The Vietnam War – 42 years Ago

I been there and done that and I know what the procedure was for calling in a air strike. Since it was a village, it wasn't a free fire zone but a restricted fire zone and all fire support larger than a 60 mm mortar had to be cleared by the RVN government in Saigon. It was the RVN government who issued the rules of engagement for the U.S. military not the U.S. military.

The American liberal lie of the napalming of Trang Bang is just like the lie about having to destroy the village to save it, just another left wing lie to help North Vietnam to win the war on the streets of America.

 

Are you saying that because the napalming of Trang Bang might have been a lie that napalm was never used on civilians and villages during the entire course of that war? Are you also saying that My Lai was a liberal lie?

 

But Trang Bang was never napalmed.

The U.S. military had no control over who the South Vietnamese bombed or killed.

Why do you think that the RVN didn't prosecute Lt. Calley for killings of VC villagers at My Lai ? Could it be that the RVN government approved and if it were ARVAN troops they would have done the same ?

My Lai was VC. Lt. Calley orders were to kill the VC. In Vietnam even a ten year old girl would walk up to an American soldier and pull the pen on a grenade. No different today with female Islamist bombers in the Middle East today.

Don't know if you were ever "in-country" during the Vietnam War. But back then the vast majority of Americans supported Lt. Calley. Probably because the majority of adults back then served during WW ll and understand war better than those who didn't serve.

Lt. Calley carried out an unlawful order, that was the crime.

 

I think Calley was a victim, but my point is that we brutalized, or allowed to be brutalized, a whole lot of people. It puts the things ISIS is doing into an alternate perspective.

 

Exactly who were these people who were brutalized by the Americans ? The Vietcong ?

Who were the VC ? Terrorist in the beginning just like how most people's liberation armies started out as under the label of socialism./communism. Like the African National Council (ANC) during the 1980's in South Africa. Black South African socialist murdering other black South Africans.

The VC targeted the South Vietnamese civilian population and government officials. It wouldn't be until 1961 that the VC would grow a pair and actually engage ARVAN troops in actual combat. The NVA didn't enter the fight in the RVN until 1965.

The VC (National Liberation Front) were South Vietnamese civilians, rebels, traitors, bandits, criminals under the RVN laws.

VC Maine Force wore uniforms and were well equipped. They were organized into regiments able to conduct regimental size combat missions.

VC Regional Force, organized in to regiments and battalion size units. These were the bad dudes who committed most of the atrocities against South Vietnamese civilians. They were also the VC tax collectors. Does not matter where you live in the world, no body likes the tax man.

Then you had the VC guerrillas. These were the black pajama clad VC who were farmers or shop keepers during the day time and soldiers at night.

The NVA (Peoples Army of Vietnam/PAVN) were the North Vietnamese army. Well armed, well trained, well supplied. They were organized into divisions and had artillery and up in l Corps even tanks.

Rules of Engagement:

LBJ drew up the ROE for the air war over North Vietnam.

The government of the RVN in Saigon wrote the ROE that American troops had to follow in South Vietnam. The U.S. military didn't write the ROE that were enforced in the RVN.

American troops had to obey all of the laws of the RVN including traffic laws.

In the My Lai incident, there was no war crime committed. Under RVN laws, murder charges could have been filed by the RVN government but they weren't because the My Lai village that actually consisted of a number of hamlets were VC. The RVN government approved of what took place at My Lai.

Now if My Lai were have been inside North Vietnam, it would have been a war crime.

Lt. Calley followed an unlawful order and Lt. Calley issued an unlawful order to those soldiers under his command. The vast majority of the Vietnam vets, Korean war vets and the WW ll vets who made up the majority of the male population in America during the era believed that the officer who originally issued the unlawful order should have been held responsible not Lt. Calley.

Most Americans who were never in-country have been indoctrinated by liberals and the Hollywood left that a "free fire zone" meant you could shoot at anyone or any thing. Just left wing propaganda at the time. Some still believe it.

