April 3, 1968.Weinraub, Bernard. "Head of South Vietnam's Forces Quits Amid Reports of Shake-Up", New York Times April 4, 1968 Viên then denied he had done so, instead saying that he threatened to do so if U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were put under a unified command. Vien later criticised the U.S. and South Vietnam for not pressing home their advantage and going on a large-scale offensive in an attempt to totally defeat the communists immediately. Post-Defense Minister role

Thiệu considered replacing Viên as JGS Chair in June 1968, but kept him in the position. Viên remained a strong supporter of Executive Vice President Kỳ, who remained a very powerful figure in the government and had the support of nearly 1 million Roman Catholic refugees in the country. Viên (like Kỳ) opposed the appointment of Trần Văn Hương as Prime Minister,Lescze, Lee. "Huong, Aides Consulting on Viet Cabinet", Los Angeles Times May 20, 1968 and Kỳ signalled to President Thiệu that he would not like to see Viên or the other generals who supported Kỳ removed from their positions.Viên subsequently accompanied Thiệu to Hawaii for yet another meeting with President Johnson in July 1968 and to an eight-day state visit to Taiwan and South Korea in May 1969. Viên's political position remained unstable, however. Several times in 1969 and 1970, Prime Minister Trần Văn Hương advised Thiệu to replace Vien with Lt. Gen. <mask> Trí.Sorley, Lewis Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968-1972 Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 2004. Viên continued to act as chief strategist for South Vietnamese armed forces, but his influence was increasingly impaired. In June 1968, he advocated that the U.S. resume bombing of North Vietnam. In September 1968, he advocated the invasion and occupation of Cambodia, Laos and southern North Vietnam.Menzel, Sewall Battle Captain Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2006. ; Smith, Hedrick. "Disengagement vs.Survival", New York Times December 29, 1968 But as President Johnson and later President Richard Nixon began implementing the policy of Vietnamization (under which there would be gradual American troop withdrawals and extensive re-arming and training of ARVN forces with the aim of leaving the war completely in the hands of the South Vietnamese), Viên and other South Vietnamese military leaders were rarely consulted or informed ahead of time about these decisions. For example, when the U.S. considered an immediate halt to all bombing of North Vietnam in October 1968, only Thiệu was consulted. Viên nonetheless was forced to help implement Vietnamization. Based on the conversations in Hawaii six months earlier, he held the first JGS discussions on American troop withdrawals in January 1969. Viên remained silent about his views of the American policy, but his aides were extremely pessimistic about its success. Viên did, however, support Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker's "One War" strategy (under which pacification, counter-insurgency, and Vietnamization all took equal importance) and assisted Abrams with developing the Combined (US/SVN) Strategic Objective Plan of 1969. The plan involved the transfer of hundreds of American military camps to the South Vietnamese armed forces.Many ARVN officers criticized Viên's plan to base ARVN troops in these static positions, arguing that it isolated the Army from the populace, hurt morale and reduced mobility. Viên accompanied Thiệu to Midway Atoll in June 1969, where the two men learned of Nixon's intention to withdraw 25,000 American troops from South Vietnam within 60 days. In what became the then-largest single transfer of military equipment to South Vietnam, Viên received 64 river patrol boats from the United States just days later. Viên was awarded the Legion of Merit, Commander, in December 1969.Sorley, Lewis A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam Reprint ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Vietnamization
Viên continued to worry about the prosecution of the war effort. He told the press and his American military advisors that he expected the United States to maintain a force of at least 250,000 troops on the ground for the next several years, and that if the U.S. did not he did not expect South Vietnam to survive.Beginning in 1970, he asked to be relieved as Chief of the JGS and assigned command of the Airborne Brigade, but President Thiệu refused each time (wishing to retain the apolitical general in this critical role). As Vietnamization continued, Viên clamped down once more on the American press. He led JGS staff in exercises in determining how much territory ARVN could defend with varying amounts of U.S. aid. He also began planning independent military operations to cope with the effects of Vietnamization. Although General William B. Rosson met with him in April 1970 to warn against it, Viên began planning for ARVN troops to engage in cross-border attacks into Cambodia to strike at Viet Cong and PAVN staging and supply areas. He also reorganized the ARVN command structure, providing for joint command of III and IV Corps while operating inside Cambodia and the establishment of a Cambodian military liaison officer to the JGS. At a high-level meeting of cabinet officials and generals in October 1970, Viên again sought and won support for a plan (Operation Lam Son 719) to send ARVN troops into Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.Shuster, Alvin."Plan to Cut Enemy's Lines in Laos, Long Rejected, Was Revived 3 Months Ago", New York Times February 9, 1971 Viên and Thiệu met with United States Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird on January 11, 1971 and proposed their plan. With Laird's tentative approval, Viên met with Abrams and worked out the military details. Viên had proposed an invasion of Laos "countless" times since 1965, making it one of his top strategic goals. But the invasion was a disaster. Poor roads, rough terrain and a much higher than expected number of PAVN artillery and machine gun positions (which interdicted airborne resupply efforts) brought the invasion to a halt halfway to its intended target of the city


