Ken Burns' "Vietnam"

Quote: odiousgambit

Nice! could inspire my next signature line, stay tuned

As with anything fleastiff posts its been stolen from somewhere else or else its been totally concocted out of thin air.

Quote: Nareed

The French had just come out of five years under Nazi domination, and several years of warfare in their territory.

This detail boggled my mind. Ho Chi Minh assumed that after Hiroshima, the French would devote 100% of their efforts to rebuilding war-torn France. It cannot be overstated just how insanely stupid it was for the French to attempt to continue occupying Indochina after WWII. The only thing dumber than this was the fact that the U.S. paid for it, and eventually took their place.

Quote: terapined

The stories from the American soldiers last nite was the best part of last nites episode
That one marine that was so seriously wounded that medic after medic considered him a goner
Looking forward to tonight's episode, The Tet offensive

Tet Offensive a/k/a Operation Fargo. Its sole purpose was to get Westmorland "Offsides" during Tet which for years had always been an unofficial cease fire.
Those stories from soldiers are the best part because things like that get filtered out as they go up the chain of command.
Early in the war two presidential advisors were sent to Vietnam to report to the President. Their reports were diametrically opposite to each other and someone quipped about are you two sure you went to the same country. One of them promptly said: we went to totally different countries. Instead of going to Saigon and talking to Generals, Information Officers and Politicians; I went to the countryside and talked to privates and sergeants; that is where the war is being fought; those are the people who are dying.

One guy went around to various commands and got a copy of the Green and Red map: the map that showed how much of a district was "safe" and how much was 'VC territory". AFTER he had that map, he said: I'm coming back in two hours and you and I are going to take a drive in one jeep with two guards. In the interim two hours all those officers radically updated the Green and Red areas. Headquarters got impressive maps but when someone actually threatened to take them out to the middle of a green area boy did those maps change fast.
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Quote: reno

It cannot be overstated just how insanely stupid it was for the French to attempt to continue occupying Indochina after WWII.

They'd just come out of Nazi occupation and years of war. their pride was wounded even more because part of their population collaborated with the Nazis. I don't mean just with the occupation, but many fought for the Nazis. On top of that, they didn't kick the Nazis out, but had to await liberation by British and US forces (and an assortment of others).

Morally, though, De Gaul and co. attempted to do to Indochina, albeit more humanely, what the Nazis had just done to them.

Quote:

The only thing dumber than this was the fact that the U.S. paid for it, and eventually took their place.

Now you know why Barbara Tuchman describes this period as "America betrays herself in Vietnam."

What boggles the mind was America's total inability to learn from what happened to the French in Indochina RIGHT THEN.

The French didn't want to give up their empire and its resources and abandon the French families there. Ego. Pride.

Eventually France even abandoned the captured Legionaires.

Americans were slow to learn because of this Public Relations campaign of lying to the people, the congress, the military, etc. All those speech writers delay learning history. Vietnam, Columbia University, Chicago? Those were extreme betrayals but smaller routine betrayals carried the battle.

Quote: terapined

That one marine that was so seriously wounded that medic after medic considered him a goner What a story

Yes, that was amazing. One guy was in a VA hospital and they needed a spare part. He was told if we find one you will live if we can't you will die. Fortunately for him they found the spare part.
Sometimes it worked the other way: Newbies who had not been "in country" but were sent in a replacements found the same situation as world war two: "don't send us anymore replacements, we don't have time to bury them".

One replacement was killed his first night in country. He had been watching a newly arrive SVA unit digging in down the road and then when night fell he was smoking on guard duty. Maybe, just maybe, in his last moments he realized that you don't smoke on guard duty and that it was clearly an NVA unit that he had watched all afternoon.

What's amazing is that North Viet Nam had superior equipment
WTF
They were shooting the highly dependable Kalashnikov rifle. Gets dirty, it still works
Americans were shooting back with the undependable M16. Gets a little dirt, it jams. Junk.

Quote: terapined

What's amazing is that North Viet Nam had superior equipment
WTF
They were shooting the highly dependable Kalashnikov rifle. Gets dirty, it still works
Americans were shooting back with the undependable M16. Gets a little dirt, it jams. Junk.

That's why my last long gun purchase was a 91/30. 83 years old and it's in better nick than some purchased in my lifetime. In a hobby of such elegant machines, commie gear has all the elegance of a hammer. And they're about as reliable as one, too. Add to that a purchase price of <$100 and crates of Berdan @$0.10 p/rd for 7.76X54r's, and every able bodied gunner should have one. Forget your polymers and range finders, bang something down at 200yds with iron sights and unpadded wood stocks. That's gunnin'.

Quote: terapined

What's amazing is that North Viet Nam had superior equipment.

Cheap, simple, no gold plating, no doo dads. The manufacturer disputes it but many marines thought it was the powder charge that caused the gun to jam not just that in a hug the ground ambush its hard to keep a rifle clean. I've never really liked the term 'firefight' but in any such ambush half the casualties were often inflicted in the first two minutes. The only thing to do was hunt some 'cover' and often that meant mud, water, muck of some sort. No place for a sensitive weapon system. This take a hill, abandon it, take it again system was foolish but no commander had any better ideas.

During the Zulu Wars the British soldiers were urinating on their rifles in a desperate attempt to prevent premature discharge when a cartridge was loaded.

One advantage of the colt .45 was it was rugged; it worked in the rain soaked Philippines, Cuba,Malaya. Later procurement types wanted changes.

Some GIs in Vietnam picked up a Kalishnikov and sought ammunition for it because it was more reliable.

Even in the Wild West the Cavalry like to travel with civilians. The military often had to fire single shot rifles in volleys; the civilians had repeating rifles and fired in between volleys. Each NVA company had a long range sniper rifle, marines all had standardized weapons.

Quote: Face

That's why my last long gun purchase was a 91/30. 83 years old

You being the gun guy here, wasn't the m14 pretty reliable? Then I thought it was replaced by the m16 that Lady Bird Johnson owned so much stock in Colt arms?

https://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-M14-replaced-so-quickly#!n=12