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Post by jerryfmcompushaft on Jun 24, 2013 22:38:51 GMT -5
Not only did you not know where they were, most of the time you didn't even know WHO they were. And this was as true in Saigon as it was in Cu Chi. There were no front lines in Vietnam.....
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Post by dontom on Jun 25, 2013 8:11:13 GMT -5
A friend once asked me what was the hardest part that I experienced in Vietnam my answer was and Don might agree that going out every morning hunting down an enemy that you were not quite sure where they were but they knew where you were and they were waiting for you . Many times I found the living conditions to be the worse part, such as all the mud everywhere during some times of the year. That we had to deal with a lot more than combat.
-Don- SF, CA
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Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2013 12:31:20 GMT -5
Jerry when my unit arrived in VN a 1st LT gave us a indoctrination class with map in hand he pointed out the area we controlled which boiled down to the ground we were standing on at any given moment .
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Post by jerryfmcompushaft on Jun 25, 2013 13:26:53 GMT -5
Jerry when my unit arrived in VN a 1st LT gave us a indoctrination class with map in hand he pointed out the area we controlled which boiled down to the ground we were standing on at any given moment . And you controlled only that which you could see and only while you were awake. And some of that even was not under your complete control -- after one attack on Tan Son Nhut, they found one of the BX barbers in the wire.... Sucker had shaved me that same week....
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Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2013 20:26:13 GMT -5
Elan' , The American effort peaked during tet everybody was on the up and the move American units had their blood up and were bleeding also , thousands of Americans lost their lives during this offense but they were willing to move on because it was worth a win and they got their win but in the end the toll was too much , too too much , if our allies the S.Vietnamese had done their part might have been different a lot of ifs , it was a PHYRRIC VICTORY .
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Post by Swampy on Jun 25, 2013 22:45:32 GMT -5
Tet was NOT supposed to be a pyrrhic victory; the VC was destroyed, and the NVA given a good beating. Furthermore, the enemies atrocities at Hue galvanized the population, so there would be no further support for the communists.
But this victory was turned into a propaganda defeat by Walter Cronkite and the liberal press, so a tragedy would develop a few years later, when Saigon fell.
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Post by Sir John on Jun 26, 2013 0:11:07 GMT -5
King Pyrrus won an over expensive victory.
The US won, but the victory was stolen from them.
SJ
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Post by mcnoch on Jun 26, 2013 0:15:24 GMT -5
Tet was NOT supposed to be a pyrrhic victory; the VC was destroyed, and the NVA given a good beating. Furthermore, the enemies atrocities at Hue galvanized the population, so there would be no further support for the communists. But this victory was turned into a propaganda defeat by Walter Cronkite and the liberal press, so a tragedy would develop a few years later, when Saigon fell. There was a victory in this Ted related battles/campaigns, but the NVA needed only about six months to be back in strength. So it was just a battle that was won, not the war. On the political front the battle was lost as it revealed that all those convenient statements were wrong.
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Post by Swampy on Jun 26, 2013 0:48:31 GMT -5
The NVA didn't do anything until 1972, because they couldn't. And the South Vietnamese counterattacks in 1970 and Lam Son 719 had some successes.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2013 8:32:41 GMT -5
Vietnam was a never ending nightmare , life was lived by the Nano second , but other than that not so bad .
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Post by Deleted on Jul 3, 2013 21:35:44 GMT -5
Decades ago a friend asked me how I felt being out of Vietnam I said I feel happy he looked at me as if there was more to say there was no more , HAPPY covered it all .
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2013 18:00:34 GMT -5
Guys Comrades are always looking to drop a nick name on some unfortunate , a Friend took a minor wound to the head , you guessed it his nick name was " lead head " .
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Post by Sir John on Jul 12, 2013 18:14:46 GMT -5
MS,
"Vietnam was a never ending nightmare , life was lived by the Nano second , but other than that not so bad ."
Was 12 months service in VN any tougher than 4+ years in the desert, and the jungles of New Guinea or the Pacific Islands? Most of those men had no idea when they would see their family again, and some even passed close to their home town on their way to jungle training and later service in the North.
In fact I would bet that some actually passed THROUGH their home town on the journey. No day on the calendar circled in red for them.
SJ
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2013 19:57:15 GMT -5
SJ , Can't say which or what would been tougher , there was a survey done in the '70s to make comparison on who had it worst the survey done by the VFW said the average grunt in WWII spent between 90-120 days in combat , about the same in Korea in Vietnam the average grunt spent 315 days in Combat , many reasons for this I think in WWII they had the soldier for the duration and they had millions of soldiers , in Korea there was a scope and a goal , in Vietnam there was no scope and goal the nearest fight might be just up the trail plus they only had this soldier for 365 days and they got as much out of him as they could . so its in the eyes of the beholder .
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Post by Sir John on Jul 12, 2013 20:21:14 GMT -5
Agree on most of that, but I dispute the 90-120 days.
My FIL spent almost 8 months in the Siege, and another 3 weeks at Milne Bay until he got malaria. His Unit stayed in New Guinea from late 1942 until well into 1945, and only finished the landing at Balikpapan (another stupid MacArthur idea) a couple of weeks before Hiroshima.
I think the average American soldier did have it easier though. The 1st Marine Div came to Melbourne after Guadalcanal and spent quite a few months on R & R.
What was to become the Gold Coast (Qld) in the 1950s, was first a beach side R & R camp for Officers and ORs, separate of course!
JMO
SJ
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