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 of Tchepone by the first of March.Nolan, William K. Into Laos: The Story of Dewey Canyon II/Lam Son 719 Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1986. A worried Viên met with Abrams, Thiệu and Bunker on March 3 to discuss a change in tactics, and concluded that ARVN airborne forces would make an assault on the abandoned town of Tchepone and occupy it. The assault was successful, and two days later a withdrawal began.The withdrawal turned into an undisciplined, panicked retreat with very heavy losses which was completed on April 6, 1971. In an example of what he called "pure psywar", Viên also spread rumors that ARVN troops might invade across the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone and invade North Vietnam (rumors intended to keep three PAVN brigades pinned down there).Kamm, Henry. "Invasion Rumor Spreads in Saigon", New York Times February 28, 1971 Viên met with Laird, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas H. Moorer and Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC) Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. in November 1971 to discuss the effect of military aid cuts. Viên's role as Chief of JGS became more advisory after 1971. After the PAVN's success during the early months of the Easter Offensive in March and April 1972—during which the city of Quảng Trị and the provinces of Bình Định and Kon Tum were lost to PAVN forces Thiệu consulted with Viên but continued to personally direct the war without general staff assistance. Viên still believed ARVN capable of defeating the insurgents if his military forces were given enough supplies. As the Easter Offensive ended in October, speculation was rife that the Thiệu government might not be able to survive.Viên was among the individuals who South Vietnamese and American officials felt might be able to form a coalition government with the Viet Cong, if such an action were necessary. Viên nearly became a signatory to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. A tentative agreement between the United States and North Vietnam was reached in late October 1972, but Thiệu rejected the accord and demanded 69 changes.Gettleman, Marvin E. Vietnam and America: A Documented History 2d rev. ed. New York: Grove Press, 1995. ; Donaldson, Gary America at War Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996. Concerned that the Hanoi government might pull out of the negotiations altogether and seek to defeat the South Vietnamese, Nixon ordered the heavy aerial bombing (Operation Linebacker II) of North Vietnam in December 1972. Although American losses were light overall and damage in North Vietnam heavy, American public opinion and Congressional anger ran high against the bombing campaign.The Hanoi government agreed to return to the bargaining table and Nixon suspended operations against North Vietnam on December 29, 1972. Nixon offered repeated, private assurances (which did not have the weight of formal diplomatic guarantees) to Thiệu several times during the first two weeks of January, but could not get him to agree to sign the peace document. When Thiệu continued to balk, Nixon told him that he would independently sign the peace accord on January 23 with or without South Vietnamese consent and Thiệu capitulated. By January 22, however, it was unclear if Thiệu would actually send a delegate to Paris to sign the documents. Viên offered to go to Paris to initial the peace agreement without Thiệu's consent, but Nixon vetoed the idea. Viên was the most senior South Vietnamese official to represent the government as General Frederick C. Weyand and the final contingent of U.S. ground troops left Vietnam on March 28, 1973. Viên ordered heightened security for the 1974 Tết holiday, and in April 1974 traveled to the United States to plead (unsuccessfully) for more military aid.He was appointed a member of the Presidential Military Council in 1975 along with generals Trần Thiện Khiêm and Dạng Văn Quảng. He also promoted Lt. Gen. Đổng Văn Khuyên, a close friend and Commander of the Central Logistics Command, to act concurrently as Chief of Staff of the JGS. In the opinion of Major General Homer D. Smith, the U.S. Defense Attaché, Khuyên's appointment enhanced operations and personnel operations while diminishing the managerial efficiency of logistics and creating jealousy among other military commanders. Role during government's final days