You had free fire zones and restrictive fire zones. It all had to do with fire support missions. In a restrictive fire zone, any fire support using any weapon larger than a 60 mm mortar, you had to get permission from the South Vietnamese government back in Saigon. When I was in-country any concrete, or block building was a restrictive target. So were rubber plantations, pogodas, bridges, most towns and any villages or hamlets that weren't VC.

Those who were there remember all of SAT-COM microwave relay stations on hills and mountain tops from Thailand through all of South Vietnam into Laos. These micro-wave relay stations was how an American rifle platoon when requesting an artillery, CAS or NGF support mission that wasn't in a free fire zone had to get authorization from the RVN government in Saigon via MACV. It was time consuming some times taking up to 30 minutes. The American soldier had one arm tied behind his back fighting that war.

 

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

You know as well as I do (maybe better) that the RVN government has no bearing on the UCMJ. Who cares what the RVN government approved?

 

It's just how we roll. Goofball Ivy League term paper theories, like the one about falling dominos, shape our policies. If you get an "A" on that term paper, you get to be Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State.

 

you nailed it.

 

So all the reading I've been doing all these years is a lie? Tell me,, do you have some kind of inside information? What really happened?

 

It's very likely you been reading a lot of bull (*)(*)(*)(*) over the years.

The only inside information I have, been there and done that.

But I also watch for the CIA dumps that are made every once in awhile.

What really happened ? Some young know it all who surrounded himself with all of his Harvard buddies better known as the "young and brightest" failed to take the advice of their elders, those who were older and been there and done that and got us involved in a shooting war that we should have never got involved in.

That those who sent young Americans into combat would back stab them while they were still on the battlefield.

 

Links than Trang Bang wasn't napalmed..

 

I already did on post #101. -> http://www.warbirdforum.com/vphoto.htm

CPUSA and it's slpinter groups like the SDS and the terrorist organizations like the Weathermen/Weather Underground would always come out with lies to provide aid and comfort to the enemy (North Vietnam) to keep the anti war movement motivated on the streets of America.

The agenda of the political left in America wasn't to end the war in South East Asia but to make sure that the United States didn't win the war in South East Asia.

Like when John Kerry accused me and a few million other Vietnam vets of atrocities that 99.9 % of us never committed. Kerry aided the North Vietnamese government by back stabbing the American soldier in the back while they were still on the battlefields of South Vietnam. It's why Kerry was defeated in 2004 when he ran for President. He didn't get the military vote, the Vietnam veteran's vote or the American veterans vote. But then again neither did Clinton, Gore or Obama.
< http://www.wintersoldier.com/index.php?topic=Testimony >

 

You haven't read the article carefully. From the link,

http://www.warbirdforum.com/vphoto.htm


"Fact: American or South Vietnamese forces never used Nerve gas. The canisters dropped by the VNAF fighter that injured Kim and her countrymen were napalm, a type of jellied gasoline bomb that was developed by our British allies in WWII, to knock out enemy troops in trenches and fortifications."

 

Did I or anyone else on this thread mentioned nerve gas or denied that napalm was dropped that day ? No.

The facts are, the village wasn't napalmed but from where the reporter stood it may have looked like it was.

For example, Oliver Stone's "Platoon" is based upon his own experiences while doing a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1967. By the time he wrote the play script for "Platoon" his mind was pretty much fried from drugs and he had spent way to much time around the Hollywood left.

Towards the end of the movie during the firefight scene Oliver Stone shows the company CO calling in a CAS mission on the company's position. Everyone who served in Stones company says it never happened. Stones company CO said that from where Stone was during that firefight, it looked like the company's position was being bombed but it wasn't.

In combat you see a lot that isn't really what your seeing.

Stones CO along with members of the company who Stone served in said there was no drug use in the unit. Which makes sense, grunts didn't get stoned in 1967 while in-country, it's just another liberal Hollywood lie.

