US Soldiers in Vietnam

US Soldiers in Vietnam – Sources

NOTE: this topic is not included per se in any of the specifications, but it is essential knowledge about the Americans' war in Vietnam, and helps us to understand why the US lost.

Around 2.8 million Americans served in Vietnam. At first, many were volunteers. After 1966, however, most were ‘drafted’ (conscripted). Their average age was 19. Many white and rich Americans managed to avoid the draft – young men at university could delay call-up until they had finished their degree. For this reason, most infantry soldiers in Vietnam were blacks, Hispanics (Spanish Americans) and poor whites. The men served a ‘tour of duty’ lasting just one year.

In total, 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam – about 2% of those who went. Overall, American soldiers had a one in fifty chance of dying, and a one in ten chance of being wounded. But only about 10% of the soldiers ever saw combat, so the chances of a combat soldier of being killed were 20% (one in five), which is high.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic account from Alpha History

Excellent account from Army Heritage Center Foundation

YouTube

A platoon comes under fire

Fighting in the Vietnam War

Training: ‘Kill a gook every day’

American soldiers called the enemy ‘gooks’, ‘dinks’ and ‘slopes’ (from the shape of Vietnamese people’s eyes). They were trained to think of the enemy as animals – it made it easier to kill them.

Source B

The way we were trained was that they were more animal than anything. You just didn’t trust any of them. We were always told that kids or women were just as much your enemy as anybody else. We never trusted any of them. I already hated them before I went over there. Pretty much anything with slanted eyes was the way I was. You always thought they were snakes - sneaky, which they are. Slant-eyed people, you couldn’t trust them.

Vernon Janick, a former US soldier remembering what he thought about the Vietnamese people (1993).

Source C

I am now filled with both respect and hate for the VC and the Vietnamese. Respect because the enemy knows that he can’t stand up to us in a fire fight due to our superior training, equipment and our vast arsenal of weapons. Yet he is able.

I’ve developed hate for the Vietnamese because they come around selling Coke and beer to us and then run back and tell the VC how many we are, where our positions are, and where the leaders position themselves.

‘Mike’ Ransom, a US soldier in South Vietnam, writing to his parents in 1968.

Source D

I could respect the NVA. They put on the uniform and they came at you head-on. I never believed that there was honour between warriors on opposite sides of the battle, but I see that there is. But dealing with the Viet Cong was real hard because they didn’t stand up and fight like men. It was real easy for me to dehumanise the Viet Cong.

Jeff Yushta, a former soldier remembering what he thought about the enemy soldiers (1993).

Combat

General Westmoreland thought that a one-year tour of duty would keep the men’s spirits up. He was wrong. The one-year tour of duty system greatly harmed the American army in Vietnam – by the time a soldier had learned how to survive and fight, he went home.

Of those killed in combat, 43% were killed in the first 3 months of their tour, when they were inexperienced. Only 6% died in the last 3 months (when they were being careful and trying to get home safely).

Platoons were always getting new, inexperienced men. They were called ‘cherries’, and they were disliked and distrusted. Many were new men for friends who had been killed or wounded. Worse than that, they made mistakes which cost lives – often their own, but possibly yours. At the same time, soldiers at the end of their ‘tour’ often wanted to avoid combat and risks; they were not reliable either.

The three most unpopular jobs were:

1. Radio operator,

2. Machine gunner,

3. Walking point (leading the platoon, checking for enemy soldiers and booby traps).

Both the radio and machine gun weighed three times more than a rifle, and these soldiers were always the ones the enemy killed first in an ambush.

Source E

An increasing number of recruits scored so low on the standardised intelligence tests that they would have been excluded from the normal peacetime army. The tour of duty in Vietnam was one year… A rookie army which constantly rotated inexperienced men was pitted against experienced guerrillas on their home ground.

Michael Bilton, Four Hours in My Lai (1992)

Source F

This was the worst battle that this company has experienced. I can't help crying now because I think about the horror of those three days. I was carrying the bodies of wounded and dead onto helicopters.

Yesterday we were rescued from that area by helicopter. I thought they'd never come for us. The area is less than two miles from Cambodia, where VCs have regiments. They ambushed us.

Kenneth Peeples, a letter home to his parents (July 1966)

Source A

A cartoon by Bill Maudlin, who had a son fighting in Vietnam, for the National Catholic Reporter, a US newspaper.

Morale

At the start of the war, morale was good, as many men were volunteers who believed in what they were fighting for. By the end of the war, however, most soldiers were draftees, who hated the war, knew people back home did not support them, and were just counting the days to DEROS (Date Eligible for Return from Overseas).

Many soldiers came to hate their officers, who sometimes tried to get on in the army by scoring high body counts in combat; the soldiers thought they were helping their career by endangering soldiers’ lives. In some platoons, the men refused to take orders, and decided as a group what they were going to do ('working it out'). Sometimes, the men killed their officer (this was called ‘fragging’) – this became quite common; during 1970–1971 about 700 officers were killed by their own men, and overall about 3% of all officers who died in Vietnam were killed by their own troops.