Viên was present at the fateful meeting in March 1975 which led to South Vietnam's collapse. At the end of February 1975, Thiệu (accompanied by Viên and Prime Minister Gen. Trần Thiện Khiêm) made a brief visit to Cam Ranh Bay to assess the military situation in South Vietnam's northernmost military zone. At an assembly of top generals on March 11, 1975, Thiệu declared he would abandon the Central Highlands, trading land in order to achieve a more defensible concentration of population and troops around Saigon and the Mekong Delta.Lee, J. Edward and Haynsworth, Toby Nixon, Ford, and the Abandonment of South Vietnam Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. "Secret Viet Talks Reported" United Press International.March 19, 1975. Although he had believed consolidation was necessary for some time, Viên had never voiced his concern. He finally did so at this meeting. Yet, Viên also privately believed that the war was unwinnable if the Central Highlands were abandoned. Accounts of this meeting differ, however. Some versions have Viên remaining silent regarding Thieu's consolidation decision.Kolko, Gabriel. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience.New York : Pantheon Books, 1985. Whichever version is correct, the government did not prepare the army, its allies, or the public for the decision, nor did it anticipate how the decision might affect the war effort. Although Viên met with Smith shortly after the March 11 meeting, he did not inform him about Thiệu's decision—leaving the Americans unprepared for what followed. Thiệu's decision led to widespread panic among the public, and the collapse of the ARVN as they sought to protect their families. As panic set in and ARVN troops refused to fight or deserted in large numbers, Viên tried to rally his nation's troops: "We have only one way and that is to fight for our survival. The historic hour has come." Privately he expressed his belief that the Thiệu government could no longer prosecute the war effort effectively.Viên, Thiệu, Vice President Trần Văn Hương and Prime Minister Gen. Trần Thiện Khiêm consulted with General Weyand (visiting South Vietnam on a fact-finding mission) on April 1.McArthur, George. "Weyand's Hard-Nosed Message", Los Angeles Times April 3, 1975 Also present were U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin and Smith. Weyand delivered a personal message from President Gerald Ford indicating that limited amounts of critical supplies and equipment were coming, but that the ARVN had to hold its ground. Viên met with General Trần Văn Đôn, the new South Vietnamese Defense Minister, on April 16 and advised him that ARVN troops would no longer fight. To Australian Army Brigadier Ted Serong, this was a sign that Viên himself was abandoning the fight. But Smith felt that Viên and the JGS staff were working very hard to reconstitute forces which had fled and wanted to continue to fight.On April 21, Viên issued a statement that said he would not resign and intended to stay and fight. On April 27, Viên helped brief members of the National Assembly on what was likely to happen once the city fell. Kỳ later said he called Viên on April 27 and offered to lead a tank column so that they could open the road to the west and help tens of thousands of people flee the city, but Viên dissuaded him. Viên's next actions are unclear. Some accounts say that Viên then resigned, telling President Trần Văn Hương that he could not serve under Dương Văn Minh (who had returned to the country in 1968 and would be named President on April 27). But other versions of the fall of Saigon have Viên leaving Vietnam on April 28 without resigning, leaving the JGS in turmoil.Turley, William S. The Second Indochina War: A Concise Political and Military History 2d ed. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.Saigon fell to PAVN forces on April 30, 1975. Assessment
Assessments of <mask> Viên's military career are generally positive. In his memoir, A Soldier Reports, General Westmoreland concluded, "Never have I known a more admirable man: honest, loyal, reserved, scholarly, diplomatic." Historians have said his strategic and command skills compared favorably with those of American General Earle G. Wheeler, and that General Abrams respected Viên deeply. Smith said, "I was most impressed with this gentleman. Our relationship was one of complete candor on the matters he chose to discuss. ...I never heard him say an unkind thing about anyone. Despite the obvious facts of too little support and the failing prospects of getting more support, he was never bitter. He was a very gracious person." In a top secret report in July 1970, Colonel John K. Singlaub said he had "a very warm personal working relationship" with Viên, and described the general as a "major factor in getting things done". There are some critics, however. General Lâm Quang Thi called him a "colorless" man who preferred practicing yoga over leading troops. Los Angeles Times reporter George McArthur called him "something of a prima donna."Nguyễn Tiến Hưng described him as "a mediocre staff officer, without imagination." Post-war life
<mask>n Viên left South Vietnam for the United States on April 28, 1975. He arrived in the U.S. on April 29, 1975, aboard a C-141 Starlifter aircraft which landed at El Toro Marine Air Station. He was met by Marine Brigadier General R. W. Taylor and taken to an undisclosed location before being reunited with his family. The Viên family had strong ties to the U.S. already: In 1973, Viên's oldest son was a doctoral student at American university and his second-oldest son was attending high school in Washington, D.C. The Viên family settled briefly in New Jersey, where his wife Tran Thi Tao ran a dry cleaning business. The Viên family then moved to Falls Church, Virginia, His wife started an export-import business.For a time, Viên was paid $1,500 by the U.S. Army to write monographs about the conduct of the Vietnam War. His most comprehensive analysis was The Final Collapse, in which he argued that cutbacks in military assistance and a lack of U.S. air power led to the defeat of the South Vietnamese government. After finishing his work for the U.S. Army, Viên considered teaching French literature, but he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was unable to work. Viên was a lifelong adherent of Buddhism; fluent in English, French and Laotian; never smoked tobacco or drank alcohol; and loved birds. He became an American citizen in 1982. He kept bees and allowed them to sting him to dull the pain of his arthritis, but this unorthodox remedy was only temporarily effective. Viên's wife died in 1991.His daughter, Lan <mask>, became a professor of law at the College of William and Mary. His son <mask> Tuan died in 1996, and his son <mask> Dzung disappeared and has never been found. <mask> Viên lived his last years at Sleepy Hollow Manor, an assisted living facility in Annandale, Virginia. He died there of cardiac arrest on January 22, 2008. He was survived by his daughter and five grandchildren. Controversy over wealth
At the time that he left South Vietnam, the American press believed that Viên was one of the wealthiest generals able to escape the country. The Los Angeles Times'' reported that "repeated American complaints" had prevented Viên himself from accumulating wealth or engaging in corruption.Viên's wife, Tao Thi Tran, was the daughter of one of the largest landowners in the Mekong Delta. Her father was executed by the Viet Cong and her family's land confiscated. A savvy businesswoman, she built a large number of businesses while her husband was in the military. She owned and ran bars and hotels that catered to U.S. military personnel and diplomats, as well as a number of other businesses at different times including a Pepsi-Cola bottling franchise, a San Miguel beer distributorship, and a construction company that built approximately 20 to 30 homes each year. She also owned extensive tracts of land, and, for a time after moving to the US, she ran an import-export business which specialized in Vietnamese handicrafts. She was also said to sell favors and military and political promotions. Accusations were also frequently made that Viên's wife had enriched the family due to her husband's position, although there was almost no evidence to support such claims.In September 1970, a member of the National Assembly accused Viên of extensive corruption. After the fall of Saigon, Nguyễn Văn Ngái (a former Minister of Rural Development and former Senator in the National Assembly) also accused the Viêns of corruption. Another unsubstantiated claim was that the Viêns had deposited $1 million in a bank in Guam during their flight from South Vietnam. Other awards
In addition to his National Order of Vietnam, Silver Star, and Legion of Merit, General Viên was awarded eight other medals from the governments of the Philippines, the Republic of China, South Korea, and Thailand. He also received the following honors from the Republic of Vietnam as of 1967:
Army Distinguished Service Order, 1st class
Air Force Order, 1st class
Navy Distinguished Service Order, 1st class
Gallantry Crosses (12 citations: eight with palm, two with silver star, two with brass star)
Air Gallantry Medal (Golden Wing)
Hazardous Service Medal

