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The Vietnam Experience

Two soldiers wait anxiously for the enemy to appear.

No two soldiers had the same experience in Vietnam. One Army private could patrol thick jungle filled with enemy soldiers every day. Another private at the same base, whose tent was just a few feet away, might work eight hours a day typing letters in an air-conditioned trailer.

Being in the Air Force or Navy was no guarantee of safety either. Airbases were targets of enemy rocket and mortar fire. One Air Force soldier, trained as a weather observer, was sent to a lonely - and dangerous - Army base deep in the Mekong Delta. Pilots needed the weather information he collected. Naval crews running gunboats up and down the Delta's rivers and canals always drew fire. Almost all U.S. soldiers came under mortar or rocket attack at one time or another. The shelling usually lasted only minutes, and there were bunkers made of sandbags for protection.

Soldiers in the "boondocks" (remote or hostile areas; Boondock Comes from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning "mountain." Tagalog is the main language in the Philippines. When World War II and Korean Conflict soldiers went on exercises, they used (and corrupted) the local word to describe their destination) knew that other servicemen lived well on large bases and in big cities. When on leave in Saigon they had seen these American soldiers and their Vietnamese girlfriends riding in jeeps and on motor scooters. This hurt morale. Morale is how a soldier feels about being in the military.

Differences between the lives of officers and enlisted men caused other morale problems. The military has always given officers more privileges and benefits, rewards for the difficult job of being in command and being responsible for others. Young soldiers didn't realize the burdens that came with the privileges. In their eyes, ordinary soldiers took the risks, and officers received the rewards.

There were other reasons for the growing resentment between officers and enlisted men. In Vietnam, officers were required to be in combat for only six months of their twelve-month tour of duty. Enlisted men could be in combat all twelve months. This system prevented well-liked officers from staying with their men. As the war dragged on and the fighting grew more hazardous, new officers assigned to veteran troops lacked experience in jungle warfare and often made poor decisions. If their orders placed the soldiers in unnecessary danger, the troops at times disobeyed or even killed their own officers. An Army study showed that in one year, 209 officers were shot to death or blown up by their own troops. The real figure may have been higher. For these and other reasons, many young draftees refused to become officers.

The problems of noncommissioned officers were often overlooked as well. These officers were the sergeants and specialists who help make the armed forces work. Many were black, hispanic, or from other minority groups. They had spent their adult lives in the military, and many were married and had families. While serving in Vietnam could mean more money and faster promotions, it also put a strain on family relations and caused other problems for these soldiers. Trained in traditional warfare in such places as Germany, they were not prepared for the kind of combat they encountered in Vietnam. They often found themselves caught between young officers and even younger enlisted men.

Noncombat personnel were also at risk in this hot, humid combat zone. Doctors, nurses, chaplains, cooks, mechanics, and others worked within range of mortar and rocket attack. People outside the military also sustained alarming casualties. They included USAID (Agency for International Development) officials, missionaries, and reporters and photographers. Among the writers and photographers who died in Vietnam were Bernard Fall, a history professor whose books on Vietnam are considered among the best; Franpis Sully, a correspondent for Newsweek magazine; and Sean Flynn, a photographer whose father was a movie star. Fall was killed by a land mine, Sully died in a helicopter crash, and Flynn disappeared after being taken prisoner near Cambodia.

Part of the reason everyone was at least in some danger was the fact that Vietnamese friend and foe looked exactly alike. Because the enemy could blend in so easily with the population, there was no such thing as established front lines where soldiers were separate from civilians. Any part of Vietnam could be a combat zone, and anyone from children to old people could be the enemy. Places safe one month could be thick with Viet Cong or NVA troops the next. While most areas were secure by day, nowhere was safe by night.

It is easy to see why many U.S. soldiers came to distrust and hate Vietnamese civilians. In a village where a booby trap wounded an American, the only people to blame were those in the village. The soldiers sometimes took out their frustration over the deaths or injuries of their friends on innocent Vietnamese people. However, considering the conditions under which these young soldiers fought, they often showed remarkable restraint and courage.

If the soldiers suffered, the civilian population suffered even more. A Vietnamese farmer often found himself in a situation with no good choices. For example, there could be large numbers of Viet Cong in his village. If he were unfriendly, they might harm him. If he acted friendly, another villager might tell Americans or South Vietnamese soldiers that he was a Viet Cong. If many people in his village sympathized with the enemy, then enemy soldiers were hidden when U.S. or South Vietnamese soldiers arrived. If the village was neutral, the Viet Cong could simply hide among the people. But a careless word by a child or an elderly person about the presence of VC could bring down destruction and death-from all sides. The American or South Vietnamese forces might burn the village, while VC or NVA fighters might kill people they regarded as informers.

