RJ

[Justin]

RJ my father was over there in Vietnam in 68-69. He was in the 25th infantry fighting as an infantryman. Just out of curiousity where were you and what infantry division were you in? My Dad saw quite a bit of action and has some great stories about the war (well not great as in good but very interesting). He managed to get the silver star, the bronze star, the distinguished service cross, and 3 purple hearts during the conflict. Vietnam is a very intersting topic for me to study.

Justin

[RJ]

Justin,

I haven't been on any forums since last weekend, so just saw your note now. My job, plus night school, and other obligations will probably not create any greater access time until next spring.

As for military service, I was drafted around Christmas of 1966. Came home one day and found an envelope sticking out of a melting snowbank in front of my rooming house. Don't know how long it had been there, but do know I'd have been put in jail for failure to show up for induction, if I had not found it. Induction was down by Detroit someplace on January 17, 1967. At a pre-induction physical a couple weeks beforehand, they marched us en mass, naked, through a day long series of exams, inspections, tests etc. It was pretty crude and bizarre. The thing I remembered most now, was the vision exam. Without my glasses, I couldn't even see the chart, let alone the big "E" at top of chart, which meant I was legally blind without glasses. At that level, of vision, worse than 20/200, normally enlistees would have been rejected. However, since the army badly needed recruits to feed their Vietnam human hamburger machine, the medico examining me ignored my 20/400 vision, averted his eyes, and yelled "PASSED!" and sent me on to next station. At the time I didn't know anything about measuring visual acuity, or medicine, or law, like I do now. And I didn't know anythign about minimal vision requirements for soldiers. All I knew was the look on that guy's face when he yelled "PASSED" It had all the earmarks of dishonest. At the time, I didn't know why.

Basic Training was at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri (we called it Fort Lost in the Woods). They put us on a train in Detroit, headed for St Louis. With my last name near the start of the alphabet, I got marched into the train near the head of the troop. We were sent all the way to the far end of the long train. There happened to be about two cars on the tail end, that were Pullman Sleepers. Most of the other cars you had to sit up the whole ride, but a few cars had slightly reclining seats, like on intercity bus lines. I'd never been on a train or bus before in my life. So you can imagine my amazement at having the luck to get a Pullman sleeper with my own private (even tho small) stateroom with it's own recliner, pull down bed, sink, commode, etc. The guy across the aisle from me was a bright and interesting guy. We popped open our half doors and talked and enjoyed nearly the whole trip. He was a farm kid too, but grew up near Orchard Lake area I think, which changed from agriculture to a Detroit suburb after a while. So he'd transformed from farming into sailing and enterteinment. He'd gotten into music with a guitar. He got me going on two part harmony (I'd done a fair amount of choir singing in high school & couple yrs of college), with popular music of the 60's and we had a BLAST!!! Later, at the reception center for almost a week at the Fort, he organized a four some of us 'cruits into a barbershop quartet and he had us using our old, hollow, temporary army barracks as an echo chamber. Man, we had that place ROCKING!! The other 'cruits were all standing around when they could, to listen and bounce and smile that somebody could create something so unexpectedly pleasant in such a dismall circumstance. We got told to shut and go to bed a couple nights, by the people in charge, but these were just temporary personnel facilitators, not hard core army drill staff, so there were no significant bad consequences.

Growing up on the farm provided one big advantage and one big disadvantage for me in basic training. I handled the physical demands fairly easily, while most guys were pretty much gassed out and torn up. But that business about army sergeants yelling all kinds of nonsense, insults, lies and anything they could think of to train us to handle stress, was no fun. I especially hated the way those southern hill billy numbskull sergeants couldn't even get their own orders straight, then blamed the consequences on us recruits and punished us for it. There were many of us who were smarter and better educated than they were, but they lorded it over us like kings, or beasts with their abuse. I could understand the exposure to stress, but I hated the stupidity and impracticality of having to do things the absolute worst way, then getting chewed out for the consequences. Farmers tend to be independent and practical. The army, or at least basic training at that time, was about as close as you can get to the absolute opposite of independence and practical common sense.

