Volume 44 - No. 03
by lyle e davis
There was a time, when I was younger, when I was an adventurous sort. We spent some time in the middle of a crazy Asian War in a place called Vietnam. You may have heard of it.
We had a few military folks assigned there. Quite a few.
We lost a lot, too. Records indicate we lost 58,282 between 1955, when the war started, and 1975, when we left the country. A mighty war power, beaten by a rag tag army of guerillas and the North Vietnamese Army. Our cause was not helped by politicians in Washington who fascinated themselves as superJim-Dandy Generals. Those politicians got a lot of our people killed. Records also show that the Vietnamese lost 2,000,000 civilian deaths. Some killed by NVA, some by the Viet Cong, some by their own South Vietnamese military and, sadly, some by US military forces often these civilian deaths came by way of massacres.
The Viet Cong were the guerilla element of the Vietnam War. They were very, very effective. They used booby traps covered with brush and leaves, ready to trap the unware soldier or Marine.
The Paper - 760.747.7119
website:www.thecommunitypaper.com
email: thepaper@cox.net
When I Was Younger
Quite often they would smear these nails with human or animal excrement as they knew this would speed the spread of infection. They actually preferred to wound our troops rather than kill them because that would tie two to three people up, at a minimum. Two soldiers to transport the wounded man, then two or three medics/nurses and/or doctors at the field station, then air transport . . . a lot of people tied up, unable to participate in combat. Smart cookies, those Viet Cong.
They were hard to identify because they were the villagers, the farmers, the merchants. They would smile at you during the day and try to kill you at night. Once in a while we’d catch some and then interrogate them (see photo at right). Here we record such an interrogation. The military language schools are some of the best and a lot of good information was gleaned from field interviews. All too often, the good information would get to a field commander who did not belong in the field but selling shoes or delivering milk. We had great field commanders . . . we also had terrible ones . . with eyes on promo-
January 16, 2014
A much younger me, (notice the dark hair; not a streak of grey. Also notice the slender body. There have been a few changes over the years. Here, we are chatting with Montagnard children in the village of Plei Manu - near Pleiku, in the Vietnam Highlands. Montagnards are ‘mountain people’ and were looked down upon by the Vietnamese. The American military, however, found them to be dependable, excellent warriors.
tions and m e d a l s rather than victory and/or the safety of his troops.
But when a good field commander got that info and processed it, we were capable of kicking some butt. And did. Reguarly. But we also lost a lot of people. In addition to the estimated 58,282 casualties that died, we also had 303,644 wounded in action, and 1,655 Missing in Action. We also had between 725 and 799 POW’s, with between 65 and 119 who died in captivity, or while trying to escape. It was a nasty, dirty war.
What we have going on now in Afghanistan, and, earlier, in Iraq, pales in comparison to the loss of military and civilian life we had in Vietnam. I was there in 1967 and
Younger
Continued on Page 2
1968. We traveled with the Army, the Marines, Navy and Air Force.
We landed on board the Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier via a COD (Carrier On Board Delivery), a propeller driven aircraft that was later catapulted off the deck when we took off. I had been told it was a tremendous jolt. It wasn’t. Not really. I’ve had greater jolts on rides at Disneyland. Still the tour of the ship and sleeping on board was interesting. Met lots of great sailors, both officer and enlisted. I have to admit, however, the Navy serves up the best food of all the service branches. Back on shore we’d spend a lot of time with Army and Marine