Don't get me wrong, Oliver Stone was a damn good soldier when he served in Vietnam, I wouldn't have had any problem with Stone watching my six. But after his tour of duty he started using to many hard drugs and basically fried his brain and associating with Hollywood liberals just made it worse.

 

Did you or did you not state this in post #103?

What's so horrific about the Kim Phuc incident is the Vietnamese pilot dropped napalm on friendly forces and civilians. The North Vietnamese also used the image of Kim Phuc as propaganda, stating the South Vietnamese kill their own children (or words to that effect).

 

It's a factual statement, the vill wasn't bombed, the outskirts of the vill was bombed.

Of all if the ordnance's that can be used in a "danger close" CAS mission with the least chance of "fraticide" (friendly fire casualties) is napalm. Napalm can be used with in 115 meters of protected friendly troops and 250 meters with in unprotected troops in the open. The next bomb would be the CBU cluster bomb, it can be used with in 250 meters of friendly troops that are in the open. Then the Mk-82 low drag 500 lb. bomb, 700 yards with in unprotected friendly troops.

 

I think what happened in Vietnam, a lot of what is printed is slanted towards the anti war side as they were the ones in college at the time with the deferments from the draft. They became the professors and to a certain extent the writers of history. The perspective of the soldier or participant is mainly lost to history unless one goes to the Vietnam Archives of Texas Tech or like archives to view and hear the history of Vietnam from their own lips and writings

I'll not defend the atrocities committed by the soldiers of the U.S. other then pointing out the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong committed at least ten times the amount and probably more. Those get lost to history. When the NVA and VC captured Hua they killed over 30,000 South Vietnamese citizens during their time they occupied Hua. We know because we dug up their graves, mass killings by the North. But that is lost and forgotten because we remember Mai Lai and Calley and the killing of 100 Vietnamese Villagers.

30,000 vs. 100, really no comparison. But Hua and the NVA and VC atrocities are ignored or totally forgotten when Vietnam comes up. The amount of village chiefs, school teachers, government employees targeted for assassination and killed by the North is also ignored. We are turned into the bad guys with black hats and even our own history places the white hats on the north.

But each of us have our own perspectives and each is colored by what we want to believe and what has been told to us and written. Perhaps there is no truth, just millions of different perspectives. The ones who served in Vietnam, Southeast Asia has a whole have their own perspective of the war and each one has his own and a story to tell.

Then there is the perspective of those who never served, who wanted that war to be remembered as evil. One can not change that perspective and I will not try. I was too close to it. Spent too many years of my life there. I will only say from my own view of things is the truth of what really happened and the reasons why have been bent, spindled, mutilated that it will never be know today or even taught or written. Too much of it is from a purely political and ideological perspective to prove one side or the other was right.

 

Well, about Vietnam war I have always wondered why US felt the need to substitute France in Indochina. Why?

The obvious answer is "to stop Communism".

A part that in 1975 with the fall of Saigon history told Washington that there was no way to stop Communism in Indochina, what makes Vietnam war more useless is that Vietnam has joined Western economy become an embedded producer for our markets. They won the war, but they sold out the country to Western corporations.

So why that war? It was enough to wait that US and EU corporations bought Vietnam [like it has happened in the following decades].

 

Why the war? I think one has to put it into the context of the times it happened. The fears of the times and the events that happened prior to our massive involvement. Perhaps a change in leadership. Now this is from my perspective as one who lived through it, not from a history book and as I stated before, each individual has their own perspective. But always remember, to understand Vietnam one must understand the context of the times it happened and put all events into that context. Not from 20/20 hindsight or the context of the 21st century.

Vietnam had its beginnings in WWII. FDR was a strong anti-colonialist and had he lived, the chances are the French would never have been allowed back in. FDR also had many an argument with Churchill over British India. Truman replaced FDR, the USSR took over all of Eastern Europe and to combat this Truman came up with NATO to be a counterweight to the USSR. Truman wanted France in NATO.

