Process
Military Advisers Recruit the Hmong
As early as the late 1950s, intensified guerrilla activities had been observed by the CIA in South Vietnam. Supply routes ran over the border through the remote mountain regions of Laos and Cambodia, and would later come to be known as the Ho Chi Minh trail. To get this problem under control it was decided to recruit mercenaries for the war against communism from amongst the native Hmong hill tribes. It was hoped that they would be able to not only prevent supplies reaching the Vietcong in South Vietnam, but also stop the infiltration of Laos and northern Thailand. Since the US wasn't at war with either Laos or Cambodia, any involvement there had to be kept secret from the public, and for this purpose all logistics were managed by CIA-owned airline Air America, or one of its countless subsidiaries. The necessary field work was carried out by a handful of Green Berets whose existence could always be denied by the US authorities. Their task was to recruit mercenaries from among the Hmong tribesmen, to train them with the weapons supplied by Air America, to assign them tactical objectives and to request air support if needed.
What appealed to foreign powers about the Hmong was their long warrior tradition. In the last years of the Indochina War the French had formed a small army of Hmong, whom they called Montagnards (i.e. "mountain people"), which had fought in the Plain of Jars against the Vietminh. The Hmong were hardy, brave and knew the jungle trails. They were the perfect soldiers, and one of them was Vang Pao. In 1945 at the age of 13, he started his military career as a translator for French paratroopers who tried to organise resistance against the Japanese in the Plain of Jars. He became a lieutenant in the new Laotian army and led a commando unit in a vain attempt to relieve the encircled French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. By the end of the Indochina War, he was a major in the regular army and also commanded the self-defense militias of the Hmong in the Plain of Jars. The CIA recruited thousands of these brave jungle warriors, who subsequently defended the north of Laos, rescued downed American pilots and ambushed Vietnamese convoys on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Some teams even crossed the border into China, where they observed military movements or tapped phone lines. But the war imposed an enormous toll on them: facing superior enemy forces, thousands perished in the jungle as they had to abandon more and more villages, retreating further into the mountains. Even in 1968 a CIA adviser had admitted: "A short time ago we rounded up 300 fresh recruits. Thirty percent were 14 years old or less, and ten of them were only ten years old. Another 30 percent were 15 and 16. The remaining 40 percent were 35 or over. Where were the ones in between? I'll tell you, they're all dead...and in a few weeks, 90 percent of [the new recruits] will be dead."
By the end of the war in 1975, the Hmong had been fighting for the US for well over a decade. As Americans began to leave Vietnam, the support the Hmong recieved grew less and less, leaving them isolated and alone against the Vietnamese forces. As a result of persecution by the Vietnamese for helping the Americans, by the early 1970s as many as a third of the Hmong population left Laos and fled across the Mekong River to Thailand. In Thailand, the Hmong were housed in a series of refugee camps. About 130,000 made their way to United States. Another 50,000 to 100,000 stayed in Thailand. About 400,000 remained in Laos. Hmong immigration to the United States continues to this day.
The United States Trains and Supplies the South Vietnamese Army
The South Vietnamese Army (SVA) had been financed by America throughout the late1950’s,1960’s and as a result of Vietnamisation, to an even greater degree from 1970 to 1975. The South Vietnamese Army first took shape after the 1954 Geneva Agreement when the American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) commanded by Lieutenant General John O’Daniel set about creating a modern military force, funded by the US, that was capable of defending South Vietnam against an invasion by troops from North Vietnam.
The SVA, on paper, was a formidable force. By the mid-1950’s it numbered 150,000 men and had all the modern equipment that an army could require. Trained to fight a conventional war, however, it soon became apparent that it would need full US military support if it was to survive against the forces from North Vietnam. Despite both Kennedy and Johnson pouring more and more US ‘military advisors’ into South Vietnam to support and train the SVA, US Marines landed in South Vietnam in 1965 to effectively lead to campaign against the North while the SVA assisted it.
