Myth: The domino theory was proved false. (Westmoreland quoting Douglas Pike, a professor at the University of California, Berkley a renowned expert on the Vietnam War) [Westmoreland] This included Tet 68, which was a major military defeat for the VC and NVA. trails, waiting for those things to explode, we had begun to feel more like victims than soldiers. Which made up only about 10% of the total American soldiers in Vietnam. 2.3K2.3K For example, the weather in Vietnam tended to be very hot and humid. 10 Months later, U.S. military leaders abandon the base. They were more educated, affluent, and older than any assembled American fighting force Black and white soldiers tended to band together when they faced danger and the threat of death. "How can you defeat an enemy who knows the land intimately, who has every reason to regard it as his own backyard, and who has fought for decades, even centuries, to rid it of foreign invaders?" It changed Richard, he said, adding that he had found letters in his locker explaining why he needed help to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the draft did tend to target men from working-class homes, there were other factors that led these men to fight in Vietnam in greater numbers than other groups. "Every time we slapped someone around, or trashed a village, or shouted curses from a jeep, we defined ourselves as the enemy and thereby handed more power and legitimacy to the people we had to beat.". Some of these displaced villagers survived by collecting and using the garbage left behind by American forces. As a result, as many as 500,000 U.S. soldiers became addicted to drugs. He also weighed less than 100 pounds, further disqualifying him from serving in the Army. The U.S. military reported 730 fragging incidents between 1969 and 1971, which resulted in 83 officer deaths. Only a third of Vietnam vets were draftees. [VHPA Databases] Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association Databases. You have permission to edit this article. While there are still officially more than 2,200 cases, there now are only 55 incidents of American servicemen who were last seen alive but aren't accounted for. In the jungles, they often had to hack their way through dense vegetation. Ebert, James R. A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam,19651972. . Although he is the subject of a new documentary available on Amazon Prime and iTunes and a soon-to-be-released book, the full story of Capt. The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. Capt. Others grew angry that the South Vietnamese did not seem to appreciate American efforts to save their country from a Communist takeover. Encyclopedia.com. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances you can't help but love. Appy, about two percent of Americans lived in towns with populations smaller than 1,000 in the 1960s. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1986. There, he would either qualify for a deferment (an official delay of military service), or he would be inducted into the armed forces. Some soldiers reacted to their fear, anger, and frustration by treating the villagers very harshly. (The CACF is the basis for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, i.e. Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations. Joe Treen, People.com, 21 April 2000. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. 7,484 women served in Vietnam, of whom 6,250 or 83.5% were nurses. Upon enlisting, soldiers were given a one-time bounty of $31.00 and 160 acres of land, a total later increased by Congress to $124.00 and 320 acres. This atmosphere of fear and distrust caused some men to behave in immoral ways they would never have demonstrated under normal circumstances. It was called "shell shock" and other names in previous wars. Although the percent who died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. After a while, some U.S. soldiers began to feel like the purpose of their endless patrolling was to serve as bait for attacks by enemy forces. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Another problem associated with the decline in morale of U.S. soldiers was increased drug use. For US Soldiers the initial tour was 365 days (one year). In some cases, men who entered the service by enlisting rather than being drafted received better duty assignments. He agreed to cooperate, but said that once we got started, I had to promise to finish the project, Yuzuk said. The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. They are the average height for the men and women in that country. No mythical proportions here lol, the military personnel are derived from the pu I just asked Gunny Google Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. Starr, Paul. DID after the U.S. Congress cut off funding. The final third enlisted because they expected to be drafted soon. Americans were tall because These tiring and unpleasant patrols made up much of an average U.S. combat soldier's experience in Vietnam. There are 23,300 troops in Vietnam. "Vietnam was a place where the elite went as reporters, not as soldiers," reporter David Halberstam noted. Others begged for handouts from passing soldiers. Richard Flaherty (far right) seen with members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He was struck and killed in a hit and run in 2015. But such attitudes began to change as black soldiers faced discrimination in Vietnam. But during the Vietnam War, individual combat soldiers were rotated into and out of the country on a one-year schedule. of fuel, ammunition and other supplies because of a lack of support from He returned to Vietnam in 1969 and stayed there until 1971 when he left the Army. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. "Perhaps the best single image with which to synthesize [combine Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. Today, interviews with vets give WebHow much of an impact does the difference in the average size of soldiers between combatants make in 20th/21st century warfare? The building is the Pittman Apartments, a 10 Sadly, only 200 of the American military dogs returned to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War. The combat patrols rarely found any strong evidence linking the villages to the Viet Cong. The two began meeting more frequently, and Yuzuk became so fascinated with Flahertys story that he asked permission to tell it in the form of a documentary. ", In addition, men from poor families tended to have fewer job options in civilian [non-military] society. Drugs were inexpensive and easy to obtain in Vietnam. A free weekly newsletter with expert sports betting insight and analysis. WebDuring the Vietnam War era, between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military drafted 2.2 million American men out of an eligible pool of 27 million. '", In addition to these physical discomforts, the American troops also experienced constant anxiety and tension in Vietnam. This soldier of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam is equipped with US weapon, uniform, webbing, and radio pack. Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers. was several blocks from the Pittman Apartments. On average there were only about 35,000 combat soldiers in Vietnam, on the average. The U.S. Embassy and its helipad were much larger. The northern section, which was led by a Communist government under Ho Chi Minh, was officially known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, but was usually called North Vietnam. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. The death squads focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and schoolteachers. As of 1967, eighty percent of the American troops had a high school education or less, and only six percent had completed four years of college. https://www.vhpa.org. Some of these men were career military officers. Many American veterans, as well as citizens who had donated their pets, were angry and disgusted at the treatment the military dogs received. In fact, many U.S. combat units measured their progress by how many Vietnamese Communists they had killed. [1996 Information Please Almanac], POW-MIA Issue (unaccounted-for versus missing in action), Politics & People, On Vietnam, Clinton Should Follow a Hero's Advice, "The problem is that those who think the Vietnamese haven't cooperated sufficiently think there is some central repository with answers to all the lingering questions," notes Gen. John Vessey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Reagan and Bush administration's designated representative in MIA negotiations. . Vietnam War Reference Library. Specifically, as it relates to western WebThis oft-repeated fact comes from the 1985 Paul Hardcastle song "19. [Westmoreland] Approximately 70% of those killed were volunteers. "If the war was so important, why didn't our leaders put everyone's son in there, why only us?". When he graduated high school in 1966, the 4-foot-9-inch man was 3 inches under the Army's height requirement. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Two high ranking While his allies came, fought, and left, the ARVN soldier had to live with his Ground troops typically did not enter a sprayed area until four to six weeks after being sprayed. different ideas into one] the physical experience of the American combat soldier in Vietnam would be that of a column of men spaced about five yards apart; burdened with 80-pound packs; wearing thick armored vests called flak jackets; carrying rifles, mortars, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and three or four canteens; and patrolling on foot through jungles, mountains, or rice paddies," Appy writes. By that time, Flaherty had been promoted to captain and awarded two Bronze Stars for bravery and two Purple Hearts for combat wounds, in addition to the Silver Star. During the spring "monsoon" season it would rain nonstop for days at a time. Rev. Most Agent Orange contained .0002 of 1 percent of dioxin. They usually started firefights by ambushing U.S. combat patrols. I made a tangentially related post some time ago but I'll repost it below. Packaging: Original (Unopened) Theme: TV, Movie & Video Games. You secure a village, you search it, and you leave, and the village reverts [goes back] to the enemy. (the herbicide