The British over saw half of Vietnam and the Nationalist Chinese the other half after WWII. It was the British another colonial power who first let the French back into Vietnam followed by the Nationalist Chinese. Truman went along with it as he paid attention to Europe and not Asia much at all with one thought in mind, get France into NATO.

Then Korea happened. North Korea invaded South Korea, we became involved and when it looked like we would unite both the North and South under the banner of freedom, the Chinese sent in 3 million troops to back the North Koreans and later we had the armistice which left Korea divided. Ho Chi Minh which helped us working with the OSS during WWII recovering some of our downed pilots and fighting the Japanese became France&#8217;s enemy as he formed the Viet Minh. In 1954 France was defeated and the 1954 Geneva Accords divided Vietnam in half, giving the north to Ho and his Viet Minh Communist and the South to be govern by Emperor Bo Dai with Diem as Prime Minister.

In 1956 there was supposed to be a vote per the Geneva Accords of 1954 to see whether all of Vietnam would be ruled by Ho from the north or by Emperor Bo Dai and Diem from the south. Since the north had more people and Ho and his communist had taken over the north and began ruling it with an Iron Fist, Bo Dai and Diem knew they would lose. So instead Diem held a referendum of the people of the South to determine whether they wanted to unite with the north or become a separate country. Becoming a separate country won. It was at that point Ho Chi Minh decided to take back the south by force. The second Indochina War had its beginnings here.

All of this is important to understand, to the west the North&#8217;s invasion of the South had all the look as Korea had before it. Communist expansion by force of arms. To Ho Chi Minh, he viewed it as the west and South Vietnam not living up to the Geneva Convention. The west had just seen the USSR and communism take over all of East Europe, the west had saw Mao and the communist takeover China, they had just saw the armed invasion of Korea by the communist, so Vietnam fell into that line or pattern of communist aggression. The taking over of other nations by force.

This is the context of how the seeds were planted for the Vietnam War. Eisenhower kept us out of Vietnam militarily twice. When he left office we only 800 or so advisors in South Vietnam. I do not think IKE would have gotten us involved in Vietnam the way JFK and then LBJ did. But Eisenhower was worried and heavily involved in Laos, not Vietnam. Laos was the key to Southeast Asia IKE told JFK, JFK ignored him. JFK choose to make our stand in Vietnam.

But I will stop here, you now have the context as best as I can explain without writing a book. The fear of further communist expansion by force was very real. It had happened in Eastern Europe, in China, it was tried in Korea and now, it looked like it would happen again in Vietnam and perhaps all of Southeast Asia. Remember the British were fighting a communist insurgency in Malaysia at this same time. The British won that one.

The thing here is if FDR had lived, the chances are the French would not have been allowed back into Indochina. Vietnam would have become communist, but Laos and Cambodia would have remained free under their Royal governments. My opinion. If Eisenhower hadn&#8217;t been limited to two terms, chances are he wouldn&#8217;t have gotten heavily involved in Vietnam even with all the above happening. He had vowed having seen the carnage of Korea to never get into a land war in Asia again. He probably would have let Ho Chi Minh take the south, while standing firm on Laos to keep Laos and Cambodia in the western sphere. The difference as IKE viewed the two countries, Vietnam was a war between Vietnamese, Laos was a war of the Royal Laotians against the North Vietnamese. Laos was being invaded by another country, whereas Vietnam was more internal. More to it than this and again this is but one man&#8217;s opinion.

If you are really interested I will continue, if not, you have the context of our involvement. Changes in leadership had a lot to do with us getting involved in Vietnam.

 

Interesting, I think that there are a couple of historical details to put in this scenario:

Chiang Kai-shek made a good attempt to find an agreement Between Ho Chi Minh and France [the Chinese power refused the US proposal to control Indochina in late 1945]. China wanted France back, after that a great number of Chinese soldiers entered the area to disarm Japanese forces.

