The Vietnam War in American Insights

For the captured Vietcong ... there is no equivication. They are firmly set in the honorable tradition of sacrificing one's life for one's country.



THE BATTLES FOR SAIGON. At Tet and again in May, the Vietcong struck Saigon. They aimed at the middle-class districts that were duly destroyed by United States firepower.



THE PROBLEM with "close" air and artillery support is that it can often be too close.



U.S. COMBAT TROOPS ARRIVE, outnumbering the enemy 3 to 1 and possessing the most sophisticated military hardware; the job seemed easy. Earlier, spirits were high among the troops, intoxicated as much by the spectacle of their own strength as by the cold beer delivered to them daily.



RICE is the staple diet. But it is more than food to the Vietnamese – it is their purpose for existing. A symbiosis exists between the society's religious beliefs (its moral values) and its task of growing rice. To a Vietnamese, each meal has some of the significance that eating Communion bread has for a Catholic.



LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP. A Marine introduces a peasant girl to king-sized filter-tips. Of all the U.S. forces in Vietnam, it was the Marines that approached "Civic Action" with gusto.






WATER was the great concern. Some GI's refill their canteens during a monsoon downpour ...



Ten-year-old ARVN, a "little tiger'" feted for killing two "Vietcong women cadre" the day before (his teacher and mother, it was rumored).



Personal hygiene – particularly that of the Vietnamese – was always a matter of great concern to Americans.





WOUNDED VIETCONG ... GI's often show a compassion for the enemy that springs from admiration of their dedication and bravery. This VC had a three-day-old stomach wound. He'd picked up his intestines and put them in an enamel cooking bowl (borrowed from a surprised farmer's wife) and strapped it around his middle. As he was being carried to the headquarters company for interrogation, he indicated he was thirsty. "OK, him VC, him drink dirty water," said the Vietnamese interpreter, pointing to the brown paddy-field. With real anger a GI told him to keep quiet, then mumbled, "Any soldier who can fight for three days with his insides out can drink from my canteen any time!"



GI's recover after narrowly escaping death at the hands of their colleagues who gave them somewhat inaccurate covering fire as they retreated along a ditch from a Vietcong sniper.




BEACHHEAD ASSAULTS took place more often for drunken parties than for attacking the enemy. As the was became more automated, soldiers who remained had more leisure time. By late 1970 the beaches were ablaze with the fires of barbecue grills.

Call girls in Saigon





THE AUTOMATED WAR ... The shape of things to come was predicted by General Westmoreland in 1969: " ... enemy forces will be located, tracked and targeted almost instaneously through the use of data links, computer-assisted intelligence evaluation, and automatic fire control. With first round kill probabilities approaching certainty, and with surveillance devices that can continually track the enemy, the need for large forces to fix the opposition physically will be less important."

General Westmoreland visited Saigon.



BOMB-LADEN PLANES are catapulted off the deck. Intended for emergency use in far-off conflicts, carriers are wasteful of men and machines. The accident rate is high. This one carried two different size planes: the smaller ofetn fell in the sea on take off and the larger crashed on landing.



CAPTURED SUSPECTS. Anyone who was male and between 15 and 50 was automatically assumed to be Vietcong and treated as such. After the traumatic experience of being arrested and then 'interrogated,' any person released would quickly want to join the Vietcong.



MOTHER AND CHILD, shortly before being killed. A unit of the Americal Division operating in Quang Ngai Province six months before My Lai.




If there was a Vietcong sniper around he missed many easy targets, for after the artillery stopped, the GI's stood in exposed groups, utterly dejected, telling each other what awful torture they had planned for the artillery officers back at their camp.



WOUNDED CHILDREN, who, like most civilian victims, had been hit by indiscriminately used U.S. firewpower. The boy below was on his way to church in a 'safe' area when helicopters, firing into some VC positions only 300 yards away, overshot a rocket and wounded him. He died later in the hospital.



AFTER THE FIGHTING WAS OVER, the people were allowed to return to their former homes – or rather what was left of them. The government paid each owner twenty dollars compensation, that is if the owner was still alive.



DISCARDED EQUIPMENT collects in huge stockpiles as the ground war draws to a close. Helmets discarded as too large for Vietnamese.

Source: Blog Tacke