Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story to tell of people fishing while their nation refuses to stand on it’s own.
The stamp today is from the last days of a failed state, in this case South Vietnam. One imagines the leaders of the country would be trying to rally support. Or perhaps tell how great things will be after victory. But this stamp looks to be showing off an almost Hawaiian style luau. Were they out of touch or was someone else doing their stamps for them.
The same year, 1972, North Vietnam was putting out a series of stamps with a running total of American planes shot down. The one from October 1973 showing a Mig 21 fighter going in for the kill number 4181 on a big Boeing B52 Stratofortress was most dramatic and evocative of victory. Even in North Vietnam there are so many stamps bragging on the Soviets. Their space programs, even their white leaders. Wasn’t the North’s best argument that the government is a matter for Vietnamese, not outsider pirates and their vassals. All those Lenin stamps make the North look rather vassal like themselves. Hey, our masters are better than yours. I guess it was a Russian T54 tank breaking through gates while Saigon fell and American UH1 helicopters were flying off the roof.
The stamp today is issue A129, a 7 piaster stamp issued by the republic of South Vietnam on January 2nd, 1972. The stamp showed net fishing from a small boat. It was part of a 3 stamp issue celebrating fishing in South Vietnam. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used.
With the withdrawal of the French colonial power in 1954, Vietnam broke into a communist north, and a southern government that was more aligned with the older French authorities. The south had a larger population and more economic clout. Over time French aid and influence was superseded by American aid and influence. There was much more corruption in the South and the fact that so many of the higher ups were Catholic, a tiny minority in the country, separated government from people. Many leaders in the North were also French educated. This was a time though that many young third world educated youths returned home from a Paris education as a believing communist.
A third world proxy war develops with massive military aid given to both sides by their puppet masters. Chinese troops come in to North Vietnam allowing the NVA to fight in the south. When the local South Vietnam army proves not capable, the USA makes the colossal mistake of sending in large ground forces under President Johnson. The American forces win every battle but take losses that are simply not acceptable to the people back home. The cost in aid is also extreme and causes the South to rely on it rather than standing for itself. What a mess.
In the end the ARVN would not fight the NVA and begged for more aid. This was cut off and those loyal to the South Vietnam government rushed for the exit. A cargo plane took a resigned President Thieu to Taiwan with a plane load of gold and he settled in London where his son was studying at Eton. Those less connected resorted to dangerous boat rides to Thailand and many to the USA eventually. Or course the end saw a gradual drying up of Soviet aid to united Vietnam and so there was no great leap forward with peace.
Well my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the discussion in the below comment section. Getting the Americans out of Vietnam was a major undertaking by Nixon. Too bad he couldn’t get the Soviets to cut off their corroding aid at the same time as the USA. Maybe the locals would then have learned to work together and stand together. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.