It's important to underline that Chiang took advantage from this period improving the Chinese relationship with the Vietnam section of the Kuomintang. In the meanwhile China asked to France to renounce to extraterritorial privileges, but Paris refused. As counterweight Beijing offered to accept the French presence in Vietnam.

Ho Chin Minh reacted in a diplomatic way to the return of the French forces. He wrote letters to all [Truman, Byrnes ...], but he obtained nothing. The last contact was in Paris, with Abbot, in US embassy.

United States didn't answer ...

So the two points to underline are:

* China didn't want to be involved in Vietnam, preferring a solution between Ho Chi Minh and France, even accepting the French presence in Vietnam.

* Ho Chi Minh looked for the American aid, but US substantially ignored him.

 

Yeah, if I remember right Ho Chi Ming went to Washington to talk to Truman, but Truman refused to see him. Truman wanted France in NATO and he didn't care one iota about Vietnam or Ho. At least that is what I remember. There were a lot of twists and turns and what may have beens or what ifs. I suppose there always are.

People reacted the way they did back then to the real fear of communist expansion. This is lost on most people these days. Then you had the erecting of the Berlin Wall during JFK tenure which heighten tensions and increased fears as the USSR tighten their grip on East Germany and eastern Europe as a whole. Throw in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the west was willing to jump at about anything that looked like communist expansion.

I suppose after all of went before, JFK figured he had to make a stance and he chose Vietnam. Hindsight probably shows if we in the west had let Ho Chi Minh unite Vietnam, he most likely would have let Laos and Cambodia alone.But that knowledge was not available back then. One can only act or react on what one knows at the time. Not 50 years latter. For me context is all important.

I also think when Nixon meet Mao he told Nixon then that China would not become militarily involved in Vietnam. In other words China would not send troops to fight there although they had a ton of advisors in Hanoi and a bunch more in Laos. This fear of another Korea, having to fight millions and millions of Chinese soldiers is I think, the main reason we never sent troops into North Vietnam to conquer territory like we did to Germany in WWII.

 

Bump...
I tend to agree.
In my RVN experience, so called 'pacified' areas were never really pacified. We always had to sweep the local roads for mines, booby traps every day. The 'pacified' areas were 'peaceful' in the daytime but controlled by the VC at night. The 'locals' were (unfortunately) mainly under the control of the VC/NVA who infiltrated into the area threatening the locals with 'death' if they didn't cooperate with the 'communist united front.' This was our challenge (thus, our nightly ambush patrols).

We conducted many successful ambushes at night in so-called 'pacified' areas near our fortified base.

I can remember one night in particular where we set up an ambush site near a village (we were in the village garden). Needless to say, the villagers were active that night until they were ready to retire for the evening.

My next in command 'buck Sgt.' saw them 'moving' and asked me to call in 'mortar fire.' BS...I was in charge of the patrol and saw no indication of the enemy...only innocent villagers. I refused his request.

I've always thought that this 'decision making' is always the difference between 'atrocity' and 'war making.'

Just because a (civilian) 'village' supports the VC/NVA (Lt. Calley) doesn't mean that they should be subject to 'elimination' IMO. I'm no 'supporter' of Lt. Calley. Geezus, if that was the case (RVN village support of the VC), we would have qualified for 'mass murder'). If you don't want to call it 'murder' it would have been mass slaughter...there was so much of it.

SFC...2nd/14th Inf. Div. 25th Inf. Div. (Inf. Platoon Sgt.)

 

It's not hard for me to believe. Considering what we learned when Daniel Ellsberg gave us the Pentagon Papers, I'm not surprised at any lie the government tells.

Having done my year there, it took only a short time in country to understand that pretty much everything I had been told was fiction.

 

Please explain the "fake incident you're referring to.

Ike sent advisers to Indochina during his term. JFK was responsible for the Green Berets, their clear purpose was to increase the role of advisers in 'Nam.

 

I did not use the term "fake incident, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Yes, Ike started it all and JFK followed suit, and Robert MacNamara's "Fog of War" was very good.