References

External links
General <mask> Vien's resume

1921 births
2008 deaths
People from Vientiane
Vietnamese Buddhists
Army of the Republic of Vietnam generals
Non-U.S. alumni of the Command and General Staff College
People of the First Indochina War
South Vietnamese military personnel of the Vietnam War
Vietnamese anti-communists
5 <mask>, Van Vien
Recipients of the Silver Star
Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Vietnamese exiles
Vietnamese emigrants to the United States
People from Annandale,

masks:
Cao Văn
Cao Vă
Cao
Cao Anh
Cao Anh
Cao Văn
Cao Van
Cao


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Admiral Sir <mask> KCB GOTE RN (6 March 1786 – 6 November 1860) was a British naval officer whose sixty years in the Royal Navy included service in the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, Syrian War and the Crimean War (with the Russians), and a period commanding the Portuguese navy in the Liberal Wars. An innovator concerned with the development of iron ships, and an advocate of humane reform in the Royal Navy, he was also active in politics as a Liberal Member of Parliament and was probably the naval officer most widely known to the public in the early Victorian Era. French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

He became a midshipman in 1799 aboard the 16-gun sloop , but left her in May 1800 before she was lost with all hands. He next served aboard , flagship of Sir John Borlase Warren. After this, in November 1802, he transferred to the frigate  under Captain William Hoste. The following year, he moved to Égyptienne for a voyage to St Helena escorting a convoy of ships and then in the English Channel and off the coast of France. (In later years, feeling he had been badly treated as a midshipman by her captain, <mask>leeming, <mask> challenged that officer to a duel, though they were eventually reconciled by their seconds.)In 1804–5 he served briefly on Mediator before moving to  off Boulogne. He was promoted lieutenant on 30 November 1805. He was appointed to , and was present in her in the West Indies at the action in which the squadron under Admiral Warren took the French Marengo (80 guns) and Belle Poule (40 guns), on 13 March 1806. After returning home with Warren, he returned to the West Indies in  and having been promoted to commander on 30 November 1807, he was appointed acting commander of the brig  of 16 guns, formerly the French privateer Austerlitz. In August 1808 he became captain of the brig-sloop  (18 guns), and in her fought a hot action off Antigua with the French sloop Diligente (18 guns), in which his thigh was smashed by a cannonball. In April 1809, <mask> took part in the capture of the Caribbean island of Martinique, and subsequently distinguished himself in the pursuit of three escaping French ships of the line, handling the small Recruit so well that the British were able to capture the French flagship Hautpoult. As a result, he was promoted acting post captain and briefly given the command of the captured 74-gun ship-of-the-line.His rank was confirmed on 22 May 1809, but he was put on half-pay, when he came home as temporary captain of the frigate  escorting a convoy. While on half-pay he spent some time at the University of Edinburgh. <mask>, still on half-pay, then went to Portugal to visit his three cousins, (all colonels serving in Wellington's army, and one of whom was <mask> <mask>, the future conqueror of Sindh). He took part in the Battle of Buçaco, during which he saved his cousin <mask>'s life and was himself wounded. In 1811, he was appointed captain of the frigate  (32 guns) and served in the Mediterranean Fleet under Sir Edward Pellew, disrupting enemy shipping. Among his principal exploits was the 1813 capture of the island of Ponza, which was a possible haven for corsairs. In 1813 he moved to command the frigate  (36 guns), operating mainly off the French and Spanish Mediterranean coast.American War and the "Hundred Days"
After the surrender of Napoleon and his first period of exile in 1814, <mask> and his ship were transferred to the coast of North America, where the War of 1812 with the United States was still in progress, now commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane. In the Chesapeake Bay campaign, he took part in the August expedition up the Potomac River to Alexandria (southeast of the American national capital), Arriving several days after the Burning of Washington and the Battle of Bladensburg under Maj. Gen. Robert Ross and Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn, he was second in command to Captain James Alexander Gordon. The British squadron took 10 days to travel  upriver, with many strandings and damage from a tornado/thunderstorm (after the Washington fires), but on 28 August 1814 before attempting a bombardment, they captured Fort Washington on the north shoreline which was blown up by the Americans prior to the attack. The town of Alexandria capitulated with a ransom paid and the shipping there was seized. The squadron successfully withdrew downriver with their prizes despite frequent harassing American attacks from the shores downstream. During this withdrawal <mask> was wounded in the neck. He next distinguished himself in the following attack on the city of Baltimore by a British Army accompanied by 16 warships, 12–14 September 1814, under Admirals Cochrane, and Cockburn.HMS Euryalus was involved in the bombardment of Fort McHenry, protecting the city on the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River that began early in the morning of the 13th. At. the same time, earlier on the 12th, Gen. Ross had been put ashore to the southeast at North Point with his regiments to attack the town from the east. He was shot in a brief skirmish just before his troops met the City Brigade regiments of the Maryland Militia under Brig. Gen. John Stricker at the Battle of North Point that afternoon. After pausing for the night to tend to the substantial wounded and now under the command of Col. Arthur Brooke, the regiments waited outside the substantial American dug-in fortifications with opposing approx. 20,000 troops and 100 artillery at old Loudenschlager's Hill (today's Hampstead Hill in western Patterson Park) until the naval forces were able to subdue the fort and move upriver to attack the eastern land redoubts.The critical period of the attack developed shortly after midnight when a picked British force in longboats armed with scaling ladders under <mask>'s command penetrated the Middle or Ferry Branch of the river along the southern opposite shore (today's Brooklyn and Fairfield areas of southern Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County) to the west of the fort with the intention of storming it from the rear flank. Before they could land, however, they were detected and subjected to a withering fire from the still active guns of Fort McHenry and two smaller forts to the west, batteries Covington and Babcock. The British fought back strongly with cannon and rockets. (Watching the battle from a safe distance, Georgetown lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key, who had been attempting to free William Beanes, arrested earlier for jailing British Army deserters, was inspired to compose the poem, "The Defence of Fort McHenry", which was later set to music as The Star-Spangled Banner). Eventually American firepower prevailed; <mask> was compelled to retire to the warships with substantial casualties, and Cochrane's fleet later withdrew on the morning of the 14th, with the Americans raising a substantially huge 42 by 30-foot flag, with the firing of the traditional morning gun at daylight, after the night's driving rainstorm and bombardments, enabling all to see from the town that the fort had held. Euryalus proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia for refitting and then took part in the ongoing blockade of the eastern seaboard of the U.S.A.. Bored by such duties, <mask> issued a challenge to the famous American, Baltimore-built frigate , which had been lying in on the Elizabeth River harbor near the U.S.Naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, (since making her only war cruise during the first year of the War) to come out and fight a single-ship duel. The challenge was accepted and due arrangements were made 'in the most gentlemanly fashion', but Euryalus was made part of the squadron that Admiral Cochrane took to Florida and Louisiana in December 1814 in the operations that climaxed in the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815, and before she could return to fulfil her engagement with Constellation news of the peace treaty of Ghent reached the USA. With Napoleon's escape from Elba and brief return to power, (the 'Hundred Days'), Euryalus returned to Britain. <mask>'s last mission of the Napoleonic wars was to land troops at the mouth of the River Scheldt to guard against the French advance into Belgium. Marriage and family
At the end of the war <mask> was made a Companion of the Bath (4 June 1815). He married Frances Elizabeth Elers, née Younghusband, generally referred to as Eliza, whom he had known and loved in Edinburgh while still a teenager. In the meantime Eliza had married a Lieutenant Edward Elers and been widowed.She had four children whom <mask> adopted as his own. Of these the second son, <mask> <mask>, became a naval officer. The eldest, Edward Elers <mask>, entered the army, rising to the rank of major-general: he also wrote books of travel and reminiscence, as well as the authoritative biography of his stepfather. Frances also gave <mask> two children of his own, a son born in Rome and a daughter born by Lake Geneva. The son, <mask>, died as a result of an accident aged five. The first years of his leisure <mask> spent in Italy, Switzerland (where he briefly took up farming), and in Paris. He had inherited considerable wealth from his mother's side of the family and spent it freely.Steam and iron
During these years <mask> began a voluminous and indefatigable correspondence with the Admiralty on the urgency for naval reform, which lasted for the rest of his career. He sought to persuade successive civil administrations of the need for innovative ship-design and tactics, the development of steam ships and the use of iron in ship construction, the proper training of officers, and decent living conditions for ordinary seamen. He held that the use of the press gang and of flogging should be abolished, and that seamen should receive proper wages and pensions. In all this he was far ahead of his time. His advocacy had little effect: on the contrary, successive administrators considered him an eccentric nuisance. He had been interested in steam navigation since its beginnings, and began investing his considerable resources in a steam vessel service that would ply along the River Seine. In 1821 he financed and participated in the construction of one of the first iron-hulled vessels ever built, and the first designed to venture into open water.The Aaron Manby was named after the master of the Horseley Ironworks, Tipton, Staffordshire, where she was pre-fabricated to a design formulated by <mask>, Manby and Manby's son <mask> and then assembled at Rotherhithe on the Thames. After trials in May 1822, the Aaron Manby crossed the English Channel to Le Havre under <mask>'s command on 10 June 1822, and proceeded up the Seine to Paris, where she caused a great stir and where she was based for the next decade. This has been claimed as the first passage from France to Britain by steam ship, which it was not: but it was the first direct passage from London to Paris by steam ship and the first seagoing voyage by an iron ship anywhere. <mask>'s company built five similar steamships but in 1827 he went bankrupt, leaving the family in severe financial difficulty. (Sold off, the ships gave 30 years further service.) Portugal

