Cluster bombs once against Vietnamese people and still in use today
ANNE-RUTH WERTHEIM
08/23/2020
1SHARES
( Joop) - On 4 March 1971 our train pulled in to Paris's Gare du Nord
station. My then husband Ab van Kammen and I were going to spend a few days
in the city. We had left our three daughters with various friends, packed
our suitcases and caught the train. It would not just be a pleasure trip,
for Ab had been invited to take part in a mission connected with the Vietnam
war, which was then at its height. People in many countries, including
Holland, were by now aware of the impact of the Americans' fierce bombing of
North Vietnam, and action groups had been set up all over the world to help
its suffering people. University students, sometimes backed by their
lecturers, often played a major part in the work of such groups, including
the Medical Committee Netherlands-Vietnam and the Science and Technology
Committee for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. As a member of the latter body's
committee of recommendation, Ab had now been invited to join a visit to the
Vietnamese mission in Paris. He had previously been one of the members of an
international movement that had taken responsibility for the societal
implications of their discoveries after the Second World War - concerned
about nuclear armaments and the role scientists had played in their
development, they had organized themselves as the Verbond van
Wetenschappelijke Onderzoekers (Alliance of Scientific Researchers).
The napalm dropped on North Vietnam by American planes was intended to
starve the population by destroying their harvests, and above all to
defoliate large numbers of trees. This would make it hard for people to find
shelter, and would make them easy targets for cluster (or fragmentation)
bombs. Such bombs have little effect on military targets such as buildings
and vehicles, and are mainly used on human targets, whether fighters or
civilians. When they reach the ground they break up into smaller bombs known
as clusters, which in turn break up into even smaller bombs that scatter
sharp metal fragments. Some do not explode at once, but only when they are
touched later on - often by children. The fragments pierce human flesh,
causing serious bleeding and migrating on into tissues and organs where they
cause dreadful pain and are hard to trace. Someone with such injuries needs
constant care from several people, and this even appears to have served as
an advertisement for these weapons: a single cluster-bomb strike can put not
just one fighter out of action, but a whole group of them in one go.
The Vietnamese people defended themselves against such warfare by digging a
vast underground network of tunnels that provided at least some protection.
The Science and Technology Committee included Dutch students from Delft
University of Technology, who had designed equipment for the North
Vietnamese. They had devised a portable X-ray machine that could be used in
the underground tunnels to trace the tiny bomb fragments. There was no point
in operating on the entry wounds, for the fragments had long since
disappeared. Since American bombers could detect infrared radiation from the
air, the machine and the accompanying generator had been designed to produce
as little heat as possible. The students had brought the North Vietnamese a
blueprint and afterwards they would build the device themselves. It had to
be shown to them at the mission in Paris, for Holland did not recognize the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (as North Vietnam was officially known) and
the two countries did not have diplomatic relations.
As we emerged from the Gare du Nord we saw the small group of students
waiting for us: three young men in cut-off jeans, their long hair blowing in
the wind, and a girl in a denim miniskirt and a tank top made of
self-crocheted dishcloths. They were standing next to the deux-chevaux car
in which they had travelled down cheaply from Holland. The idea was for us
to drive to the house some way south of Paris where the Vietnamese had their
mission; but when the students saw me next to Ab, I could hear them
muttering to each other 'And what do we do with her?' We couldn't all fit
into their car, and after some to-ing and fro-ing it was decided that two of
the young men would go there by public transport. I felt awkward, unused as
I was to being treated as 'the wife', and suddenly realized how much we
contrasted with these young people - me in my below-the-knee skirt and high
heels, Ab in his neat jacket and trousers.
In the car they told us all about what they were doing. Besides the portable
X-ray machines, they were developing surgical lamps that would run on
dynamos in the underground tunnels. Because injured people arrived in huge
groups, many such lamps were needed all at once. Cluster bombs were nearly
always preceded by an 'ordinary' bomb; when people rushed in to help the
victims, the cluster bomb was dropped on them. In the absence of surgical
lamps, they made do with bicycle lamps; the bicycle dynamo was driven by
putting the front wheel in neutral and pedalling fast. This also produced
little heat, and could hardly be detected from the air.
The students told us how amazed they were to be backed by some of the
teaching staff in what they mockingly dismissed as 'our right-wing bastion
in Delft'. Although the lecturers had initially been reluctant to oppose
Holland's American allies, they now felt they could not square what was
happening in Vietnam with their consciences. Not that they automatically
supported communist North Vietnam or the Northern-backed rebels in the
South; but they had decided they could no longer uncritically accept the
black-and-white Cold War dichotomy between the 'capitalist West' and the
'communist East'.
