M60
NES Member
Well, one thing is for sure. No one can bullshit you with phony numbers when you're one of guys doing the counting.
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An article for my fellow Vets
- Thread starter Skysoldier
- Start date
Well, one thing is for sure. No one can bullshit you with phony numbers when you're one of guys doing the counting.
TayNinh_66
NES Member
Minh, the greatest propagandist of them all. In 67-68 he was in poor health and maintained a ceremonial role. The actual TET strategy was developed by Gen. Thanh, but he died of a heart attack (according to North Vietnam) and died during a bombing raid (according to US.) Giap was then left to execute the plans. The diversionary attacks at Khe Sanh and on the Border at Dak To were successful in drawing off US troops. Giap then made a major mistake by picking too many targets and not using enough troops. TET was doomed to fail and fail it did to the extent that the Viet Cong were decimated. Giap kept NVA regulars out of it for the most part except for the diversions.
In spite of the military defeat, it was a huge psychological victory and was probably the single event that turned the US population against the war. I can't imagine being a Marine at Khe Sahn or Can Thien with thousands of artillery rounds falling all day long for days at a time. A childhood friend I grew up with was at Khe Sahn. He drove himself into a bridge abutment one night. I put up with a few mortar rounds now and then. Bottle rockets compared to Khe Sahn.
Again, I don't believe much in the way of statistics. The winner gets to write the history and the Vietnamese have a different view.
M60
NES Member
When you talk about stats that pertain to viet cong activity, you refer to southern portions of south Vietnam only. There were no viet cong troops where we were in northern I Corps. North vietnamese troops were the only troops in the northern most area of I Corps. During my time there I never saw one viet cong soldier. Saw plenty of nva though. You mentioned Khe Sahn and Con Thien. Trust me when I tell you that the Rock Pile was no cake walk either. I went to see the wall in DC years ago and while there I met a guy who was promoting the Vietnam Veterans of America organization. He had a board set up with photos on it. I was with a guy from St. Louis. I saw a photo on the board and said holy crap Dave, there's a photo of the Rock Pile. The guy came running over and asked if I recognized the photo that he had taken while he was in country. I said, I guess it's one of those places that you don't forget easily. We all had a quiet moment and a little laugh as well.
By the way, your data is incorrect regarding nva troops being withheld in southern Vietnam battles during TET. A high school friend who joined the Corps with me was wounded at the battle for Huei City. He says that nva troops were pretty plentiful at that battle, along with with a healthy supply of viet cong. Another high school friend who was bayonetted in the same battle confirms that nva troops were there. Both of these guys were with the First Marine Division.
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I say rougher time mainly in relation to now. You guys also had the homefront to deal with... though I imagine as a Marine myself a bunch of civilians talking shit was more or less brushed off, though it seems to me that it was pretty relentless. While the Island Hopping campaign was brutal I understand those who served in Vietnam endured longer periods of sustained combat than much of WWII, though the Island campaigns were definitely rougher than the European theater.
Mike
M60
NES Member
Well , I didn't know there was an issue until I got back home. People that I knew, that were against the conflict, never mentioned anything to me. I did know some guys that were against the conflict mainly because they didn't want to be shot at. Two National Guard friends poked fun at me when I joined the Corps.. They said things like :yup, gung ho, you go get em Marine. In the end, they were both activated, sent to nam, wounded and returned home before I ever even got to nam. Then they had to attend meetings and 2 weeks per summer for years to come. I came home after my enlistment without a scratch and did no reserve time. Go figure. I was at LZ Stud the day the LZ blew up. What a shit show that was. The LZ was a huge staging area for netted supplies to be carried to the different hills in I Corps., via chopper. A chopper sucked up the sleeve / wrapper of a case of C rations into the props. Chopper went down in flames on top of a pallet of C4 and next thing we knew, the LZ continued with a series of explosions for 2 days. Ammo, arty rounds, C4, anything explosive that you can think of all went up during that event. I had gone to LZ Stud to re-up for another tour and had to sign some papers. I was trying to hitch a ride back on a chopper when the SHTF. Glad I didn't get a ride on that chopper. I did get a very tiny piece of shrapnel ( more like a splinter) in my sternum, but it was really tiny, not deep and my fault for not having the flack jacket snapped to begin with. It worked its way out on its own in a few days. Pretty uneventful.
When you say sustained combat, are you referring to length of a firefight , or length of bush time? We did 13 month tours and rotated home. WW11 went on for 4 long years. It is my understanding the guys stayed pretty much for the duration, unless they got wacked or something happened that was cause to be taken out of active duty.
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From what i understand a greater proportion of time in Vietnam was spent in contact by the average grunt. My deployment wasnt shit. We were there for a little over 4 months, was supposed to be 7 but we got caught in the drawdown. Lots of IEDs... virtually no firefights, at least in my platoon. I never even fired my rifle. I will say if it weremt for MRAPs most of our 40+ in our company who survived getting blown up would have been killed.