At the beginning of 1829 he was appointed to command the 42-gun frigate . The Admiralty gave him permission to fit her with paddles of his own design, worked by winches on the main deck.He carried out trials that proved that ships could travel independently of the wind. The Admiralty, however, did not adopt this innovation. At the start of Portugal's Liberal Wars in 1832 <mask> was at the Azores, which were the only part of Portuguese territory still held for Queen Maria II of Portugal against the usurpation of her uncle, the absolutist Dom Miguel. He so impressed the constitutional leaders, especially the Count de Vila Flor (better known by his later title of Duke of Terceira), that they begged him to take command of their small fleet. Having unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary by-election for Portsmouth in June 1832 after Galatea was paid off, he accepted their proposals in February 1833. Sailing to Portugal with his stepson <mask> <mask> as aide-de-camp, bringing troop reinforcements and using the incognito of 'Carlos da Ponza', he arrived in Porto, where Queen Maria's father Dom Pedro, ex-Emperor of Brazil, and the Liberal forces were being besieged by Miguel's armies. He assumed command of the Liberal fleet, succeeding its previous British commander George Rose Sartorius.With the fleet <mask> then transported the Liberal army to the Algarve to open a second front in the south of the country. On his return voyage he destroyed the much larger Miguelite fleet in the Battle of Cape St Vincent on 5 July 1833. These two strokes enabled the Liberals to capture Lisbon, which the Miguelites abandoned, though <mask>'s squadron was now ravaged by cholera. On the demand of France <mask> was struck off the British navy list. On the other hand, Dom Pedro appointed him Admiral of the Portuguese Navy on 10 July. <mask>'s victory, with a fleet largely manned by British seamen, was viewed in Britain as a credit to the Royal Navy. The victory and consequent accolades greatly annoyed King William IV, who disliked both <mask> and Dom Pedro.Continuing his Portuguese services, <mask> commanded land forces in the successful defence of Lisbon, September 1833. For these services he was made Commander of the Tower and Sword, and Count of the Cape of Saint Vincent in the Peerage of Portugal. On 12 September 1833 he captured The Lord of the Isles steamer at Sao Martinho and in 1836 defended his prize in the Court of Common Pleas. In 1834, with a small army made up largely of British sailors, he reconquered the Minho region for the constitutional cause. After the final defeat of Miguel and the death of Dom Pedro shortly afterwards, <mask> found himself frustrated in his attempts to reform the naval administration of Portugal and returned to England. His departure was followed by a vote of thanks to him in both houses of the restored Portuguese parliament. <mask> unsuccessfully contested the Portsmouth parliamentary seat for a second time in the by-election of December 1834.He then occupied himself until 1836 with writing a history of the Portuguese War and his own part in it. Syrian War