By 1968, the SVA was a potent force – 250,000 men armed with modern tanks and artillery. It could also call on both South Vietnamese and US aerial support and, if fighting near to the extended South Vietnam coastline, naval support. A reserve militia of about 250,000 men also supported the SVA. This militia force was made up of small rifle units and it was equipped with modern radios, vehicles and small arms.
The organisation of the SVA and the militia was very similar to the organisation of the American military. A military general staff commanded the South Vietnam military but this was answerable to the Ministry of Defence that was staffed by civilians. In 1964, the militia – technically known as the Territorials – was made a formal part of the armed forces of the South. They were apportioned out to provincial chiefs – forty-four of them – who were the main administrators of South Vietnam.
In theory, South Vietnam was very well equipped to defend itself. In the mid-1960’s it had a large, modern and well-equipped army and a similar militia both of which were equipped and funded by the world’s most powerful nation – America. In 1965, the Americans added their huge military prowess to assist South Vietnam. Despite this, by 1975, the SVA was in tatters and the North had defeated the South. What, therefore, had the SVA failed to do despite its apparent strengths? Stay tuned to find out!
Operation Rolling Thunder
By the beginning of 1965, the situation in South Vietnam was rapidly reaching crisis proportions. The three basic choices available to the United States were not particularly palatable. The United States could continuewith a role essentially limited to aid and advisory action and risk humiliation if the situation continued to deteriorate and South Vietnamese resistance collapsed.Alternatively, the United States could recognize that the situation was irretrievable and cease to support the South Vietnamese. Such a “cut-and-run” strategy, many believed, might cast other American collective defense commitments in doubt and undermine important alliance arrangements. Finally, the United States could become more deeplyinvolved and bring its military might to bear against the enemy to salvage the situation.
Air power seemed to offer a middle ground betweencontinuation of the aid of advisory effort on the one hand and full-scale military involvement on the other hand. Using air power against North Vietnam would bring the war home to the North Vietnamese, would strike closer to the heart of the problem, and yet would avoid the bane of all Western military experts—involvement in a land war on the Asian continent. Air power seemed to offer the possibilityof war at arm’s length and on the cheap, although most policymakers realized that the use of air power would be cheap only by comparison with a manpower intensive land war.
As originally conceived, the fundamental purpose of Rolling Thunder was to persuade the North Vietnamese to quit the war, or failing that, to entice them to the negotiating table to arrange a compromise settlement of the problems in Southeast Asia. In 1965, the campaign clearly failed to either persuade or entice the North Vietnamese.
Administration officials believed that heavy and sustained bombing might encourage North Vietnamese leaders to accept the non-Communist government in South Vietnam. The administration also wanted to reduce North Vietnam’s ability to produce and transport supplies to aid the Viet Cong insurgency. The general notion seemed to be that the shocking application of modern air power would quickly intimidate a small, backward nation such as North Vietnam. Such was not to be the case, however, as Rolling Thunder failed in its most fundamental and important purpose. Some officials believe that a big reason Rolling Thunder was not as effective as it could have been was because the U.S. was critical of not bombing specific main targets such as cities and industry near the Chinese border. The U.S. did not want to risk provoking China into action against the U.S. similar to what they had done during the Korean War.
A secondary objective of Rolling Thunder was to reduce, if not stop, the flow of men and materiel being sent by North Vietnam into South Vietnam. It is clear that Rolling Thunder inflicted grievous (if temporary) damage to North Vietnam’s primitive transportation system, destroy the jungles that hid it and extract a heavy toll on the men and materiel moving toward South Vietnam. However, over the course of the campaign, the infiltration from North Vietnam continued and is generally acknowledged to have increased over time as Vietnamese were often quick to repair the damages to the bombings. In this sense,the interdiction campaign was a failure. On the other hand, apologists for air power speculate that without the attrition inflicted by Rolling Thunder, the rate of infiltration might have been much greater, perhaps putting the war effort in South Vietnam in serious jeopardy in 1965 and 1966.