Even swamps, forests, and places where there were few villages could be dangerous to civilians. Many of these areas became known as free-fire zones, areas where soldiers and pilots could fire at will. Civilians who entered these suspected enemy areas did so at risk to their lives. B-52 bombers hit free-fire zones without warning. Jet fighters returning from a mission were allowed to drop leftover bombs in free-fire zones, and artillery pounded such areas around the clock. Bulldozers with huge, V-shaped plows ripped through the jungles looking for concealed enemy hideouts.

Although the enemy could strike anywhere at any time, there was more hope for wounded U.S. and ARVN soldiers in Vietnam than in any previous war. Helicopters could reach many wounded men who might have died without quick treatment. Ground forces could quickly clear a landing area with chain saws and explosives for rescue helicopters. In thick forests, wounded men were hoisted out of the thicket in slings dropped from a hovering aircraft. No longer did an injured man risk dying of shock or blood loss by being carried for hours on a stretcher. No one wanted to be wounded, but the odds of surviving a wound were very good.

At the height of the fighting, there were 16 U.S. Army hospitals, with 5 more under construction. Even though Vietnam was about 1,000 miles long, no soldier was more than 100 air miles from an operating room. The most common wounds were caused by shrapnel-the jagged, hot metal created when an artillery or mortar shell explodes. Rifle fire was the leading cause of death, largely because of the number of multiple wounds from automatic weapons. The rifles used were the Russian AK-47 and the American M-16. The bullets traveled at high speed and made large exit wounds as they left the body. Other causes of many injuries included VC booby traps and mines.

Because of the highly efficient medical treatment, four of every five wounded soldiers were able to return to duty. A wounded man was awarded a medal called the Purple Heart. Three Purple Hearts earned a combat soldier a job away from the fighting.

In contrast, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers were more likely to be wounded and less likely to survive their wounds. There were no modern hospitals to care for them in South Vietnam. They did have modern medicine, much of it obtained from black market sources in Saigon or Cambodia. But VC and NVA hospitals were either huts or tunnels with poor sanitation. In a single series of battles late in the war, the NVA suffered 100,000 casualties. That was twice the number suffered by the U.S. in all of 1968, the war's most brutal year. The rain gear carried by an NVA soldier all too often became a bag to haul his body into hiding.

Civilian casualties in North Vietnam began with the U.S. bombing in 1964 and did not end for almost ten years. As many as one million North Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died in Vietnam during the war. The bombing raids also created a great deal of hardship, destroying homes, public buildings, bridges, and more. Able-bodied North Vietnamese were put to work rebuilding ruined factories, roads, bridges, and dams. This prevented them from farming or otherwise earning a living. They had no luxuries and barely enough necessities.

On the other hand, America smothered South Vietnam in luxury items. PXs, the stores for soldiers, bulged with TV sets, radios, cameras, jewelry, clocks, tape recorders, candy, cigarettes, magazines, newspapers, soft drinks, and beer. Prices were cheap: a can of soda cost ten or fifteen cents. The PXs offered such services as barber shops, laundries, film processing, and custom tailoring. Tailors sewed patches on uniforms and made special-order suits. Even PX stores in outlying areas had at least a few luxury goods. Because these items were unloaded at major ports, the cigarettes, liquor, and food quickly turned up for sale on city streets. Items stolen in the morning found their way to the black market in the afternoon.

Another commodity sold throughout South Vietnam were illegal drugs. Marijuana became as common as chewing gum, and heroin could be purchased that carried brand names such as Tiger or Double Globe. Vietnamese in rural areas chewed betel nut, a mild relaxer that turned the teeth maroon, but few could afford illegal drugs. Some American soldiers, looking for ways to forget the war, sniffed or injected heroin and became addicted to the drug. Thousands smoked marijuana, which was less expensive and always available.

One soldier, who drove an armored personnel carrier, remembers how easy it was to get marijuana. "For two dollars, I bought a carton of cigarettes at the PX. I tossed the carton to an old Vietnamese guy. The next day, I gave him ten dollars and he gave me a carton of marijuana cigarettes. He had opened the carton and the packs, pulled the tobacco out of all 200 cigarettes, filled the cigarettes with marijuana and sealed it all back up. I carried a pack on me and it looked like I just had cigarettes." Marijuana was seldom smoked in the field or on guard duty, but it could be found on most military base camps. It was one more sign of unhappy soldiers in an unpopular war. "What could they do to me if they caught me with marijuana?" asked the personnel carrier driver. "Send me to Vietnam?"

