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The Vietnam War - Ken Burns 2017 PBS Series

Started by Up All Night, September 17, 2017, 08:29:30 PM

Jackstar

Quote from: Kidnostad3 on September 20, 2017, 03:09:07 PM
We're all gonna die!

This is a bold, unflinching prediction--still, superior to a Clinton presidency.

Up All Night

Quote from: GravitySucks on September 20, 2017, 09:57:18 PM
Most people are not aware that we had treaty obligations to protect South Vietnam and much of SEA.

This was an extension of the Truman Doctrine.

The fact that Dulles had a hand in it only adds to the intrigue.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asia_Treaty_Organization

All Based on the needed Domino Theory.

The world stay in a mess until the day you die, the day I die, and the day they die...


Up All Night

JAMES PONIEWOZIK:

The war in Vietnam offers no uplift or happy ending. It’s simply decades of bad decision after bad decision, a wasteful vortex that devoured lives for nothing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/arts/television/review-ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-pbs.html


Hog

I just watched the episode about Mei Lai/My Lei, where 415 seniors, women and children were raped and slaughtered by 1st, 2nd and 3rd Platoons. 1st Platoon led by Second Lieutenant (2LT) William Calley and 2nd Platoon led by 2LT Stephen Brooks entered the hamlet of Tu Cung in line formation at 08:00, while the 3rd Platoon commanded by 2LT Jeffrey U. Lacross
Captain Medina's command post remained outside. March 16 at 07:30, around 100 soldiers from Charlie Company led by CPT (Captain he would have given orders to the three Platoon leaders who in this case were Second Lieutenant=2LT)Ernest Medina.
On approach, both platoons fired at people they saw in the rice fields and in the brush
All while a General orbited in a helicopter.



Of all the officers charged, a 2nd Lt. William Calley  was the only convicted and got a life sentence, the Prez(Nixon) reduced it to 20 years, which was again decreased by superiors to 10 years, in the end the Lt Calley was jailed for 3 days, then served a 3-1/2 year sentence of house arrest.  The whole load fell on him, patsy IMO.
Calley was a sick fuck and desetrved a conviction, but what about the Cpt. Medina?

A following an artillery barrage and a barrage from a number of helicopter gunships that engaged many targets around My Lai, but when the choppers that inserted troops landed, they were not fired upon. 
At Calley's trial, one defense witness testified that he remembered CPT Medina instructing to destroy everything in the village that was "walking, crawling or growing". Pretty liberal ROE(Rules Of Engagement.

March 16, 1968



March 16 1968 According to court testimony, they were killed seconds after the photo was taken
The woman on the right is adjusting her blouse buttons because of a sexual assault that happened before the massacre


Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Tẩu (chín Tẩu), killed by US soldiers. Her brains are pictured beside her hat.



PFC Mauro, PFC Carter, and SP4 Widmer (Carter shot himself in the foot with a .45 pistol during the My Lai Massacre)


In PFCs right hand is an M79 grenade launcher, it fires a 40mm grenade to a max of about 400 yards.  Mostly replaced nowadays with the M203 which fires the same 40mm rounds, but the M203 is mounted under the barrel of our C-7 rifles(Canadian version of US M-16-our version is selectable semi-auto and full auto with 30 round magazines and the tritium reticled C79 optical sight.
Here is a Canadian C-7 with a mounted M203 grenade launcher and C79 optics


Anyhoo, someone observed shooting 40mm grenades from a M79 "thump-gun" into a group of unarmed Vietnamese. Simply horrible.,

