Members of the O.S.S. Deer
Team with Viet Minh leaders, including Ho Chi Minh, (standing third from
left) during training in 1945. Henry Prunier is fourth from right.
By
DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: April 17, 2013
Published: April 17, 2013
Henry A. Prunier taught Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who
withstood the armies of France and the United States, how to throw a
grenade.
John Ferrarone
Mr. Prunier in 2011 with a commendation from Vietnam.
The lesson came in July 1945, after Mr. Prunier and six other Americans
had parachuted into a village 75 miles northwest of Hanoi on a
clandestine mission to teach an elite force of 200 Viet Minh guerrillas
how to use modern American weapons at their jungle camp.
The Americans, members of the Office of Strategic Services, the United States’ intelligence agency in World War II,
wanted the guerrillas’ help in fighting the Japanese, who were
occupying Indochina. The Viet Minh welcomed the American arms in their
struggle for Vietnamese independence.
What’s more, in inviting the Americans to his field headquarters, Ho Chi
Minh, the Viet Minh leader, could receive medical treatment for his
malaria, hepatitis and other ailments. The Americans stayed for two
months, and their care may have saved his life.
Mr. Prunier (pronounced PRUNE-yer), who died last month at 91, was a 23-year-old Army
private at the time, recruited as a translator because of his language
skills. His first assignment was to instruct a diminutive man, known to
the Americans as Mr. Van, in the use of American rifles, machine guns,
bazookas and other arms.
Mr. Van, who wore a white linen suit, black shoes and black fedora, was
actually Mr. Giap, who as a general nine years later would lead North
Vietnamese troops to victory at Dien Bien Phu, forcing France from
Vietnam, and then fight the United States military to a costly
stalemate.
“Giap wanted to know why we lobbed the grenade overhand and what
activated the mortar,” Mr. Prunier said in an interview with The
Worcester Telegram & Gazette in Massachusetts in 2011. “One time he
looked down the barrel of the mortar. I was shocked. His head could have
been blown off.”
Mr. Prunier, whose death, on March 17, was not widely reported at the
time, lived most of his life in Worcester running his family’s masonry
business. He died of congestive heart failure in Beverly, Mass., his
daughter-in-law Gloria Prunier said. He was the last living member of
that Indochina mission.
Though a footnote in American history, the mission has been hailed in
Vietnam as a golden moment of cooperation with the United States. Mr.
Prunier’s Army uniform is displayed in the Vietnam Military Museum in Hanoi, and a Vietnamese film team is preparing a documentary about him, “From Henry Prunier’s Memories.”
“It’s odd,” he said. “I’m a hero over there.”
Henry Arthur Prunier was born in Worcester on Sept. 10, 1921. He
attended Assumption College, also in Worcester, where most classes were
taught in French, but left after three years to enlist in the Army.
Recognizing his linguistic skills, the Army sent him to the University
of California, Berkeley, to study Vietnamese. There, the O.S.S.
approached him and two others for “a voluntary mission into Indochina.”
Told there was a 50 percent chance of survival, all said no.
After Berkeley, Mr. Prunier was sent to a cryptology school and
scheduled to join an infantry division heading for France. But the night
before he was to ship out, he was ordered to go to Washington to join
the O.S.S. and take part in a special operations mission, code-named
Deer Team.
The Americans were supposed to walk 300 miles from China to the
guerrilla base, but the Chinese warned them of a Japanese ambush. So
they parachuted in. It was Mr. Prunier’s first jump. He landed in a rice
paddy; others got hung up in trees.
Met by guerrillas, the Americans were escorted to a bamboo hut, where
they found Ho Chi Minh lying on a mat in a dark corner shaking with a
high fever. He introduced himself as “C.M. Hoo.” The team’s medic
treated him.
As Ho recovered, he engaged in daily discussions with the Americans. The
Viet Minh agreed to gather intelligence, sabotage railroads and rescue
downed American airmen. When Ho learned that Mr. Prunier was from
Massachusetts, he regaled him with tales of visiting Boston.
While the Deer Team was with the Viet Minh, the Japanese surrendered and
the Viet Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation, using language
from the Declaration of Independence. Ho gave his American friends a
message to forward to President Harry S. Truman asking him to support
the Viet Minh against France, which had lost its colonies to Japan
during the war and was fighting to take them back. Mr. Truman never
replied. The United States backed France.
Some historians have said that by rejecting Ho’s overture the United
States squandered an opportunity to build ties with North Vietnam that
might have kept Americans out of war two decades later. The counterview
is that Ho’s Communist ideology would have inevitably made North Vietnam
an enemy by definition.
Mr. Prunier came down somewhere in the middle. “He saw no contradiction
between being a Communist and hoping for a democratic way of life for
his people,” he said of Ho. “In many ways he was naïve.”
Obeying regulations, the O.S.S. men declined, regretfully, Ho’s offer of
pretty Vietnamese women and jungle aphrodisiacs, Mr. Prunier said. But
he did accept a tapestry from Ho and later displayed it in his home.
Mr. Prunier is survived by his wife of 62 years, the former Mariette
Lague; his daughters, Joanne M. Green and Dianne M. Behnke; his sons,
Raymond and Donald; 12 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
In 2011, Mr. Prunier was awarded the Bronze Star for his long-ago exploits. That year, Assumption College granted him the bachelor’s degree he had been unable to finish. (He completed one at the University of Massachusetts after the war.)
In 1995, Mr. Prunier returned to Hanoi for a reunion with some of the
surviving Viet Minh he had helped. Recognizing him, General Giap picked
up an orange and displayed the grenade-lobbing technique Mr. Prunier had
taught him.
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