At the end of basic, it was traditional for those who graduated, to get their first 3 day pass, before their "orders" required their presence at their next station. Lots of guys went home. A few of us had the misfortune to be assigned to AIT (advanced individual training) at a site just across the post (fort) from the basic training regiments, which AIT unit just happened to be having it's annual inspection by some general. So we did not get any leave time, and were sent immediately to scrub, scrape, paint etc for the big inspection. Partly as a result of the loss of expected first weekend in 3 months to act like my own independent human being, and also due to extra exposure to cold, damp weather, I caught some kind of virus and high fever and wound up in the hospital a couple weeks later. Missed out on practice with bazookas (anti tank 40mm recoilless rifles), heavy machine guns and some other impressive stuff. Anyway, the main topics I was taught in AIT were how to operate and maintain landmovers, bulldozers, roadgraders, front end loaders, trenchdiggers etc. I excelled at that and managed to graduate as one of the top 3 in the class of 80 or so and received the promised promotion to PFC E-3.

After that, we were all sweating our next orders. We knew they were sending a lot of us to Vietnam and the news about casualties and fatalties there was not good.

Except # 2 next weekend, if you're still interested.

[Justin]

RJ I really appreciate the long response you gave and look foward to part two. I have always had a profound interest in Vietnam because how people feel and act in war is something that I just can't get enough of. No matter how much I read I always am interested in more and talking to people with firsthand experiences is probably the best way of getting a feel for real history. Once again I thank you for your time and your great response. I am sadly going to be gone from the forum from June 11- July 1 (about 3 weeks time) to study over seas so I guess last week will be the last time I will be able to get in touch for a little while. I look foward to your next posting.

Justin

[RJ]

Hey, you're going oversease to study?
Where? What subject(s)? Sounds very interesting. I'd like to hear more when you get a chance.

[Justin]

RJ I am going to England to study at Oxford so I will be unable to get in touch with just about anyone for about 3-4 weeks. I will be looking foward to your response though when I get back http://www.shania.net/shaniaforum/smile.gif

Justin

[RJ]

Oxford! Sounds pretty impressive.

You're going up, I'm going down. After post grad degree in past, now just taking a mere SQL class at local community college. It's a little embarrassing to not be able to fully understand the instructor. I think my standards for clear and complete communication may be a little too high, and I get distracted by minor inconsistencies.

[garyphyllis]

i was against the vietnam war- when it was unpopular to be against it. the first gallup poll showed 87% of americans were FOR the vietnam war.

i was a (eugene) mccarthy volunteer, and i worked actively to turn american opinion against the war. i believed it was not in america's interest to be there, that our boys were dying for nothing, and that we could not win it with the military policies johnson was persuing. he was not fighting to win, and had no intention of winning.

turns out i was right.

if you want to know what president johnson really felt about the vietnam war, read his transcribed tapes, now available in the johnson library and now released to the public.

johnson said himself that "vietnam was not worth one american boy dying for, and that we could not win the war". but he also said that if he pulled out of vietnam, that he would be the first american president to lose a war, and could not get re-elected.

sorry, but that is exactly what he said.
the tapes were released 2 years ago, and i heard the tapes , and read the transcripts.

[Londo]

That’s very nice. A history topic. It’s the 19th of September and I just got here to read it. If they create a new edition of a dictionary, I’d like the people in charge to make sure when they get to the word “idiot” they put my picture beneath it. I don’t have a picture right now, but if they do that, I promise to steal a scanner from I don’t know where and send them that picture. I’m unbelievable. I wonder how I remember to eat all. A helicopter could come through the window and I wouldn’t notice. Gary, would you lend me your gun, please? http://www.shania.net/shaniaforum/smile.gif
Are there other topics like this hidden somewhere, too obvious for me to look for? If there are, my nightmare will be complete. http://www.shania.net/shaniaforum/frown.gif

PS: RJ, looks like I’m starting to find some important pieces of the puzzle. http://www.shania.net/shaniaforum/wink.gif

[RJ]

Hey Londo,
I have a picture scanned but I can't get it from bmp, gif, tif, or jpeg into html format. As a computer guy, do you have any tips?

[Justin]

Hey RJ,

I got back about a month or so from Oxford and am back in the US again to study some more at Georgia Tech. Last time I talked to you was when you gave me your story about Vietnam. What have you been up to?