The C79 is used on the C-7(M16),C-8(shorter stock and barrel carbine version) and the C-9 LMG(Light Machjne Gun-similar to US M249 SAW(Squad Automatic Weapon) which is a belt fed light machine gun that usually fires 200 round boxes of 5.56mmNATO ammo with 4 "normal" ball rounds with each fifth round being a tracer round.  You can"walk" your tracer rounds onto a target.
I carried the C-9LMG a lot.  I was a bigger guy and could muscle the gun so it didn't walk around as much when firing it on its bipod when prone. But more importantly I was able to carry the 4-5 boxes of ammo that the C-0 LMG required.  Each box was 200 rounds, 4-5 boxes on my person with a box mounted to the gun.  After each box was complete, a barrel change was required. I kept a 2nd barrel in a heat resistant pouch on my back. Both of these barrels were matched with the correct headspace for each particular gun. After completing 200 rounds, you flick a switch, grab the barrel handle and slide the barrel off, then reach back and grab the 2nd barrel by its handle and clip it into place, replace the 1st hot barrel into the pouch, lay the belt, close the receiver, cock the weapon, and go.  A barrel change and resumption of firing could be done in 15 seconds, but is an eternity under fire, so some barrel wear was often times traded for a skipped barrel change when reloading the LMG. At 11-13 rounds per second on a clean gun with the gas regulator set on NORMAL as some of the early C-9s had the gas regulator that could be switched from NORMAL to ADVERSE.  As you went through your rounds, the gun would get dirty and its cyclic rate of fire would slow, so that instead of having to stop firing and clean your gun, you could simply select ADVERSE and the designed 11-13 rounds per second(650-750 rounds per minute) would be for a short time,  re-established. However, if you have a squeaky clean C-9 LMG and you move the gas regulator to ADVERSE right from the get go, man that gun would really dance, the cyclic rate would jump up to 18 or 19 rounds per second(1050-1150 rounds per minute). At night it was like holding a flame thrower, great for keeping heads down, but bow did it ever light up your position.  Usually you want the 2 guns of your section at your sections flanks, in an attempt to protect and cover the rest of your section mates in between the two LMGs, at least that was the theory.

We even had a 7.62mm NATO version of the C-9, but it was far from common, it was great when the C-6 was our equivalent version of the US 7.62mm NATO chambered GPMG(General Purpose Machine Gun) was a bit to heavy and bulky for the mission.
The M60 or the slightly newer M240, though our C-6 GPMG most closely resembled the FN  MAG.
Heres a pic of the Canadian variant we call the C-6 GPMG(General Purpose Machine Gun) Its a Platoon support weapon, usually 1 C-6 GPMG per 1 Platoon of soldiers, each Platoon consists of 8-10 soldiers. Each Section has 2 C-9 LMG's A section leader, a 2nd in command, 4 riflemen armed with C-7s and a couple grenadiers with C-7s mounted with the M203 40mm grenade launchers.  3 sections of 10 men each per platoon, each platoon has 30-40 men and 3 or 4 platoons make up a company of 120-200men.
It was a company that invaded My Lai, so 120-200 men. That's a lot of guys and a lot of firepower
esp. when only a couple or three enemy weapons were found in the entire area.


And then there's the plethora of lies from all the involved Presidents, with the tapes of Nixon taking the cake. Not one of these Presidents hands were clean, but of course there was various degrees of deception that each POTUS levied against the US citizenry.
Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
28 years of US involvement in Vietnam, even when the French were there, the USA was paying for 80% of it.

My Mom remembers the race riots of Detroit in 1967.  She was going to college in Windsor Ontario which is directly across from Detroit.  She remembers seeing the smoke from all the fires and hearing all the gunshots emanating from the city. Though not directly related to Vietnam, the end of July riots of Detroit aka 12th Street riot or the 1967 Detroit rebellion, were a signal of the unrest that the USA was feeling at the time.

Around 30,000 Americans came up here to evade the draft, interestingly roughly 30,000 Canadians went down to the USA to fight for the US Armed Forces in Vietnam.
It seems that the "Draft Dodgers" were much less sought after by the US than tactual "Deserters".  The "draft dodgers" have officially been pardoned, while US Military "deserters" may l face "Pro Forma" Arrest.

During the My Lai massacre, a helicopter pilot landed in between US Forces and more "intended victims" and Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr ordered his men(Pilot, Crew Chief, door gunner(s) to shoot Americans who wouldn't stop killing civilians.  Wow, what a position to be put in, your own team is doing wrong and you just might have to kill them to get them to stop.  Just wow.
Heres a pic, Warrant Officers Thompson, after climbing the ranks as a Non Commisioned Officer, and after serving back at Fort Rucker as an aircraft pilot trainer, he got his direct commission into the Officer ranks and eventually attained the Officer Rank of Captain.  He retired from the US Army in 1983.
He had death threats, dead animals left on his front step all because of his testimony against the leadership of My Lai and the ensuing attempted cover-up.

In 1998, 30 years after My Lai, Thompson and the two other members of his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, were awarded the Soldier's Medal (Andreotta posthumously), the United States Army's highest award for bravery not involving direct contact with the enemy. "It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did," then-Major General Michael Ackerman said at the 1998 ceremony. The three "set the standard for all soldiers to follow

At the age of 62, after extensive treatment for cancer, Thompson was removed from life support and died on January 6, 2006, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Pineville, Louisiana. Colburn came from Atlanta to be at his bedside. Thompson was buried in Lafayette, Louisiana, with full military honors, including a three-volley salute and a helicopter flyover.



