"C. G. Estabrook" wrote:
>
> The troops were a good bit more than unruly. The US learnt as the French
> had in Southeast Asia that it's difficult to fight a colonial war with a
> conscript army. There was essentially a mutiny of the American army on
> the ground in Vietnam. That led eventually to the withdrawal of US troops
> ("Vietnamization") and the end of the draft (the "volunteer army"). --CGE
>
Three anecdotes from students of mine who were Vietnam vets.
(1) (From late in the war) When they went out on night patrol, they would find a comfortable spot, disable their radio, & settle down for a night of smoking pot.
(2) From earlier in the war. This vet had been in an ordnance battalion in the Delta. Their camp had three sections. A barracks section, a repair section, and a third which was being built for added repair facilities. One night NFL fighters came charging through the camp throwing satchel charges around. They woke up and set up a perimeter quickly enough to defend the living quarters and part of the working areas. The next day the Captain called a meeting of the whole battalion. He announced: Our orders say that our mission is to repair armored vehicles, etc etc. This is not true. Our mission is to stay alive. He took most of the men off their regular jobs in order to have large guard details at night, to have patrols every day, etc. etc. They were never attacked again, but there was no necessity to attack them. They had essentially ceased operating as an ordinance unit. Not very many trucks got repaired.
(3) This man had spent a year in hospital recovering from severe wounds. He told me of a night when his platoon was in an ambush position. They had claymore mines covered up with soil on the trail, with wires leading to their position. A NVA unity came around the bend in the trail. The sergeant reached out to put his finger on the button controlling the claymore mines. The lieutenant pulled out his 45 and aimed it at the sergeants head. When the commander of the NVA unit got just a few feet from their ambush position, he stepped to one side as his men walked by. When the last man disappeared around another bend, the NVA commander looked around, smiled, bent down and detached the wires to the claymore mines, and walked on.
This vet told me, also, that in the VA hospital there was a sharp split between those who had been wounded before and after Tet. Almost all who had been wounded after Tet were anti-war.
If you read the various papers of the time you will find endless anecdotes of this sort.
Carrol