The final objective of Rolling Thunder, at least in the tense days of 1965, was to raise the morale and fighting spirit of the South Vietnamese. The heavy bombings from U.S. bombers and jets would strengthen the South Vietnamese Military moral equally to how the bomings sought to weaken the North Vietnamese military and moral. There seems to have been a consensus among the American leadership that South Vietnamese morale did improve. However, morale is difficult to measure, its causes difficult to attribute, and its tenure difficult to maintain.
Although North Vietnam did not have much of an air force, its leaders managed to mount an effective defense against the bombing raids. With assistance from China and the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese constructed a sophisticated air-defense system. Using surface-to-air missiles and radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery, the Communists shot down hundreds of American planes over the course of the bombing campaign. As a result, pilots and aircraft weapon systems operators accounted for the majority of the American prisoners of war who were captured and held by North Vietnam.
South Vietnam Collapeses After U.S. Forces Withdraw
After America withdrew from the war, so did much of the funding and support to the south. Meanwhile, the north still recieved heavy funding and support from the Soviets and Chinese because the U.S. was afraid to bomb key industrial and transport centers in North Vietnam near China. Although China was where a lot of supplies came from, the U.S. was afraid to involve China into the war like the Korean War.
During the war, the SVA (South Vietnamese Army) fought along with the Americans. Even while with the Americans, their loyalty was often questionable and their will to fight was often low. A common joke among American GI's was "SVA rifle for sale: never used, only dropped once." While some SVA were very good and dedicated, most were not very trusted by the Americans. Nonetheless, the SVA fought with the Americans, and had fought the North Vietnamese for a few years before the Americans. However, the SVA and Americans often caused resentment against the villigers of Vietnam because the villagers did not like the South Vietnamese governments oppressiveness or the Americans cultural ignorance along with being labeled as another invader. The stratgey of the Americans and the SVA resulted in the bombing and burned many villages, cities and recources if the places were suspected of sympathizing with the enemy did little to help relations with the people. Meanwhile, the communist forces of the north and south were fighting for the underrepresented majority of the Vietnamese population, the poor villager. Because the SVA and Americans resembled the Democratic yet highly corrupt, catholic, oppressive, destructive and dictatorial government of South Vietnam, few villagers trusted the Americans and SVA. The Americans and SVA controlled the cities, but the Vietcong and the Vietminh controlled the country.
--The SVA during Vietnamization--
When this attack did occur in Easter 1972, the North crossed the DMZ and defeated the SVA forces based there. Other units of the NVA attacked across the borders from Laos and Cambodia and once in South Vietnam joined forces with the Viet Cong that dominated the countryside. The SVA, equipped with modern American military equipment given as part of Vietnamisation, inflicted heavy casualties on the North. On a map, the North had conquered much land in South Vietnam – but it was sparsely populated land. They had only captured two major towns – Loc Ninh and Dong Ha. As a result of these losses, the North and South agreed to a ceasefire on January 23rd1973, which took effect on January 28th.
Few believed that the ceasefire would last. When it was broken by the North towards the end of 1973, the SVA numbered about 550,000 men with slightly less in the reserve militia. At this time the army of the North was estimated to be between 500,000 and 600,000. As the North moved to the southern Capital, Saigon, the SVA started to disintegrate. The Corrupt politians fled the city, and when they left, so did the SVAs will to fight. When the tanks if the North drove into Saigon city centre, they found piles of SVA uniforms littering the streets as thousands of SVA men simply deserted to merge with the citizens of Saigon.
Stories From Vietnam
Nguyen Hoa Giai, A Vietcong fighter from the late 50's to mid 70's who later moved to the U.S.
"We Weren't All Communists; We Just Wanted Independence, or Revenge"
----The story was edited as to be in proper english----
I became a Viet Cong guerrilla in the late 1950s, when I was 15. It wasn't because I was a Communist, or because I ran away to join the circus and just got wildly sidetracked. My uncle actually fought on Ho Chi Minh's side of things during WWII when the resistance against Japanese occupation was actually funded by the Americans and Brits. Here he is palling around with Allied soldiers:
I was just mad at how the South was pushing all of its excess money into the major cities like Saigon. The South Vietnamese government seemed to ignore small towns and villages, like mine. Ngo Dinh Diem (the leader of South Vietnam at the time) even took away our farms and put them under the control of a single rich guy who'd supported the French in World War II. This happened all over South Vietnam and was called "land reform," rather than the far more accurate "serious, deep, and exploratory boning."