Justin

[Londo]

I didn’t know about the transcripts Gary is talking about, but I’m not surprised at all. It shows from the way the war was handled. The only major advantage that the Americans had in that war was superior aerial power. And they didn’t use the way they should. As for ground combat, the situation was different. Some may tempted to believe that in a face to face jungle confrontation, the Vietnamese were advantaged because they were more suited to those fighting conditions. The records show the casualties on the Vietnamese side were far greater than on the American side. But the problem was the military doctrine applied and the political regimes in the two opposing countries. I think this war proved that in situations like those the communist doctrine is actually superior to the democratic one as far as fighting wars was concerned. Basically the US had a great superiority in the power of their economy, that allowed them to develop over the principle of “quality over quantity”. Vietnam had the contrary policy. Usually in modern war, the first one wins. But there are situations when all the superior technological and tactical advantage is nullified. If in the jungle two platoons met in combat, it wasn’t quite that important that the Americans had the best machineguns and equipment, lives were still lost on both sides. The problem was the attitude towards the loss of life. In America the loss of life is considered by the public opinion to be the most important thing to avoid because the welfare of the individual is something that the state, at least in theory, must ensure, the state having to serve the individual. On the other hand, in the communist army, the soldier is considered as part of a whole, it’s just a peon that can be sacrificed at any moment. So in a battle if for example a communist battalion of 100 men had to take an objective and they did it by sacrificing 95 of them, it was a success. If the Americans had to do something similar and lost 30 men, questions were asked about it. There is also a problem with the motivation. The stalinist methods were effectively used as an extreme methods do induce the full loyalty from the troops, if the deep political indoctrination wasn’t enough. It was the policy of fear, one of the fundaments of the communist society. During WWII the soldiers in the Soviet army that proved non-combative or even deserted were of course executed, but as a method of determining these actions to cease, they were threatened that their families will also be executed or transferred to Siberia. In the battle of Stalingrad, for example, Stalin threatened that any soldier that dares to retreat will be executed and so will his family. So the soldiers had no choice but to fight and die in combat. I have no doubt that these kinds of persuasive methods were used in Vietnam too, at least on some scale.
So if in a battle 10 Americans died for 100 Vietnamese, what theoretically is considered to be a victory, is actually a defeat because the general visions and purposes that the two sides had.
So, since an infantry-fought war was for those reasons and others out of the questions for the Americans, the only way they could win the war was by using the air force, an area where they had a huge superiority and the number of potential casualties was reduced. The key to the whole war was, by my knowledge, the fact that the Americans refused to bomb internal targets in North Vietnam. The official reason for this was that Johnson feared an escalation of the conflict would involve China and the USSR, not only because they were allies (theoretically defensive) of NV, but they also had tens of thousands of personal in NV during the conflict, who were potential casualties of any American bombing. On the other hand the hope was that NV would realize the futility of their actions and eventually go to the negotiation table for a peaceful agreement. So they chose a middle way to approach the conflict, to bomb only the actions of the NVA on SV territory, which was a compromise between military and politics. There were raids in NV, but only on restricted targets and not at all intensive.
I can’t understand how on earth they thought that NV would loose this. Every time the NVA tried something and was defeated, they retired back in NV and the situation was the same as at the beginning, with the exception of many casualties on the American side. It was a no-win situation if they couldn’t take advantage of any win. More than that, there was the Vietcong, which had the sympathy of a large percentage of the south population. The way they acted in the Tet offensive is the perfect example. So if you are NV and you want to conquer SV, you know that you are military superior to SV, you have the support of their a large part of their population, you have infiltrated guerillas all over SV, you know the allies of SV that can really hurt you, like the US, aren’t allowed to come after you in your home and you also have great support from China and USSR, two superpowers, would you give up on your conquering goals? Only a fool would consider that. Or someone with some other interests.
There was a list of some 160 bombardment objectives that was submitted to president Johnson in 1965 when things started to heat up, but was rejected. Approximately the same list was used in 1973 and within weeks NV decided to negotiate. Technically the war was won there. Of course, when the Americans left, NV had nothing to fear and broke the truce.
I think this war was the perfect example that no matter how strong you are, you go to war to win or you don’t go at all. I read a book that described a similar scenario where the Americans would have the same faith in Korea.
It is a funny thing with this balance between powers. The US have defensive alliances with many countries, but in order to defend you must attack your attacker, as the Vietnam war proved. Attacking your attacker would mean he would activate his defensive alliances, and full-scale war would be unleashed. So theoretically there is a good balance, but it actually works better for the communist side. That’s because the respect for the individual in the communist countries is lower, and so they can automatically take more chances since eventual casualties mean less to them, as the Vietnam war also proved.
Now the times have changed. There is only one superpower left. So if the Vietnam war was happening today, we would have seen something similar to Yugoslavia.
So from one point of view, not having a balance of powers is very dangerous, because the superpower can assume the role of “planetary policeman”. On the other hand, if we consider democracy the most advance and fair form of society, having a democratic planetary policeman could make a lot of the weaker nations happy. But the problem is that democracy diminishes itself drastically on the economical plan, the plan where the modern war is being held these days. And when enough people come to realize that, it may be too late to prevent some negative events from happening.