Though he published his An Account of the War in Portugal as 'Admiral <mask>', he was only an Admiral as far as Portugal was concerned. He was restored to his former rank of captain in the British Navy List by an Order in Council on 9 March 1836, and in July 1837 unsuccessfully contested the by-election for Greenwich in the Liberal cause. In 1838 received command of the ship of the line HMS Powerful (84 guns). When troubles broke out in Syria and Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt, invaded it and destroyed a Turkish army, <mask> was ordered to the Mediterranean. On the evening of 29 May 1839 Powerful was anchored in the Cove of Cork, Ireland when urgent orders came from the Admiralty to proceed at once to Malta. He was also informed that the ships-of-the-line Ganges and Implacable had already started from England.Wishing to overtake them, <mask> set sail at 2 a.m. on the 30th for Gibraltar. Powerful arrived at Gibraltar on 12 June to hear the other two ships were three days ahead of her, but by superior seamanship <mask> overtook them in the Mediterranean and Powerful entered the harbour of La Valletta, Malta on the evening of 24 June, with band playing and under every stitch of canvas, twelve hours ahead of her rivals. There followed a lull of about a year. In the summer of 1840 the Maronite Christians of Lebanon rose in revolt against the occupying Egyptians and Muhammad Ali in retaliation sent Ibrahim Pasha with 15,000 troops to burn towns and villages along the Lebanese coast. By 1 July 1840 <mask>, with a detached squadron and the rank of commodore, was patrolling