The French, who had controlled Vietnam since the 1800s, always saw the locals as "lower," and we never forgave them for refusing to give us independence. Ho Chi Minh was snubbed twice, and after the second time he reacted. My uncle also wanted independence and would do anything, including support Communism, to get it.
Once the fighting started, a lot of people died, well over a million on our side alone. For the war to continue, a constant stream of new fighters had to join up, and they didn't have the benefit of such luxuries as "functional equipment" or "the slightest idea what to do." Over 90 percent of these new recruits were teenagers or younger. Many of them weren't even particularly invested in the "cause" itself. Supporting Communism or the dream of a united Vietnam was less a motivator than wanting revenge for the death of a parent, loved one, or child. The Viet Cong (literally: the National Liberation Front or just "the front") were just a means for securing that revenge.
Most of them were aware that Stalin and Mao each had movements named after them (Stalinism and Maoism), so they just assumed Socialism was named after a guy named Social and Communism was named after a guy named Commun. A distressing number of my co-soldiers still thought we were fighting France. They knew of Ho Chi Minh, but only in vague propagandistic terms, not the man's actual history. When we told them we wanted a Socialist society, they just said yes because they were mostly poor, grieving peasants living through a shortage of damns, and thus had none to spare for politics.
--"We were just as scared of the jungle as the Americans were"--
Your movies tend to portray the Viet Cong as deadly jungle warriors, blending into the foliage and melting out of the wild to launch continuous surprise assaults on various Rambos. That's all a big load of crap: Many of us (including me) came from border towns and grew up in the hills or the mountains. We had no more mastery over the jungle than a kid from Oregon has over Death Valley.
So the jungle was alien to many of us, and unlike most of the American soldiers, we were stuck spending our entire war there. My uncle and I didn't trust the tunnel systems many of the other VC used. They were prone to collapse, and if that happened over a barracks or a mess hall it was likely to kill more people than an air raid. So we did most of our moving around outside, under the questionable cover of grass mats. This meant we were not only completely open to rain storms ... but also to murderous animals. It's easy to forget, amid all the drama of war, that there were tigers in that jungle. Easy to forget until you met a "Gosh Darn" :^) tiger, that is. Tigers may be shy, but every once in a while one of us would disappear in the middle of the night, and we'd all just sort of understand why. Tigers don't exactly do end-zone dances after every kill, after all.
And so many people were killed by snakes. There were also rats as large as cats, mosquitoes, spiders, and centipedes to contend with. While you won't usually die from a centipede bite, one of my co-guerrillas committed suicide after being bitten because the pain was so intense. Armed adversaries give you comparatively good odds of survival. Mother Nature has things uglier than bullets in her arsenal.
--"Fighting looked nothing like the movies"--
Movies always make the fighting between Viet Cong and American soldiers look like gruesome, close-up gunfighting. That kind of stuff happened, sure, but only when absolutely everyone screwed up. In reality, even when we were shooting at the enemy, we usually couldn't see them. There'd be muzzle flashes or tracers in the distance, and we'd just fire at those. During more than a decade of fighting, I saw living enemy soldiers up close only three times.
The first time was right after a firefight, and we were shocked to see how blackened the bodies were. We thought they must have been charred by an explosion until we realized their skin wasnaturally black. None of us had seen a black person before. Some people thought they were myths. All of them were either dead or near-death. We shot the wounded survivors with a pistol. We were in no condition to provide them with medical care. It seemed kinder than letting them bleed out. We didn't torture them or take any pleasure in the deaths. The younger guerrillas, who were less attuned to death, even cried.
Thanks to Hollywood, you probably picture the VC as constantly popping out of holes in the ground like deadly gophers. But like I said before, my group avoided those cramped, rickety tunnels full of death traps like, well ... like cramped, rickety tunnels full of death traps. You don't need an analogy to understand why that sounds like a bad idea. But sometimes we'd have to go really far south, or there'd be exceptionally clear skies and we'd decide that the tunnel sounded like marginally more fun than a bomb. The tunnels were essential for a lot of the VC, though, especially around Saigon.
