Vietnam War Myths

There is a persistent myth that Blacks were used as "cannon fodder", being assigned to infantry units where they were forced to "walk point". This is not supported by the casualty data which indicates that 86.8% of those killed in action were Caucasian, while 12.1%, or 5,711, were Black. Again, this number is approximately the same as the percentage of Blacks in the general population during the war.

It appears as if this myth was generated by the anti-war movement in an effort to bolster their ranks by convincing Blacks (who could hardly be losing sleep over the fact that some white college students might have their education interrupted by military service) that they were being used as pawns to be sacrificed.

While protesting against the U.S. involvement in Vietnam made some sense for those who were desperately trying to avoid military service, it is not clear why they displayed Viet Cong flags at their rallies and protest marches. People who today claim they were only expressing their conscience cannot explain why they needed to display the flag of the enemy, and burn the American Flag.

The anti-war movement has been often and erroneously referred to as the "Peace" movement. This is a non-sequitar since despite their rhetoric to the contrary, they never actually called for "peace" per se, only an end to American involvement in the war. They actually did not seem to care very much about the poor Vietnamese peasant that they accused American soldiers of killing. Especially if the North Vietnamese and the VC did the killing. And when Pol Pot went on a killing spree, they uttered not a sound. When the North Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, they said not a word. When the Soviets invaded Afganistan the did not protest. Why? Ask them.

The Vietnam War lasted for over 10 years. During that period 58,202 Americans lost their lives in an attempt to preserve the sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam.

Further, drug use in Vietnam was confined almost exclusively to personnel stationed at base camps and other relatively secure installations. These people had free time and the ability to go out on the local economy and buy drugs. Drug use in the field was rare and was discouraged even by personnel who used drugs in the rear. The reasoning was fairly straightforward: drug use in the field endangered lives. It was not a "victimless crime" in the field. Also, for people who were in the remote areas, such as the Central Highlands, there were few Vietnamese civilians to purchase drugs from. Peer pressure was usually enough to discourage drug use when in the field. Those who were stupid enough to use drugs in the field were often beaten senseless by their non-drug-using comrades. Those that persisted were usually killed in action, sometimes by hostile fire, and occasionally, tragically, by friendly fire.

Given that everyone who was in-country from the spring of 1969 to 1972 was keenly aware that U.S. troops were being withdrawn from Vietnam, it is nothing short of a miracle that morale remained as good as it did (which wasn't very) during this period. It was precisely during this period that the overwhelming majority of homicides occurred. But it must be taken into account that the soldiers who were sent to Vietnam during this period, especially the draftees, had been bombarded for years by the anti-war movement and were more inclined to question authority, especially military authority.

It was also no help to good order and discipline when judges started giving convicted criminals the choice of jail or the Army. You can be assured that even an understrength rifle platoon would have preferred to remain understrength than to be given sociopaths as replacements. This misguided policy on the part of state judiciary systems was part of the reason that discipline began to erode from about 1970 onwards. A good number of the intentional homicides committed during this period were perpetrated by these sociopaths.

Finally, it must be understood that intentional homicides, especially of superior officers and non-commissioned officers, have occurred in every war in history. This includes Americans in WWII and Korea.

And it is a mystery as to what, exactly, anyone would have done with a captive who wanted to "talk" because almost no one spoke Vietnamese, an extremely difficult language to learn and pronounce. Because Vietnamese relies a great deal on tonal inflection, it is entirely possible to inadvertently insult someone while trying to ask a straightforward question. So given this, what was anyone going to do, exactly, with a VC captive who was blabbing his head off?

This story seems to have grown a big tail from what was probably its actual roots. I for one witnessed a NVA or VC body dropped from a Huey. It occurred on September 25th, 1968 at BR829594 in the Suoi Ca Valley. A Dustoff chopper radioed us that they were dropping off a dead PW who they had been transporting to a hospital and who had died enroute of a massive abdominal wound. They requested we bury the body. When they arrived at our position, the chopper hovered about ten feet off the ground and the medic and crew chief began lowering the body from the door. In the process, the body slipped from their grasp and fell the ten feet to the ground. It was clearly a dead body. There is no mistaking a dead body. This one had a battle dressing covering a huge wound to the abdomen. We buried the man right where they dropped him. Others, who were further away from the spot where the chopper hovered, thought he had been tossed--alive--from the Huey. Sure enough, a month later I overheard one of these guys regaling a Base-Camp-Commando with the story of a "live" VC being "tossed" from the Huey. And the Base Camp Commando was told that the VC had been tossed out from "about 500 feet". As this guy repeated this story, the Huey became progressively higher and higher, until it was almost in Earth orbit.

