A quick history of Americans in Vietnam

For those who were born during or after 1975, it is not really known to them how similar the Iraq war is to Vietnam. In my personal opinion, both were and are unwinable wars, but not because of resources, but the will of the nation to spend the lives of our service men and woman over that of a place for something that has nothing to do with the States. Both are fought against a force that is hidden within it's people, and both have the same mentality, take the loss of battles but hold out till the US gets tired and leaves the country.

In Vietnam, the battles started long before the US was involved. The French fought as far back as 1946 and the first Indo-china war ended in 1954 when the French gave up and surrendered, with the separation of North and South Vietnam at the 17th Parallel. The US had "advisers" in country since then with the idea of "military aid" to South Vietnam, and of course to "stop the spread of Communism". In 1959, the first 2 American soldiers were killed, and in April of 1975, the last American fatality was recorded in country. Between those times, over 3,000,000 soldiers were deployed with over 58,000 dead or were missing. The year I was deployed, 1969, saw 550,000 American service personnel in country. As far as Vietnam goes, 1969, was just after the worse year of the war and at it's peak as far as American service personnel deployed.

TET, the Vietnamese new year which started in February, was always a bad time for encounters with the Viet Cong, but the 1968 TET was especially brutal. Much like in Iraq, American service men and woman fought under some of the most difficult circumstances faced by our military forces. Although the US troops were able to constantly defeat the enemy in battles, the North Vietnamese accepted those defeats believing the US would tire of the war. Has this not been the idea of our enemy in our wars today?

The unit I was with in 1969/1970, the 179th Military Intelligence Detachment with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, was instrumental in warning our forces of the upcoming TET offensive in 1968. Both of the bases that I was on, in Bien Hoa and Xuan Loc, were two of the hardest hit areas at that time, along with Long Bien and Saigon, both to the south-west of us. These areas stayed hot spots for a few years afterwards, with forces coming out of Cambodia to our West, and were the final areas that the South Vietnamese surrendered in 1975. With most of the fighting soldiers out of country between 1973 and 1974, April 30th, 1975 saw Saigon fall to the North, ending the war once and for all. The North was right, with protests never ending at home in the US, the end came before that time as far as the Americans were concerned. Again as in Iraq, all for wars that could have been won in a matter of months if we were the aggressors instead of the babysitters. Over 58,000 dead and missing for a country that gave up when we left.

I'll never forget some of the looks and words that were directed at me when I came back home. It wasn't enough that I spent a year away from my loved ones, with every day of that year possibly being my last, but I had to come home to a country that did not show it's gratitude for serving my country (even if we did not agree with the war) until after the first Iraq war of Bush Sr.

So now some of you know what had happened so many years ago in another part of the world. It is so similar to what's going on now in Iraq. You can not win a war where the enemy lives and hides among the villages just outside your perimeter. When will we learn.

Now I am coming to grips with the real effects of that time in my life. Next we will talk about how the government, through the VA, is treating these effects in my personal situation. What goes on with my visits to the VA Medical Center and the Vet center?