masks:
Charles John Napier
Charles F
Napier
Napier
Napier
Charles James
Napier
Charles
Napier
Napier
Napier
Napier
Napier
Napier
Napier
Napier
Charles Elers
Napier
Napier
Napier
Charles
Napier
Napier
Napier
Charles
Napier
Napier
Napier
Charles Elers
Napier
Napier
Napier
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Charles Napier
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 the coast to protect British interests. Though in August he appeared off Beirut and called upon Suleiman Pasha, Muhammad Ali's governor, to abandon the town and leave Syria, there was little he could do until September, when he was joined by the allied fleet under Admiral Robert Stopford: mainly British, but also including Austrian, Ottoman and Russian warships. Open war broke out on 11 September.Due to the illness of the army commander, Brigadier-General Sir <mask>, <mask> was instructed to lead the land force, and effected a landing at D'jounie with 1,500 Turks and marines to operate against Ibrahim, who was prevented by the revolt from doing more than trying to hold the coastal cities. Meanwhile, Stopford, claiming his flag of truce had been fired on, bombarded Beirut, killing many civilians. <mask> next distinguished himself by leading an attack by land and sea on Sidon, the Egyptian army's southern base, which capitulated on 28 September. The Egyptians abandoned Beirut on 3 October. While preparing to attack them at Boharsef, <mask> was ordered to relinquish command of the army to withdraw and hand over the land forces to the now recovered Brigadier-General Smith. To do so would have meant giving up the tactical initiative, and <mask> accordingly disobeyed the order and continued with the attack against Ibrahim's army. The ensuing Battle of Boharsef, on 10 October, was a hard-fought victory, one of the very few land battles won by a naval officer.By the end of the month the only coastal position still held by the Egyptians was Acre, which Stopford was instructed to recapture. On 3 November the Mediterranean Fleet, with its Turkish and Austrian allies, moved into position against the western and southern sides of the town. The fire of the ships (48,000 rounds in all) was devastatingly accurate. A shell penetrated the main magazine in the south of the city, which exploded killing 1,100 men. That night Acre was occupied. British losses were only 18 men killed and 41 wounded. During the action, <mask> had manoeuvred independently against Stopford's orders and his division, by accident and mutual misunderstandings, left a space in the fleet's deployment, not that this affected the outcome.Some captains wanted <mask> to be court-martialled for insubordination, but Stopford did not push the issue. The rapid collapse of Muhammad Ali's power, with the prospect of bloody chaos in Egypt, was not part of the Allies' plan, so Stopford sent <mask> to command the squadron at Alexandria and to observe the situation. Here, acting once again on his own initiative, <mask> appeared before the city on 25 November and enforced a blockade. <mask>, without reference to his admiral or the British government, personally negotiated a peace with Muhammad Ali. The treaty guaranteed Muhammad Ali and his heirs the sovereignty of Egypt, and pledged to evacuate Ibrahim's beleaguered army back to Alexandria, if Muhammad Ali in turn renounced all claims to Syria, submitted to the Sultan and returned the Ottoman fleet. 'I do not know if I have done right in settling the eastern question', <mask> wrote on 26 November to Lord Minto, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Stopford repudiated the arrangement immediately when he had heard the news; the Sultan and the British ambassador were furious, and several of the Allied powers declared it void.Nevertheless, the formal treaty later concluded and confirmed on 27 November was essentially a ratification of <mask>'s original, and his friend Lord Palmerston congratulated <mask>. (Muhammad Ali's last heir, King Farouk, ruled Egypt until 23 July 1952, when the Free Officers Movement under Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a military coup that launched the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and forced him to abdicate.) Parliament and Channel Fleet
In acknowledgement of his distinguished services during the campaign <mask> was knighted as a KCB on 4 December 1840, and was also included in the vote of thanks by the Houses of Parliament. He was also presented by the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia with the Order of St. George of Russia; the Order of Maria Theresa of Austria; and the Red Eagle of Prussia. In January 1841, <mask> carried out a special mission to Alexandria and Cairo to see that the treaty was being adhered to before returning to Britain in March. He was invited to stand as Parliamentary candidate in two constituencies and so at his own request was placed on half pay. He was returned as Liberal Party MP for Marylebone at the 1841 general election.He spoke mainly on naval topics, especially conditions for seamen and increasing the strength of the navy. In April 1842, with 67 other MPs, he voted for the motion of William Sharman Crawford to form a committee to consider the demands of the People's Charter (1838): votes for working men, protected by secret ballot. In November, 1841, <mask> was appointed Naval Aide-de-Camp to Queen Victoria. He subsequently wrote and published War in Syria, his personal account of the campaign. On 4 December 1845 he was invested with the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh. <mask> continued to be interested in warship design and was responsible for the design of the paddle-frigate  launched in May 1846. In the same year he was promoted rear-admiral of the Blue on 9 November.in May 1847 he was appointed to the command of the Channel Fleet, hoisting his flag in HMS St Vincent. By this time he was perhaps the naval personality most famous to the general public: his level of everyday name-recognition is shown by the passing allusion in William Makepeace Thackeray's famous humorous ballad Little Billee  ("the British fleet a-riding at anchor / with <mask>, K.C.B."). He did not stand again for his parliamentary seat at Marylebone in the July–August 1847 general election. The Channel Fleet was sometimes a sinecure, but this was by no means the case during <mask>'s period of command. The fleet's area of operations was not just the English Channel but more or less throughout what in the 20th century would be called the Western Approaches. Portugal was in the closing stages of its 'little' civil war, the Patuleia, and British interests in that country needed protecting. Ireland, in the aftermath of the Great Famine, was feared to be near insurrection.Moreover, there were considerations of experiment and training with new ships, made necessary by the rapid technological advances such as screw propulsion. During 1848, the fleet was mainly off the coast of Ireland, where the political situation dictated that <mask> show the flag and train for the eventuality of transporting and landing soldiers on practically any part of the Irish coast. In December he took the Channel Fleet further than it had ever operated before, when it was sent to Gibraltar and then onto the Moroccan coast, with the purpose of curbing the activities of Riff pirates. He compelled the Sultan of Morocco, Muley Abderrahman, to grant compensation for the injuries he had inflicted on British commerce. <mask> returned to Britain in April 1849 and was ordered to strike his flag. His disappointment that his expected three years term had been cut short led to bitter letters to The Times criticising the Admiralty's policy. When he applied for the vacant Mediterranean command, the Government and Admiralty agreed that he could not be trusted and he was rejected, Rear-Admiral Sir James Dundas being appointed instead.This led <mask> to write more angry letters to the newspapers and directly to Prime Minister Lord John Russell claiming that he had been defrauded of his just rights. He unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat for the Borough of Lambeth at a by-election on 7 August 1850. On 28 May 1853 he was promoted to vice-admiral of the Blue. Baltic Campaign