Unlike living under the mats, tunnel living was a whole different world. The big ones had a kitchen area, with a smokestack jutting out sideways so the smoke would billow out far away. There was always rice, usually along with a vegetable or meat (rat or monkey).
But, as always, the great outdoors was the best bathroom. We generally had to wait for nightfall to relieve ourselves, but if it was an emergency, well ... you just kind of hope the bomb hits you direct, so nobody sees that you died squatting with your pants around your ankles. Once, in a tunnel near the Laotian border, we even made a fun game: The goal was to be the person who could finish their business outside first. We all got pretty good at this, but once a guy panicked when he heard the distant drone of a plane's engine. He leapt back in, spraying piss everywhere.
It turned out the plane was North Vietnamese. Everyone laughed, except the guy who'd sprayed us with his pee: He'd been the record-holder prior to that point, and now his record was irrevocably tarnished.
--Poor training was common--
For every trained person we got through a camp, three more came from the surrounding area with only the vaguest idea of what a gun was. We provided on-the-job training to our guerrillas, and that led to disaster. I remember teaching one recruit, about 17 years old, how to throw a grenade. He pulled the pin then asked us what to do next. We were shouting at him to toss it, but he just waved at us, and watched the fuse burn up to the shell. It exploded. So did he.
--"Our best gear was old junk, and it sometimes came from America"--
(The top picture has three Russian and Chinese made weapons and one WWII German Rifle. The bottom picture has a U.S. hand gun, U.S. M16 and grenade launcher and on the far right, Russian AK-47.)
Because we were on the front lines of South Vietnam, we were pretty far down the food chain when it came to getting weapons. Some came in through the Ho Chi Minh trail, but most of those went to the VC outside of Saigon. With the NVA above us and more critical Viet Cong below us, the guerrillas in the middle got the "short bus" weapons.
It worked like this: The Soviets would make a bunch of AK-47s and send them to China. The Chinese would keep the Russian AKs and replace them with inferior knockoffs that they'd produced. The North Vietnamese Army got the Chinese weapons, along with whatever WWII-era crap they had left over. Since all of the "good" weapons from this already-bad lot went to the NVA and VC near major cities, we mostly wound up with antiques -- and not even the nice, collectible antiques that old ladies build nests out of. Just old junk.
On a day-to-day basis, enemy soldiers weren't our biggest threat. We saw more American leaflets and trash piles than actual combatants:
Ironically enough, most of them were originally American made. M1s (I remember the iconic "ping" sound) and Thompsons were the norm in the early years. After fights, there were always enemy M16s scattered about, but we didn't touch those -- they never worked right. In one of the few true close-in fights we had with the Americans, they were actually using AK-47s against us. The American rifles were that bad. (Side note from Mista Laroche-about 80% of vietnam veterans recorded experiencing weapon failure during combat...not good.
Toward the end of American involvement, we were just getting mortars and mortar shells. The North Vietnamese army was stockpiling everything else for an invasion of the South. In the jungle where we were, fired mortar shells could hit a tree branch and go off prematurely, killing us. So we had to find a way to use them, which required a lot of trial and error. I was in my late 20s by this time and by far the oldest living guy in my squad, so everyone else (all but one a teenager or younger) asked me to figure out something that worked.
What followed was a disastrous slapstick montage -- people were physically holding the mortar at chest level and firing horizontally (and then flying backwards from the force of the weapon). We eventually got the idea to tie them onto trees, with the backs of the mortars against the trunk. It made one giant 360-degree cannon. As long as it wasn't fired with another tree right in front of it, it seemed to work pretty well.
--"Our sides war crimes are often glossed over"--
(Both pictures are Americans, but you get the idea the VC and NVA did this too...NVA and Vietcong didn't really have many cameras...)