Pro Patria(For Country) Captain Thompson.

peace
Hog





Up All Night

And then there's the plethora of lies from all the involved Presidents, with the tapes of Nixon taking the cake. Not one of these Presidents hands were clean, but of course there was various degrees of deception that each POTUS levied against the US citizenry.

Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford 28 years of US involvement in Vietnam, even when the French were there, the USA was paying for 80% of it.



The Ends Justify the Means when fighting Communists... or so the story goes....

Here's something I do not know the answer to but would like to:

After the end of WWII, how many US military personnel have been killed and wounded?

How many Chinese military personnel have been killed and wounded since WWII?

How many Russian military personnel have been killed and wounded since WWII?

GravitySucks

Quote from: Up All Night on September 29, 2017, 09:47:29 PM
And then there's the plethora of lies from all the involved Presidents, with the tapes of Nixon taking the cake. Not one of these Presidents hands were clean, but of course there was various degrees of deception that each POTUS levied against the US citizenry.

Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford 28 years of US involvement in Vietnam, even when the French were there, the USA was paying for 80% of it.



The Ends Justify the Means when fighting Communists... or so the story goes....

Here's something I do not know the answer to but would like to:

After the end of WWII, how many US military personnel have been killed and wounded?

How many Chinese military personnel have been killed and wounded since WWII?

How many Russian military personnel have been killed and wounded since WWII?

What did you view as Ford's involvement?  He took office in 74. We were out of Vietnam and in fact in 1973, the Case -Church Amendment prevented further military action in Vietnam.

Just curious why you included Ford.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

Dr. MD MD

Quote from: GravitySucks on September 29, 2017, 10:12:30 PM
What did you view as Ford's involvement?  He took office in 74. We were out of Vietnam and in fact in 1973, the Case -Church Amendment prevented further military action in Vietnam.

Just curious why you included Ford.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

The fall of Saigon in the spring of '75 is usually seen as the end of that "war."

GravitySucks

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on September 29, 2017, 10:18:58 PM
The fall of Saigon in the spring of '75 is usually seen as the end of that "war."

But we had been long gone by then and were actually prevented from retaliating against the invasion from the north by the Case-Church amendment.

Hog

That amendment prevented US military involvement without congressional support.

The South Vietnam president had Nixons written promise that the US would intercede in the North moved on Saigon. Kissingers cease fire allowed almost 150,000 North Vietnam soldiers to remain in South Vietnam. Instead of waiting until 1976 to take Saigon, the North attacked to see if the US would start bombing again, like they did with Linebacker and Linebacker2.. When the US didn't respond, Saigon was shelled and taken.

The evacuation of Saigon was a shambles. US freighters ordered out of ports early thus preventing an organized evacuation.  The ambassador to South Vietnam wouldn't allow that tree at the embassy to be cut down until far too late for optimal helicopter evacs.

President Thieau found out about the ceasefire that was negotiated by Kissinger and the North, the agreed to terms were NOT even translated from English into Vietnamese for Thieau to read.
The terms allowed for the return of all US POWs, but not for the return of the Norths POWs.
Basically, one the POWs were returned, the US could get outta dodge.

There were a lot of promises made to the South Vietnamese.  It was said in the doc. that the South Vietnamese had the unlucky fortune of having the US as their allies. In the end they were abandoned

Kissinger as Secretary of State made some insane decisions towards the end with Ford as President.  I didn't realize that Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize works dealing with the Vietnam War.  That's just craziness IMO.

If the politicians would have let the military do their job, the outcome may have been different.  The continuous resupply by both China and the Soviet Union made the difference.  If Haiphong harbor was mined way back in the 60's like the military wanted, instead of waiting til the end to finally do so.  Same for the bombing of the North like during the Linebacker 1 and 2 missions.

In the end, it was a whole bunch of hurt for nothing.

peace
Hog


Kidnostad3

Quote from: Hog on September 29, 2017, 11:21:18 PM

If the politicians would have let the military do their job, the outcome may have been different.  The continuous resupply by both China and the Soviet Union made the difference.  If Haiphong harbor was mined way back in the 60's like the military wanted, instead of waiting til the end to finally do so.  Same for the bombing of the North like during the Linebacker 1 and 2 missions.

In the end, it was a whole bunch of hurt for nothing.

peace
Hog

In addition to politicians micro managing the war fighters and tying thier hands, which in fact prolonged the war and caused many more deaths than there had to be, the liberal media, Walter Cronkite, in particular doomed U.S. efforts in Vietnam to failure.  Honest people can differ on whether we should have sent troops to Vietnam in the first place but there is no doubt about why it all went wrong.   