was called "orange" in Vietnam, not Agent Orange. A few years later, we started talking. March 1, 2023, 4:22 PM. Over time, as mines and booby traps killed and injured more American soldiers, U.S. combat patrols grew angry that the villagers did not warn them of nearby dangers. Very few U.S. soldiers came from upper-class families. March 1, 2023, 4:22 PM. As part of 1967's Operation Cook in Quang Ngai Province, PFC Michael Mendoza fires his M16 Rifle to conduct reconnaissance. Caputo, Philip. These studies have concluded that the average U.S. soldier was a 19-year-old man from a poor or working-class family who had not attended college. The domino theory was accurate. Copyright 1995 - 2018 Gary B. Roush, 242 ASHC Muleskinners, May 1968 - May You love your mom and dad, the Vikings, hamburgers on the grill, your pulse, your futureeverything that might be lost or never come to be. The final For example, wealthy young men could afford to remain in college full-timeand even pursue advanced degrees following graduationin order to qualify for student deferments. [The Wall Street Journal] The Wall Street Journal, 1 June 1996 page A15. Soldiers who resented or distrusted their officers sometimes refused to follow orders or even resorted to violence. Maybe she planted it herself.". and money. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture was Vietnamese. "In all the years we've been working on this we have found that's not the case." In the My Lai massacre of 1968, for example, U.S. troops raided a South Vietnamese village and killed between 300 and 400 innocent civilians (see box titled "The My Lai Massacre" in Chapter 12, "Nixon's War (19691970)"). But nothing could be further from the truth. From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499. The hard drugs American soldiers used in Vietnam were much more powerful and addictive than the versions available in the United States. What's the average height and weight of soldiers in different branches of the military? Across different countries? US Marines: Average is 64 tal volunteers. In the early years of the war, some U.S. soldiers expected the South Vietnamese people to greet them as heroes. At the same time, some white soldiers in base camps made racist comments or displayed racially insensitive symbols, like the Confederate flag (the symbol of the slaveholding South during the American Civil War). Updated: 7 February 2018 In comparison, forty-five percent of the generation that reached draft age during the Vietnam War attended college. A large proportion of the U.S. troops consisted of African American men from the inner cities, the sons of immigrants from factory towns, and boys from rural farming communities. [Nixon] No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon. tail number N4 7004, were Bob Caron who lives in Florida and Jack Only two percent of officers in the U.S. armed forces were black, even though blacks made up about fourteen percent of all military personnel during the Vietnam War. Congress while the North Vietnamese were very well supplied by China and the Sometimes they would set out on foot from a U.S. base camp. Bringing the War Home: The American Soldier in Vietnam andAfter. . Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation. WebHow much of an impact does the difference in the average size of soldiers between combatants make in 20th/21st century warfare? Your e-mail address will be used to confirm your account. Web1. Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad: Feb. 26. [Houk] Testimony by Dr. Houk, Oversight on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, 14 July 1988 page 17, Hearing before the Committee on Veterans' Affairs United States Senate one hundredth Congress second session. The constant threat of triggering a hidden explosive caused some soldiers to become paralyzed with fear and indecision. After one tour in Vietnam, Capt. At the height of the war there were approximately 500,000 US Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Coast One of the main U.S. strategies for winning the war was to kill as many Viet Cong and NVA forces as possible. MacPherson, Myra. . He had passed a test few others could. Polner, Murray. Many factors combined to cause American combat troops to lash out violently against Vietnamese civilians. WebBelow are two tables which report the average adult human height by country or geographical region. Meanwhile, Flahertys burial spot, just behind Lisa Davis Annesss grave, remains unmarked as another Veterans Day approaches. As the war dragged on, opposition to it became more widespread and vocal. [VHPA databases]. [1996 Information Please Almanac] 1995 Information Please Almanac Atlas & Yearbook 49th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston & New York 1996, pages 117, 161 and 292. He indicated that while Flahertys survivors had planned on the burial taking place at Arlington National Cemetery, they honored his wish to be buried in West Virginia. The average age of American troops in Vietnam was nineteen, compared to an average age of twenty-six for U.S. soldiers in World War II (193945). 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