“We’re with you, we will NEVER forget”
By: Amanda and Annie
To us the Vietnam is an unexplainable war. When we started we didn’t know much about it and now as we have expanded our knowledge of it, we would like to share with you what we have learned. There are so many things that people knowledgeable of this war, probably didn’t know. For example: One of the popular weapons was the “pineapple bomb” which was a canister filled with metal pellets. As you read on you will learn so much more as we have researching this war.
Vietnam is a small country to the South of China and in 111 BC it became part of the Chinese Empire. While being part of the Chinese Empire, the Vietnam struggled to gain its independence from its much larger neighbor. The language, religion, architecture, system of government, and most other aspects of Vietnam life reflected on the Chinese Influence. In 1868, the Vietnam emperor surrendered and signed a peace treaty with France, in which at the time they were in a war with. In this time era, the French controlled 30 million people living in Vietnam and took over Cambodia and Laos and called it Indochina.
A group was formed before the war that was called the Vietminh, which means the Vietnam Revolutionary League. In 1953, the Vietminh controlled large areas of North Vietnam. At this time the United States was concerned over the success of communism being presented in the Vietnam. Over 142,000 soldiers were killed through the acts of communism. U.S. efforts for stop this would be wasted if communism were spread to the south countries of Vietnam. The communist parties in South Vietnam were killing thousands of innocent civilians. This caused a war in Indochina. During this war the Vietminh had taken the land from large farm owners in the territory they had controlled and gave it to the peasants. At the time they feared that communism would be spread throughout the world.
In 1961, the South Vietnamese received money to increase their army size from 150,000 to 170,000 and send 100 military advisors to Vietnam for training. Then a stockade was built around the village and patrolled by armed guards, which served as a protection source. During this time, the president stated this-“ If we quit Vietnam tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii and next week we’ll have to fight in San Francisco.” Now the forces advocated the bombing of Hanoi in an attempt to persuade North Vietnam to cut off supplies to the NLF, but still they carried out bombing raids on the North Vietnam. Then, North Vietnam preformed acts of sabotage and either kidnapped or killed the communist officials.
In August of 1964, the U.S. ship “Maddox” was fired open by 3 North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf on Tonkin. When this occurred President Johnson stated this- “ Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met only with alert defense, but with a positive reply.” But President Johnson was not willing to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves. On March 8th, 3,500 United States Marines arrive in the South Vietnam to help them fight the North Vietnam. Their leader stated- “ The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”
During this war they used a considerable amount of different weapons, the main weapon used for this war was the B-52 bomber aircraft. These machines could fly at heights that prevented them from being seen or even heard, and dropped over 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam between 1965-1973. The United States forces dropped a considerable number of incendiary devices, which included napalm (a mixture of petrol and a chemical thickener that produces tough sticky gel that attaches to the skin.) Another popular weapon used was the “Pineapple bomb” which was made up of 250 metal pellets inside of a small canister. An American plane could drop a thousand pineapples over an area the size of four football fields. In a single air strike two hundred and fifty thousand pellets were spewed in a horizontal pattern over the land below, hitting everything that was on the ground at the time. But since with the pineapple bomb it consisted of metal they decided to experiment with plastic.
During the war the US objective for bombing raids on North Vietnam was not to kill it’s 17 million population but to maim them. In 1968, they spent a total of $300 million dollars on damage alone; this is how damaging this war actually was. Also about 700 military aircrafts valued at $900 million dollars had been shot down. With 3 million United States soldiers fighting between 1965 and 1973, being called up at age 18. Since the soldiers return from the Vietnam War over 100,000 have committed suicide from the mental stresses. Only 476 of our US troops had been killed or wounded in this time.
In Military terms VICTORY was for the United States forces. But between 1963 and 1973 9,118 men were prosecuted for refusing to be drafted into the army, they feared leaving their loved ones. Also between 1960 and 1973, 503,926 members of the United States armed forces deserted. Troops were being reduced by the thousands, it went from 540,000 by 25,000 and another 60,000 were to leave the following December. The gradual removal of all US troops would eventually result in a National Liberation Front victory. With 25 of our US troops being charged with war crimes and 56,869 of them killed and 153,329 wounded. This war took a serious toll on the US population in the 1960’s. Today only 1,830 Americans are still listed as “MIA” (missing in action). With the high amount of stresses that the surviving troops suffer 10-15 percent of them are now using high-grade heroin.