The majority of these stories seem to originate with men who had rear-echelon jobs. Upon returning to the United States, they felt compelled to embellish their war time service. After all, when someone asks "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" it's not very attention grabbing to respond "I was a cargo handler at the aerial port of Cam Ranh Bay". I have met more men who claim to have been Green Berets in Vietnam, than there were Green Berets in the entire Army. The same goes for people claiming to have been Navy Seals, or Marine Recon. Some just don't want to admit that they were in a non-combat job. So they "embellish". And part of the embellishment involves repeating the myths that they have heard, and embellishing them as well. Then there are those pathetic souls who never served in Vietnam, but claim that they did. They tell the wildest, most unbelievable stories imaginable, which usually make it into the next "Rambo" movie plot. Which of course, makes it a "fact".

On a final note, I can just imagine assigning this duty to someone.

ME: "Jones, it's your turn to throw hapless VC prisoners from a Huey".

JONES: "Awww, sarge, I threw hapless VC prisoners from Hueys all day yesterday. It's somebody else's turn!"

In the case of Lt. William Calley, President Nixon stepped in and pardoned him after he had spent three years under house arrest. Why Nixon did this is unknown, but it is beyond belief that he would do such a thing. For the end result is a slap in the face to every Vietnam Veteran who did their job and served with honor by adhering to the Rules of Land Warfare of the 1949 Geneva Convention which set the rules of engagement and expressly forbid the type of behavior exhibited by Calley and the thugs he commanded. They were not soldiers. They were thugs.

But while these egregious crimes have been trotted out at every opportunity by the anti-war movement, very little attention was paid to the horrendous atrocities committed by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong on their own people. One of the end results of the 1968 Tet offensive was the deliberate roundup and murder of as many as 5,000 South Vietnamese civilians--doctors, teachers, lawyers, businessmen--by the NVA/VC during the periods that they held territory. The most widespread atrocities occurred in the Imperial city of Hue. There alone the Communists killed over 3,000 South Vietnamese. This behavior was not widely reported by the press, and either ignored by the anti-war movement at best, or justified by them as necessary in a socialist revolution.

Additionally, not much of a fuss has been made over the intentional murder of American civilians (including missionaries and USAID workers) captured and murdered by the North Vietnamese. U.S. POWs did not fair any better. Those that were not murdered were systematically tortured by the North Vietnamese. Although these atrocities qualify as war crimes under the Geneva Convention, the lunatic fringe of the radical left condones those acts as "justifiable".

Reporters covering the war from Saigon assumed that the Americans would do the same thing and that is basically what they reported. They took the position that any casualty estimate, or as they put it, body count, must be inflated.

I wish this were true but the avilable evidence does not support this belief. If the North Vietnamese did withold American POWs in 1973, then they are long dead. Consider that while it is possible that the North Vietnamese could have witheld Americans as a possible "bargaining chip" in the event that the U.S. violated the terms of the Paris Peace Treaty (the U.S. did not, the North Vietnamese did), what could they possibly have done with them after 1975? They could not very well announce to the world what they had done. Even Communists propagandists would have been hard pressed to explain the sudden appearance of six hundred-plus Americans who they had repeatedly denied existed.

If the North Vietmamese and Pathet Lao forces did withold Americans, they have long since starved them to death or murdered them outright in order to cover up their deceit. It defies belief that the North Vietnamese would risk international condemnation (as weak and ambivalent as that would have been) by keeping these people alive. Since they were listed in most cases by U.S. Forces as "Missing, presumed killed", all the North Vietnamese had to do was simply remain silent and murder them. Then they were "killed in action".

It is far more likely that the overwhelming majority of the Americans listed as MIA today were intentionally murdered by North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces soon after their capture. After Action Reports of SOG teams who made insertions into Laos indicate that Americans who were taken prisoner were usually gratuitously tortured and then murdered soon after their capture by local commanders.

Many who were captured alive were subsequently murdered by VC and NVA forces in the process of being marched to POW camps in Laos and North Vietnam. A good example is the case of an American missionary working at the Leprosarium in Ban Me Thout. Betty Olson was murdered by her North Vietnamese captors after she became ill from Dengue Fever. She received no medical treatment from her captors, and when she became too weak to walk they shot her. This was apparently routine treatment by people who Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden refer to as "heroic freedom fighters".

There is also a certain percentage of Americans downed in Laos who probably successfully evaded capture only to die of starvation or exposure in the wild jungles of eastern Laos. If you have never been to the mountainous Central Highlands area of South Vietnam, which extend westward into Laos, you have no appreciation as to just how wild and trackless the area is. It can, and did, hid divisions of troops. It is not hard to imagine downed pilots and SOG personnel wandering around in this wilderness unseen by friend and foe alike.

What is a sham is the North Vietnamese effort to help locate and return the remains of Americans listed as MIA. Totalitarian governments such as North Vietnam's record everything in minute detail. I believe that they have recorded the location of every single American aircraft lost over land in Southeast Asia during the war. I also believe that they have detailed records as to the fates of the crews and passengers aboard these aircraft.