This is of course a mileage may vary thing. Some friends had it much worse just 20 miles from us. I also have friends who were in phantom fury and from what Im told it may as well have been Hue City.
Mike
Sent from my cell phone with a tiny keyboard and large thumbs...
This is of course a mileage may vary thing. Some friends had it much worse just 20 miles from us. I also have friends who were in phantom fury and from what Im told it may as well have been Hue City.
Mike
Sent from my cell phone with a tiny keyboard and large thumbs...
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M60
NES Member
I don't know Marine. Four months of IED'S, in you face every day sounds pretty crappy to me. In a fire fight, you get to shoot back and in my situation, the M60 spoke loudly against those Ak's. Most of the NVA didn't have much of a stomach for going toe to toe with the M60, with only the AK, but there's no way to compete with IED'S. I met a girl who's job it is to teach returning vets to drive after losing limbs. She said that she cant can't keep up with the demand. She does both classroom and driving instruction with specially equipped vehicles for the VA. Seems to me that you IED exposed guys are getting pounded like crazy. As for time in the bush, yeah, we pretty much spent the tour in the bush. Check with Skysoldier and see if it was same with Army Airborne. I suspect that it was.
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As I said, MRAPs were literally and figuratively a life saver. We got some guys who were pretty concussed, but that was the worst of it (save a few dudes who got shot). From what I understand even the fatal blasts in the MRAPs would rarely penetrate the hull, it would be the shock/concussion that would cause internal injuries. Our sister company had a double amputee, and my buddy in 1/6 up in Sangin had a lot of friends lose limbs.
I do agree that it was maddeningly frustrating having a truck get blown up in the middle of the desert and having nobody there to shoot at. Especially because as grunts, all we wanted to do was shoot stuff. On the plus side, everyone came home.
That said, it was 99% boredom, from what I understand you guys were busy. Also, I'll take desert 10000000X over the cold, mountains or jungle. At least we were dry, and mostly warm. Even in Lejuene there is a good chance a field op means being wet for two weeks, and it's not nearly as hot, buggy, or wet as a real jungle.
Mike
M60
NES Member
We had our hurry up and wait times too. As you can imagine, if on a hilltop, boredom set in quickly. No where to go and nothing to do. To break up the monotony sometimes we rolled little balls of C4. We would lite them and throw them at the heels of another guys boots. Kind of like firecrackers when rolled in very small amounts. Most of the time we were to busy. Never enough sleep. Patrols, ambush, hole watch, checking on the guys on hole watch, making sure no one fell asleep. Overworked and tired usually, but as you know, when you're young, you bounce back quickly with a little rest. Don't underestimate temperature changes in the mountains of nam or monsoon season. Cold , wet and socked in on a mountain top with cloud cover, might well make you wish for the heat, humidity and bug season. Sleeping with your butt on the ground, out in the open, knees up, back to back with another guy, to avoid your head ending up in water after you fell asleep. Poncho's were useless against the monsoons. Ah, the good old days. All in all, I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. You probably feel the same way about your tour of duty. Don't try explaining it to non vets. They'll never get it, but they wonder why many vets don't talk about their overseas duty.
My main reason for not talking about it is because frankly I feel a lot of people "aren't worthy" if that makes sense. "**** you, you didn't sign up, why should you get to hear about it" attitude.
The weather was definitely better in Helmand. I've done my time being soaked/cold and I'm all set. I'm thinking of rejoining my old reserve unit because I miss it, but them now being a "cold weather unit" makes me nervous. I would happily do tons of training in the desert... but I'm not excited about snow shoeing, carrying around a bunch of extra gear, feeling like a marshmellow, etc.
Vietnam is somewhat infamous for booby traps, did that not come along until later in the war, much the way IEDs were absent the beginning of the war?
A kid in another platoon made a brief compilation vid from our deployment. Notice the lack of shooting and plethora of explosions. Most of those are controlled detonations of things that we found, but same idea when the trucks run over it. I think there are a couple of pictures of vehicles that hit them in therehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx1xMO-mrHw
We did have one platoon get ambushed but everyone hit (minus one of our bomb dogs) ended up making a full recovery. Again, for me, it was slow. I didn't even get a CAR out of the thing.
Mike
The weather was definitely better in Helmand. I've done my time being soaked/cold and I'm all set. I'm thinking of rejoining my old reserve unit because I miss it, but them now being a "cold weather unit" makes me nervous. I would happily do tons of training in the desert... but I'm not excited about snow shoeing, carrying around a bunch of extra gear, feeling like a marshmellow, etc.
Vietnam is somewhat infamous for booby traps, did that not come along until later in the war, much the way IEDs were absent the beginning of the war?
A kid in another platoon made a brief compilation vid from our deployment. Notice the lack of shooting and plethora of explosions. Most of those are controlled detonations of things that we found, but same idea when the trucks run over it. I think there are a couple of pictures of vehicles that hit them in therehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx1xMO-mrHw
We did have one platoon get ambushed but everyone hit (minus one of our bomb dogs) ended up making a full recovery. Again, for me, it was slow. I didn't even get a CAR out of the thing.