Many soldiers took drugs – cannabis, cocaine and heroin were used during periods of R&R (‘rest and recreation’). ‘Speed’ was used to stay awake during night-time raids, or just to ‘get high’. In 1971 in Vietnam, 5,000 soldiers were treated in army hospital for combat wounds, and 20,000 for drug abuse.

A third indicator of low morale was desertion; in the period 1966–1973 there were 503,926 incidents of desertion and draft-dodging, although some of these were repeat offences.

Source G

You knew the enemy was everywhere. You didn’t know if your next step would be your last because you might tread on a mine or booby trap.

A lot of the time you were searching for the Vietcong’s hiding places, like tunnels and caves. If you were able to find the enemy, then you killed them. This was all a lot harder than it sounds.

When we moved through a village our soldiers would burn down houses, even though they weren’t supposed to.

From an interview with an American soldier who fought in Vietnam, commenting on Search and Destroy missions.

Source H

In the end anybody who was still in that country was the enemy. The same village you'd gone in to give them medical treatment … you could go through that village later and get shot at by a sniper. Go back in and you would not find anybody.

Nobody knew anything. We were trying to work with these people they were basically doing a number on us. You didn't trust them anymore. You didn't trust anybody.

Fred Widmer, a US soldier, speaking in 1969.

Source I

I witnessed much cruelty. American soldiers kicked old men, they beat children. Villagers watched as their wives were sexually assaulted in front of them or their husbands tortured. They could not express their anger and hurt to the American soldiers. They couldn’t even cry. Some soldiers were nice but most were racist. They hated us because we were different in colour and size. Their insults were often directed at us as a race.

From an interview with a South Vietnamese woman, published in 2001, recalling events in 1966 and 1967.

Source J

Over 150 US veterans, many of them highly praised for their service in Vietnam, have testified that they committed war crimes. They have reported the absolute horror of what the USA’s leaders made them do. They have talked of how they had destroyed villages, poisoned food stocks and generally devastated South Vietnam. Most Vietnamese people only wanted to be left alone in peace, without napalm burning their homes.

From evidence given by a former US Navy Lieutenant to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

Source K

Most of the soldiers had never been away from home before they went into service. And they end up in Vietnam going there many of them because they thought they were going to do something courageous on behalf of their country, something which they thought was in the American ideal.

But it didn't mean slaughtering whole villages of women and children. One of my friends, when he told me about it, said: ‘we didn't go there to be Nazis. At least none of the people I knew went there to be Nazis’.

Ronald Ridenhour, a former serviceman who campaigned for a proper investigation of US troops’ behaviour in Vietnam.

Source L

We kill more civilians here per day than VC, either by accident or on purpose and that’s just plain murder. I’m not surprised that there are more VC. We make more VC than we kill by the way these people are treated. I won’t go into detail but some of the things that take place would make you ashamed of good old America.

Ed Austin, a US soldier writing to his parents in 1967.

Source M

You would go out, you would secure a piece of terrain during the daylight hours, but at night you'd surrender that – and I mean literally surrender… you'd give it up, because the helicopters would come in and pick you up at night and fly you back to the security of your base camp.

Lieutenant Col. George Forrest, US Army.

Source N

I remember sitting at this wretched little outpost one day with a couple of my sergeants. We’d been manning this thing for three weeks and running patrols off it. We were grungy and sore with jungle rot and we’d suffered about nine or ten casualties on a recent patrol.

This one sergeant of mine said, ‘You know, Lieutenant, I don’t see how we’re ever going to win this.’ And I said, ‘Well, Sarge, I’m not supposed to say this to you as your officer - but I don’t either.’

So there was this sense that we just couldn’t see what could be done to defeat these people.

Phillip Capurso, a lieutenant in the Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1965-66, speaking in 1997.

The Enemey

For comparison, here is a single quote from an officer in the North Vietnamese Army, remembering in 1996 how he had felt about the war:

Source O

It was our duty to liberate the Southern population that was in misery under the domination of the American imperialists. After a continuous week of this my morale was a lot higher than it was when I left my village.

We had such hatred for the enemy and such devotion to the noble cause of liberating our oppressed people that we felt we could overcome any difficulty and make any sacrifice. We were defending our country and our people and punishing the aggressors.

The point is that we had faith in the cause we were fighting for, and that this faith was reinforced by effective propaganda.

Consider:

1. What are the messages of Source A?

2. Explain why US soldiers hated the enemy.

3. Make a list of problems US soldiers faced in Vietnam.

4. Make a list of all the things undermining the US soldiers' morale.

5. The VietCong and NVA faced the same war as the US soldiers, and many more of them died. Does Source O help you understand why they kept going where US soldiers' morale collapsed? Explain your answer.

AQA-style Questions

iGCSE-style Questions

Edexcel Questions

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