Swishypants

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on September 29, 2017, 10:18:58 PM
The fall of Saigon in the spring of '75 is usually seen as the end of that "war."

Line Infantry Combat troops were out of there by late August of '72. Special forces by the end of March '73. You'll catch a lot of old lying REMF fucks knowing that. "I was in Nam in '73! I was a grunt." et. al. No Pops, ya weren't. You are a fucking liar and mealie mouthed pathetic worm though! :) The guys who served but had boring jobs are the number one source of stolen valor there is. They know just enough to snow most civilians, and didn't want to go home and tell everyone they scrubbed toilets while they were in the service.


Hog

Quote from: Kidnostad3 on September 30, 2017, 07:33:38 AM
In addition to politicians micro managing the war fighters and tying thier hands, which in fact prolonged the war and caused many more deaths than there had to be, the liberal media, Walter Cronkite, in particular doomed U.S. efforts in Vietnam to failure.  Honest people can differ on whether we should have sent troops to Vietnam in the first place but there is no doubt about why it all went wrong.
Agreed 100%.

I enjoyed the series, and will rewatch it in the future.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In uniform Ive been spit on and called a baby killer.  I didn't understand why people would do that, but fuck did it piss me off. Its amazing what a few years makes towards the attitudes people.

peace
Hog

GravitySucks

Quote from: Hog on September 30, 2017, 09:30:31 PM
Agreed 100%.

I enjoyed the series, and will rewatch it in the future.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In uniform Ive been spit on and called a baby killer.  I didn't understand why people would do that, but fuck did it piss me off. Its amazing what a few years makes towards the attitudes people.

peace
Hog

Thanks for your service Hog.

Guess I was lucky. I served from 74-82 and never really had any bad experiences. Their were some places in Plattsburgh that we weren’t welcome, but that was more because of it being a college town.

Not sure jow I would have handled being spit on or called a baby killed.

Dr. MD MD

Quote from: Hog on September 30, 2017, 09:30:31 PM
Agreed 100%.

I enjoyed the series, and will rewatch it in the future.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In uniform Ive been spit on and called a baby killer.  I didn't understand why people would do that, but fuck did it piss me off. Its amazing what a few years makes towards the attitudes people.

peace
Hog

No disrespect but I thought Canadians were only deployed as peacekeepers after '73?  ???

Up All Night

The US backed the wrong guy. If we had swallowed our pride way back when, and backed Ho Chi Minh, then the Independence of Vietnam would have happened much faster, with much less body kill.

Remember, it was for fear of the Chinese that the Korean Conflict turned out with a stalemate an armistice, and no peace treaty.

But the Korean Conflict was yet another unholy "UN" action where (mostly) American lives were spent under the direction of a President who be satisfied with such a stalemate.

Where's "the Wall" for the Americans that died in that botched war??

I say botched, because you don't reward an aggressor nation by leaving them all of the land they started with. They should lose land as a penalty for their aggression.


Hog

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on September 30, 2017, 09:57:07 PM
No disrespect but I thought Canadians were only deployed as peacekeepers after '73?  ???
Doc, my interaction with the spitting no mind occurred shortly after Basic back when I started in a conventional infantry regiment in the 90's.   Yes, it was a punk Canadian, spitting on a Canadian soldier, calling him a "babykiller", in Canada, 20 years after US ground combat ended in Vietnam.  It was a confusing moment for sure.

peace
Hog

Swishypants

Quote from: Hog on October 01, 2017, 08:51:24 PM
Doc, my interaction with the spitting no mind occurred shortly after Basic back when I started in a conventional infantry regiment in the 90's.   Yes, it was a punk Canadian, spitting on a Canadian soldier, in Canada, 20 years after US ground combat ended in Vietnam.  It was a confusing moment for sure.

peace
Hog

The only Canadian's in 'Nam were volunteers that joined the US Military.

Quote from: Up All Night on October 01, 2017, 01:00:52 AM
The US backed the wrong guy. If we had swallowed our pride way back when, and backed Ho Chi Minh, then the Independence of Vietnam would have happened much faster...

We were supporting a sovereign nation (South Viet Nam) from an invasion.  What is now Viet Nam was only briefly ever a single independent nation in the past. 

Not only was a sovereign nation being attacked by a nation they were not historically tied to, it was a ruthless communist nation, and the world had already seen 50 plus years (at the time) of what that meant to those who had the misfortune of coming under it.  If you are getting this garbage from Ken Burns, I suggest not watching more of it.