Whenever "Vietnam War crimes" are mentioned in the West, people think of My Lai or Agent Orange being dumped over large swaths of forests. Those are both awful things. But, for whatever reason, my own side gets to walk away whistling suspiciously. That shouldn't be the case: We committed war crimes on a regular basis. How do I know? I saw them. The North Vietnamese Army would purposely target hospitals and medical areas, because that was where they could do the most damage. I wouldn't have believed it if somebody had just told me back during the war -- but I saw it happen at a base in the Quang Tri area and heard the order given when we briefly came to an NVA area to get new orders. We were also occasionally called away from the trail to watch over a VC or NVA firefight -- having long-range rifles as support was effective. But many of us would stop firing when we saw villages going up in smoke or villagers being shot. The VC and NVA weren't always sure if people near the border were pro- or anti-American, so rather than take chances, they went by the "atrocity them all and let god cry it out" philosophy.
--"No one really survives war intact"--
In 1974, with the U.S. out and South Vietnam operations winding down, my VC group was allowed to go home. I took the trails up to my village. As I approached, I started noticing odd things. Signs were gone, no kids came begging, no travelers walked the paths to and from the town. It all seemed too quiet. I remember running up to my village to find nothing. It was literally all gone.
I found only traces of burned buildings under the dirt. When I went to the hill outside my village I saw a new indentation in the land. It wasn't a crater from a bomb; it was a mass grave. And despite knowing what I was going to find, I dug it up.
To this day I have no idea if the North Vietnamese, the Americans, or someone else was responsible. But the way everything was just covered by a bulldozer indicated the North Vietnamese. Everyone but my youngest brother was gone (and he would die during the Chinese War five years later). I'm not special. Ask any older Vietnamese person: They've all lost many, many loved ones. And not always due to America or its allies. I never expected to survive 10 years at the front. And, to be honest, I still don't really feel like I survived.
--"Only time can heal wounds"--
After the war, I moved to Saigon. At that point I'd never lived in a city and had spent half my life utterly detached from society. All I knew was how to hide, kill, and drill. It came out everywhere I went. I fought people because of the way they were carrying a loaf of bread, because it looked like they were smuggling a radio. I had the bathtub taken out of my apartment and built a custom one out of metal, tarps, and dirt -- to simulate bathing in a river. In hip U.S. neighborhoods, they'd call that something like "paleo bathing" and charge you a fortune for it, but I just knew no other way to be. I had to be reminded constantly to pay for things, because I was just so used to taking them. I struggled with PTSD and depression. I thought a lot about suicide.
In a weird way, Communism actually helped keep me alive. Workers in unified Vietnam were forced to socialize with each other during breaks and lunch. That's down to the whole "commune" part of "Communism." Lone wolves might have strange ideas; they might not be committed to the party. I started talking with others around me to avoid suspicion and found that, to my surprise, human interaction has some kind of value.
Many of them had similar experiences: They'd lived, but they had lost their family and friends in horrific ways. Over months and years of breaks, lunches, and trade meetings, my group of co-workers turned into a "Depression Anonymous" support group.
Life is much better now. By the 1990s, the U.S., Australia, and South Korea all more or less apologized for their role in the war. Today, the U.S. is actually viewed favorably by over three-quarters of the population. The general negative feelings are actually aimed more at France and China than the U.S., since you guys at least apologized. I've personally forgiven the U.S. and everyone else for their involvement in the war. I lost my entire family, but I managed to start a new one with a wife who also lost nearly everyone, including her husband, in the war.
I went back to the site of my village a few years ago and found it to be a forest. The sunken area with the grave is still there, but there is a small memorial with trees growing over it. It made me feel oddly at peace: Death had been covered by new life.
Excerpts From an Interview With a Former Vietmihn (NVA) Fighter Bao Nihn
Bao Ninh’s real name is Hoàng Au Phung. He was born in 1952 in Nghe An province (his ancestors were from Quang Bình province). During the Vietnam War, he served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of ten who survived.