Very little about Vietnam and the conflict made sense to many Americans. Perhaps because Vietnam was so remote, there was little popular enthusiasm for the war, and enlistments in the armed forces lagged. The Pentagon as early as May 1965 talked about an all-volunteer army to fight the war. Such talk ended when military officials discovered that recruiting volunteers would cost the armed forces an extra $3 billion to $5 billion a year.

Officials decided to maintain the draft, a way of automatically bringing young men into the armed forces after they reached the age of 18. At about the same time, General Lewis B. Hershey, head of the draft, spoke out against deferments. These were delays in the draft granted to young men for a variety of reasons, such as ill health or continuing a college education. Hershey wanted to build up the military forces as much as possible to reinforce and replace troops already in Vietnam.

The military had good reason to be nervous about the draft. Not only was antiwar feeling growing in the United States, but stories about the fighting conditions in Vietnam were beginning to filter back home. Marines defending the airbase at Danang put up with eight-foot high elephant grass, heat stroke, wild boars, scorpions, leeches, all types of booby traps, and even swarms of frogs, locusts, and mosquitoes. Vietnam was like nothing the Marines had ever seen before.

The flow of news did not work both ways, however. Radio, television, and a daily newspaper were available for American soldiers, but all of them were operated and censored by the U.S. government. Armed Forces Radio played rock, country, and black music and had brief, regularly scheduled newscasts, usually heavily censored. The television station showed programs from the U.S. and also had regular newscasts. The newspaper, Stars and Stripes, ran sports and general war news. But bad news, from Vietnam or from the U.S., was played down. The writers and editors of Stars and Stripes often fought the military over permission to report stories of large American losses or other bad news.

Soldiers found themselves in the middle of the world's biggest news story, yet they had little idea of what went on even a mile away. No one ever took a stroll just to look around. It was too dangerous. Ironically, the troops sometimes knew more about what was happening back home in the United States. For example, a tall, quiet member of the 9th Infantry Division named Calloway read a few lines in Stars and Stripes in 1967 about Detroit race riots. The article told of fires, gunfights, and killings and gave street names near Calloway's stateside home. How unusual that a young man facing enemy soldiers in Vietnam worried more about his family's safety than his own!

In Vietnam, however, the unusual was commonplace. For example, soldiers in many larger base camps had access to MARS stations. These were dozens of telephones linked to the United States by satellite. A soldier who didn't mind waiting for an available phone could call his parents or wife or girlfriend. The 12-hour time difference meant that his noon call would be received about midnight in the U.S. A soldier could talk to his parents in the morning; be in a firefight, or battle, that afternoon; then return to base and call his family again.

In addition to fighting the Viet Cong and NVA, Americans at times fought each other. Enlisted men's clubs at military bases were sometimes the scenes of barroom brawls. Soldiers, drunk on inexpensive beer, fought over such matters as jukebox songs. Blacks wanted to hear soul music. Whites wanted rock or country-western tunes.

However, the fighting wasn't always divided along color lines. For example, antiwar soldiers often had more trouble with rural or southern whites than they did with blacks or latinos. There was also fighting in the stockades. These were places where soldiers were put when they broke military law. Big stockades, such as the Long Binh Jail (called "Camp LBJ"), had places most guards feared to enter. Murderers, heroin addicts, and other desperate men were held in Camp LBJ before being sent back to prison in the U.S.

If prison awaited some soldiers, a wonderful five or six days of leave from the war awaited many others. The military provided its men with "R and R," or rest and relaxation leaves. Soldiers were not allowed to return to the continental U.S., but they could go to Hawaii to meet their families. Other popular spots included Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia. Each soldier was permitted one R and R leave for every 12 months of duty (the Marines served 13 months). Shorter leaves of three days were usually spent at safe Vietnam beach resorts such as Vung Tau.

Because of air transport, U.S. troops had the unsettling experience of being whisked in and out of the Vietnam War. They could be vacationing on a Sydney, Australia, beach one day and be back on jungle patrol in Vietnam the next. It was one more bizarre aspect of what was turning out to be a very strange war.

David K. Wright. Hardships in a Strange War. War in Vietnam. Regensteiner Publishing Enterprises, Inc., Chicago. 1989.

The Vietnam Experience: A Concise Encyclopedia of American Literature, Songs, and Films A fascinating and informative resource that examines the films, novels, memoirs, and songs that document the Vietnam War and its impact on American society.

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