June 21, 2012

• Goodbye Vietnam

  The book I read to research this post was Goodbye Vietnam by Robert W Wood which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. It's about his experiences as a marine in vietnam. He thought it was impossible for his drill sergaent to be angry with all of them at once but was wrong. The biggest recruit inadvertantly looked at him rather look straight ahead. He hit him over the head with his stick & told him if he wants him to look at him he'll poke his eyes out & stick them on his sleeve lapels. They did have people who checked if they were abused in any way but everyone was terrified of reporting him. On another occasion when they were in vietnam they had found a mine & just to be awkward the commanding officer made them spend 2 hours digging up the surrounding plants prior to detonating it. Apparently most of the battles the South Vietnamese & the Americans had with the Cong they won. It was the propaganda battle the Americans lost. Also the Americans despite what they said didn't continue supplying the South Vietnamese after they pulled out. The communists in contrast stepped up supplies. In the 2 weeks war was waged after the Americans pulled out the South Vietnamese lost almost as many men as the Americans in the whole conflict. We will never if the South Vietnamese could have fended off the NVA if they had adequate supplies. Also the NVA broke almost every agreement they made with the Americans over how they were going to treat the South Vietnamese after all there was not much chance of the allies restarting the war.

  • 8:23 am
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