"I initiated the interview by asking Bao Ninh what he did as an NVA solider. He answered that his work was dangerous and that he was often at great risk observing American installations at close range. He noted this was the general function unit. I wondered if he had gathered information outside or inside base perimeters. Such information would be used for later attacks, vigorously rehearsed, the NVA going to great lengths to perfect every detail, building sandbox models, practicing for days, sometimes weeks, occasionally calling off missions if conditions were not favorable. In short, had he penetrated the defenses of American bases as an elite sapper, gathered intelligence, then escaped undetected? He refrained from comment.
When asked about the men and women in his unit, Bao Ninh noted the average ages were between 18 and 20 years old. He distinguished between soldiers from the countryside and soldiers from the city. He emphasized that in combat, food and other necessities were shared, that the NVA spoke informally to each other, and like soldiers everywhere made ample use of profanity. What did the NVA talk about? Bao Ninh stated NVA troops most often spoke about sex and food, and exchanged jokes.
When I asked about disease and other hardships of guerrilla warfare, he referred only to the debilitating effects of malaria. He did not speak about the incredibly difficult training and subsequent grueling marches up or down the Ho Chi Minh trail, the lack of food, the constant threat of American aerial assault, the sick or disabled left to rest or die in cloth hammocks or tree branches.
I asked Ninh about the range of feelings he and the soldiers in his unit experienced during and after combat. He said the NVA cried or were sad when there were deaths or casualties. And what of religious ceremonies after the retrieval of the wounded or dead? To provide comparison, I described how the Americans would fly chaplains into the jungle who would then conduct song and prayer, often with our weapons and ammo scattered carelessly about. Ninh stated that in his unit all the troops were communist, and therefore no religious ceremonies were observed. The dead were mourned and buried. Recalling his book, I pressed Bao Ninh on this subject, but to no avail. Later, under somewhat different circumstances, he would reveal deeper feelings. For the present he remained implacable.
I returned to a previous subject. If the NVA soldiers didn't talk about ongoing battles, or battles they had fought in, what was the general morale? Ninh provided an eloquent and perhaps doctrinaire answer. Although everyone feared death, the NVA soldiers in his unit had a clear focus: to fight for the independence of the country. Perhaps this was true, since the Vietnamese had successfully fought the Chinese for a thousand years, then the french, then the Japanese, the French again, then the Americans.
Differene Between Vietminh and Vietcong
.png)
(The Top imiages are Vietcong fighters. The bottom are NVA. Look for the difference between the uniforms, weapons, organization and professionality between the two armies.)
The Viet Minh was a Vietnamese nationalist organization formed in opposition to Japanese rule in 1941, and then opposing, in turn, Chinese and French dominance of the country. The Viet Minh led the war for independence against France, and assumed control (under Ho Chi Minh) of the government of North Vietnam as part of the Geneva Conference of 1954. The Viet Minh lost political power by 1960, both as a result of their failure to institute critical reforms and, more importantly, their failed attempts to bring about unity with the South. They were replaced by the organization known as the Viet Cong (officially called the National Liberation Front,) which was a South Vietnamese communist revolutionary and nationalist organization.
The Viet Cong led the fight against the South Vietnamese government under Ngo Dinh Diem, and eventually against troops from the United States. While theoretically, the Viet Cong was separate from the government of the north, in reality, North Vietnamese soldiers served alongside Viet Cong guerrillas, and Viet Cong fighters were often under the command of NVA officers. The Viet Cong was dissolved when North and South Vietnam were unified.
The overwhelming majority of the Viet Cong were subsequently recruited in the South, but they received weapons, guidance, and reinforcements from North Vietnamese Army soldiers who had infiltrated into South Vietnam. During the Tet Offensive of 1968, the Viet Cong suffered devastating losses, and their ranks were later filled primarily by North Vietnamese soldiers. For the most part, the Viet Cong fought essentially a guerrilla war of ambush, terrorism, and sabotage; they used small units to maintain a hold on the countryside, leaving the main population centres to government authorities.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail
IF NONE OF THE LINKS WORK AT SCHOOL, WATCH IT AT HOME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poE_nNW9-yk
If that link does not work, try watching it here
And if that fails, try this one