Hog

Quote from: Swishypants on October 01, 2017, 08:54:03 PM
The only Canadian's in 'Nam were volunteers that joined the US Military.
Roughly 30,000 went South to volunteer as per the Canadian Vietnam War Veterans Memorials "North Wall".
We were next door in Cambodia since 1954.



peace
Hog

Up All Night

Quote from: PB the Deplorable on October 01, 2017, 09:00:39 PM
We were supporting a sovereign nation (South Viet Nam) from an invasion.  What is now Viet Nam was only briefly ever a single independent nation in the past. 

Not only was a sovereign nation being attacked by a nation they were not historically tied to, it was a ruthless communist nation, and the world had already seen 50 plus years (at the time) of what that meant to those who had the misfortune of coming under it.  If you are getting this garbage from Ken Burns, I suggest not watching more of it.

I'll have to re-watch that episode, because they made it clear that elections were supposed to be held, the North was ready and willing, but it was the Corrupt South who backed out of holding elections. That was evil.

Swishypants

Quote from: Hog on October 01, 2017, 09:05:46 PM
Roughly 30,000 went South to volunteer as per the Canadian Vietnam War Veterans Memorials "North Wall".
We were next door in Cambodia since 1954.



peace
Hog

little known fact: Rick Moranis (the actor) is the basis for the Canadian gunner in Matterhorn. He was a volunteer and served in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam primarily as an M-60 gunner.

Dr. MD MD

Quote from: Hog on October 01, 2017, 08:51:24 PM
Doc, my interaction with the spitting no mind occurred shortly after Basic back when I started in a conventional infantry regiment in the 90's.   Yes, it was a punk Canadian, spitting on a Canadian soldier, calling him a "babykiller", in Canada, 20 years after US ground combat ended in Vietnam.  It was a confusing moment for sure.

peace
Hog

Yeah, weird! Why would they have thought you had anything to do with Nam then? ! ???

Hog

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on October 01, 2017, 10:49:21 PM
Yeah, weird! Why would they have thought you had anything to do with Nam then? ! ???
I think it was plain ignorance on his part, looking for a reaction from the quickest insult his brain could muster, which he didn't get because the brainwashing I'd just received was fresh in my head.
Flashes of running my stainless through him were fleeting. But I was a good young Pte.  I was the biggest target(physically) and he went right for me.  The guy he was walking with looked absolutely terrified.
I stood down to attend to my uniform, and I couldn't believe what just happened.  I was full of piss and vinegar, we just got back from training in the USA, and this fuckin Canuck hocks a loogie and insults me and I cant do a thing about it.
That really stuck with me, well lesson learned, with application of that lesson to come in the following chapters.

OK, enough about that.

peace
Hog

Hog

Looks like I will be able to watch the first half of the 18 hour documentary.

I didn't realize that Ho Chi Minh was a supporter of very early US involvement in Vietnam, like early 40's when the OSS was training the Viet Minh
He was quoted as saying "I hope the Americans aren't distracted by this communism."  But apparently they were thus came the Vietnam conflict.

Interesting fact:
" U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962."


I have a question about the draft.  Did the draft involve all of the services or if you were drafted, were you for sure doing either Marines or Army duty?  Could you be drafted for Naval service?
Thanks

peace
Hog

GravitySucks

Quote from: Hog on October 05, 2017, 09:48:03 AM
Looks like I will be able to watch the first half of the 18 hour documentary.

I didn't realize that Ho Chi Minh was a supporter of very early US involvement in Vietnam, like early 40's when the OSS was training the Viet Minh
He was quoted as saying "I hope the Americans aren't distracted by this communism."  But apparently they were thus came the Vietnam conflict.

Interesting fact:
" U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962."


I have a question about the draft.  Did the draft involve all of the services or if you were drafted, were you for sure doing either Marines or Army duty?  Could you be drafted for Naval service?
Thanks

peace
Hog

If you were drafted, it was for 2 years in the Army, active duty with an additional 4 year inactive reserve commitments.

You had the option to enlist in the other services, but the active duty commitment was 3,4 or 6 years depending on the service and the speciality. The total service commitment remained the same. 6 years combination of active duty and inactive reserves.

A lot of people would enlist in the national guard or reserves if they had a low lottery number in hopes they wouldn’t get called up. You had to do this before you got your draft notice though.

The other services only offered the best jobs if you enlisted before you got your draft notice.

The educational deferment was a big factor in creating the trend towards liberal adts degrees during the 60’s and 70’s.

Hog

Thanks Gravity.

Happy to see the site up again.  That was a long day.lol
peace
Hog

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