On arrival at the mission we were welcomed by five women and two men who
nodded and bowed to us politely. They were all smaller and thinner than we
were, and dressed in the same sober grey colour: the women in two-piece
outfits buttoned up to the neck, and the men in suits. We sat in a wide
circle of armchairs round a low table, with the students trying in vain to
hide their long, bare legs; and while tea was being served they began
explaining to our hosts in perfect French what they had come here to do.
There was an animated discussion in which the current situation was compared
with the previous months. News was exchanged about the dispatch of the
technical equipment by the Medical Committee Netherlands-Vietnam, along with
their own medical materials; and assessments were made of how the war would
progress over the coming months. It was heart-warming to see how well
informed the students were, and how respectfully the two sides communicated.
At one point one of the students produced a rucksack from behind his chair,
and unrolled a large sheet of paper with lines and figures printed on it in
blue. Our hosts looked with interest at the blueprint of the X-ray machine,
and asked questions which the students answered; but suddenly I could see
them glancing at each other in dismay. In their enthusiasm the students did
not notice this, and they went on pointing to blue lines and giving
explanations - until the Vietnamese made clear to them that they should
stop.
We were then told the Americans were no longer making the fragments in the
bombs out of metal, but were now using a hard plastic that could no longer
be detected by X-rays. Incredulous, we sank back into our chairs. The
students looked shocked, and began talking all at once in agitated voices.
How could this be? And was it even true? Where had the report come from? How
long had this been the case? Yes, the Vietnamese nodded, it was quite true;
at first they hadn't wanted to believe it themselves, but there was no
escaping the inexorable truth. I could see a mixture of sadness and anger in
their eyes, and in their despair they began to apologize, as if it were
their fault. They were terribly sorry, but the X-ray machine could no longer
be used to detect the bomb fragments. They wished things were different, but
that was the way it was. And they really did appreciate all the work the
students had done.
When everyone had calmed down a bit, the Vietnamese tried to keep the
students' hopes up, saying they should go ahead anyway and build the X-ray
machine, as well as the generator - for there were still plenty of people
with metal bullets and fragments of shells and ordinary bombs in their
bodies. The students were assured that their machine would be put to good
use.
And so, in the May-June 1973 issue of the Medical Committee
Netherlands-Vietnam's Medical Bulletin, the report on the previous year
contained the words 'Dispatched: six complete portable X-ray machines,
including electric generators'.
Scientists in the United States were also horrified by the 'improvement' to
the cluster bombs that had made the fragments invisible. The 11 September
1971 issue of the Dutch weekly news magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, which
former editor Maarten van Dullemen has retrieved from his extensive
archives, included the following report headed NOORD AMERIKA ('NORTH
AMERICA'):
'For some time a "Science for Vietnam" movement has been active in the
United States . Much of its research is focused on the most conspicuous
consequences of the American war of destruction . treatment of injuries
caused by cluster bombs. As we now know, one of the latest "improvements" to
this weapon, which breaks up into dozens of tiny bullets that then follow
almost undetectable paths in the body, is that the bullets are now made of
plastic, and so can no longer be seen on X-ray screens. The members of
"Science for Vietnam" are trying to develop injectable substances that cling
to the plastic bullets so that they can be seen on X-ray screens, and to
find out whether they can be made visible with the help of radar or sonar
equipment.'
In the years that followed, numerous action groups and organizations around
the world worked long and hard to get the development, production and use of
cluster bombs banned. In December 2008, representatives of a hundred
countries gathered in Oslo to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions. One
of the signatories was Holland, and other countries have since joined. But
they do not include the main developers, producers and users: China, India,
Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and the United States.
What is now known as the 'Military-Tech Complex', in which the United States
plays a key role, is still working manfully to develop new, 'smart' bombs -
above all by trying to reduce the proportion of unexploded bombs to less
than 1%, for instance with the help of built-in software. For there is a
stubborn determination to keep on using cluster bombs; and even today it is
hard for activists to discover what kind of weapons will be developed, and
how they will be 'improved'. For this they still depend on the commitment
and ingenuity of intelligent young scientists who, just like the students
that developed the portable X-ray machines, are using their knowledge to
help civilians protect themselves against air raids.