Mike
TayNinh_66
NES Member
the memories are never far away. Never enough sleep. When the LT called a break to check maps or whatever I would be asleep in 10 sec. On rocks, roots, puddle of water, didn't matter. At night we were on perimeter watch (Army talk for hole watch. We didn't dig holes) and depending upon your time slot you might get a max of 3/4 hours of uninterrupted sleep unless some clown started firing off flares or shooting at noises. Could not see a hand in front of your face many nights so listening became your primary sense. Your eyes would convince you that the trees and fallen logs were moving.
Monsoon season was miserable. Cold as hell, wet wet wet. Walking in the pouring torrential rain. Sleeping in the pouring torrential rain. Eating in the pouring torrential rain. It sucked. Rain pouring off the hood of the poncho right into the can of cold congealed ham and lima beans. You couldn't sit because there was always an inch of water of the ground. Squat or sit on the helmet. After my tour I swear the back of my thighs were flat from squatting so much. Day after day. Relentless. Did I say it sucked.
I'm glad I served. No regrets. It was a life changing event for all of us. Peace to everyone who didn't make it.
M60
NES Member
LMAO. Nam 101, NEVER EAT THE HAM AND MUTHAS. I haven't thought about the stationary things that run around at night for a long time. They never moved from left to right. Only forward and backward. Surprised you had a LT.. All of the time, or only when they needed bush time on their record?
Did all your officers suck back then?
I've only had good experiences with officers as have the vast majority of my friends from varying units. Bad officers, at least now, seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Mike
I've only had good experiences with officers as have the vast majority of my friends from varying units. Bad officers, at least now, seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Mike
TayNinh_66
NES Member
Hated Ham and Limas but if you were hungry enough...
Always had an LT although life expectancy wasn't very high, "Follow Me". They were either OCS or ROTC. OCS were mostly idiots with an attitude. ROTC were usually smart and listened to the NCO's before doing anything stupid. I was on a demo team for most of my tour and was fortunate to have a good LT who always listened, made good decisions, and we all kept our fingers and toes. He was basically a draftee like most soldiers and was not interested in getting himself killed. Line platoons were always out in front of us so they always made contact first. We did have to pull our share of patrols but he wasn't the gung ho type.
We were up on the Tuy Hoa area TDY'd to the 101st and got stuck with a patrol in searing heat. Went out, cleared the area, headed back, but didn't want to get back too early and get stuck with a night patrol. A sergeant had a grease gun that he acquired in some black market deal and a few boxes of 45 ball, so we sat around for an hour blasting coconuts out of the trees with the gun on full auto. LT took his turn.
Had a hillbilly with us who decided his grenades weighed too much so he destroyed some previously destroyed bunkers. Nobody seemed to mind including the LT because this was the same hillbilly who dropped a grenade in the back of a deuce and a half we were riding in. It fell off his ammo pouch. I refused to allow him to walk behind me.
M60
NES Member
Nah. All of the Lt.'s didn't suck, but I never saw one that could call in ARTY worth a damn. We told them that they weren't allowed to call in ARTY and it wouldn't be a good idea to piss off everyone on the hill. They were fine with it. Some of them were going to be good officers if they lasted that long.
dustoff22
NES Member
I was in Vietnam from Jul 67 through Jul 68. Mention of the Monsoon season brings back a lot of bad memories, particularly because flying in that crap was downright nasty and back then we went hell or high water. We didn't have the luxury of GPS or even radar navigation more than a few miles away from Saigon where "Paris Control" was located. It was time, distance, and heading while trying to figure out the extent of the winds and hoping that we could pick up the FM frequency to home to. The only good thing about Monsoon season was that Charlie and the NVA were usually hunkered down and couldn't see well enough to figure out where we were.
Speaking of LT's.........we had occasion to pick up wounded LT's with suspicious wounds. Couldn't be sure but there were rumors that 'fraggings' did occur now and again. I guess they were more rumors.
TET '68 was devastating for our company. We had 24 UH-1 Hueys when we left Fort Bragg and by the time TET came we were down to less than 20. During TET we lost so many aircraft to hostile fire that we had to borrow 'slicks' from lift companies in order to do our mission. When I left in July of '68 we were just getting back to near strength both crew-wise and aircraft-wise. It was unquestionably a most crazy period of time.
Like most, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It helped a great deal being young and naive.
Speaking of LT's.........we had occasion to pick up wounded LT's with suspicious wounds. Couldn't be sure but there were rumors that 'fraggings' did occur now and again. I guess they were more rumors.
TET '68 was devastating for our company. We had 24 UH-1 Hueys when we left Fort Bragg and by the time TET came we were down to less than 20. During TET we lost so many aircraft to hostile fire that we had to borrow 'slicks' from lift companies in order to do our mission. When I left in July of '68 we were just getting back to near strength both crew-wise and aircraft-wise. It was unquestionably a most crazy period of time.
Like most, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It helped a great deal being young and naive.