On the outbreak of the Russian War, better known as the Crimean War, he received the command of the Baltic Fleet the largest fleet which the Royal Navy had assembled since the Napoleonic Wars, destined to act in the Baltic Sea. This was not without misgivings on the part of the Admiralty, but he was the most senior and experienced officer available. <mask> hoisted his flag in February 1854 in the steam ship of the line , his subordinate commanders being the rear-admirals Armar Lowry Corry, second in command, Henry Ducie Chads, third in command, and James Hanway Plumridge, commanding the scouting forces. They were all elderly men, at most a year or so younger than <mask> himself.<mask>'s force, which was augmented in June by a French fleet sent by Napoleon III and commanded by Alexandre Ferdinand Parseval-Deschenes, though impressive on paper, was radically unsuited to operations in the Baltic, chronically short of men and especially of experienced seamen, while he was hampered by contradictory sets of orders from the Admiralty. Nevertheless, he successfully blockaded all the Russian ports, sufficiently overawed the Russian Baltic Fleet that it never stirred from its moorings, and carried out many bombardment operations as far as the northernmost point of the Gulf of Finland. During the campaign the first ever Victoria Cross was won by midshipman <mask> Lucas of the gunboat , who threw a Russian explosive shell overboard before it could detonate. During the campaign Rear-Admiral Corry was invalided home because of poor health; he was replaced by Commodore (later Rear-Admiral) Henry Byam Martin. The major success of the campaign was the capture and destruction, in a near-perfect combined operation by French and British soldiers and sailors, of the Russian fortress of Bomarsund on Åland, which were temporarily liberated from Russian rule and which <mask> offered to Sweden (they were declined). But he refused to attack the great naval bases at Sveaborg (often quoted as the "Gibraltar of the north") and Kronstadt, which observation had established were probably impregnable without shallow-draught bomb vessels which he did not have; and a great outcry (led by The Times newspaper) was raised against him for his apparent lack of determination. (His inaction was thoroughly justified by the sequel: in 1855 a better-equipped Anglo-French fleet did bombard Sveaborg, but despite an enormous expenditure of ammunition caused the fortress only trifling structural damage.)<mask> felt he was continually being second-guessed by the Admiralty, and especially by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham. In fact the Naval Lords were reacting to adverse press coverage and unwilling to accept the assessment of the commander on the spot, and relations between them deteriorated as his ships maintained the blockade in atrocious weather, quite unable to storm or destroy impregnable Russian fortresses into the bargain. Never one to mince his words or submit to what he felt to be unmerited criticism, <mask>'s 'disrespectful' tone in his despatches, which the Admiralty complained of, sealed his professional fate. Nevertheless, though lacking any dramatic action apart from the capture of Bomarsund, <mask> had achieved a great deal. In one modern assessment, the campaign "had successfully bottled up the Russian Navy for the entire first summer of the war. The tsar had been denied an opportunity to reinforce his Black Sea fleet with additional ships. The 30,000 Russian troops posted in the Gulf had also been prevented from joining the army in the Crimea."In addition, <mask>'s constant training had welded the fleet personnel into a much more competent force for the next year's campaign; and not a single ship had been lost. Retirement
On <mask>'s return from the Baltic to Britain in December 1854 he was ordered to haul down his flag and informed his command was terminated,
the fleet being given for the campaign of 1855 to Admiral the Hon. Richard Saunders Dundas,
the Second Sea Lord. (None of the flag officers of the 1854 campaign was allowed to return to the Baltic in 1855, but Sir Michael Seymour, <mask>'s Captain of the Fleet, was promoted to rear-admiral and was made second-in-command to Dundas.) The Admiralty attempted to make <mask> a scapegoat for the perceived failure of the campaign (which, within the limits of the possible, had been rather successful) and suborned several captains to testify to their lack of confidence in him, his timidity, his age, his lack of understanding of steam tactics, and his heavy drinking. Nevertheless, some of the leading seamen in the fleet, such as Captain (later Admiral) Sir Bartholomew Sulivan, maintained along with him that <mask>'s strategy had been wise and the faults lay with the Admiralty themselves. After the war the Russians testified that, knowing <mask>'s reputation, their main hope had been of his making a foolhardy attack on their fleet under the guns of Kronstadt, where they were confident he would have come to grief.<mask> was elected MP for Southwark in February 1855, and carried his dispute with the Admiralty to the floor of the House of Commons. He never received another command. He continued to campaign vigorously for improvements in the way common seamen were treated during and after service, and maintained his parliamentary seat, though broken in health, until his death on 6 November 1860. His tomb is in the churchyard of All Saints, Catherington in Hampshire. The ships of the Portuguese Navy went into eight days of mourning for their former commander. Just before his death <mask> had hoped to persuade Giuseppe Garibaldi to acquire a fleet for the liberation of Italy, which he would have commanded. Character
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica entry of 1911, "Sir <mask> was a man of undoubted energy and courage, but of no less eccentricity and vanity.He caused great offence to many of his brother officers by his behaviour to his superior, Admiral Stopford, in the Syrian War, and was embroiled all his life in quarrels with the Admiralty." <mask> was a large, untidy man of about 14 stone (about 200lbs/90kg) who walked with a limp and a stoop due to his leg and neck wounds. His common nickname in the Navy was 'Black Charlie' because of his swarthy appearance and dark side-whiskers. He was also known as 'Mad Charlie' because of his eccentric behaviour and enthusiasms, and 'Dirty Charlie' from his habit of wearing the most unsuitable and ill-fitting clothes while insisting that his officers were correctly dressed at all times. Memorial

There is a memorial to him within St Paul's Cathedral. Works

Popular Culture
In circa 1845 Stephen Glover wrote The Retreat from St. Jean d'Acre and dedicated it to <mask>. Notes

References

Further reading

 <mask>, Elers (1862).The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir <mask>, K.C.B.. London: Hurst and Blackett. (Vol. 1 / Vol. 2)
 <mask>, Priscilla, Black Charlie, a life of Admiral Sir <mask> KCB 1787–1860 (Norwich: Michael Russell Publishing Ltd, 1995)
 "Correspondence between the Admiralty and Vice-Admiral Sir C<mask> respecting Naval Operations in the Baltic 1854" in Russian War, 1854, Baltic and Black Sea, Official Correspondence edited by David Bonner-Smith and Captain A. C. Dewar (London: Navy Records Society, 1943)

External links

 Vice Admiral Sir <mask>
 Black Charlie on www.catherington.net

1786 births
1860 deaths
People educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh
Royal Navy admirals
Royal Navy personnel of the Crimean War
Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath
Knights Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa
Recipients of the Order of the Tower and Sword
Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Charles
Scottish admirals
UK MPs 1841–1847
UK MPs 1852–1857
UK MPs 1857–1859
UK MPs 1859–1865
People from Falkirk
Royal Navy personnel of the Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841)
Military personnel of the Liberal Wars
Burials in Hampshire
British naval commanders of the Napoleonic

masks:
Charles Smith
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Admiral Napier
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Charles Davis
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Charles Napier
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