An infantry platoon commander in combat had an average of 6 weeks life expectancy. Event date is used instead of declared dead date for some of those who were listed as missing in action). I told by RTO that i could carry my own radio, When he agreed he was humping ammo. We all die, so its not even worth worrying about when in my opinion, id rather do something that i knew was worth it and risk dieing instead of living in fear of death. Fact: The domino theory was accurate. As an infantry platoon Sgt of a platoon made up of all draftees my age 21 plus or minus a year We fought the largest single one day battle of the war March 21, 1967 known as the Battle of Soui Tre, fire support base Gold operation Junction City, that base was commanded by LtCol John Vessey of the 2/77 FA Vessey was a 25 year veteran of WWII fame with a DSC at Anzio, and on this day he was looking at the end of his career after that tour in Vietnam. located on the South End of, the Post. Thank You for your courageous service as an RTO with the legendary Hawk Recon Platoon. Sgt. There must have been a real mathematician to come up with those calculations. Comments were more interesting than the article it self. Startled, I quickly pointed my M60 at them. We were all in our Bunkers, and at the ready with our weapons. I was a 2nd Lt. Infantry platoon Leader. 240 men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War. Company B had seven dead, Grandstaff announced, and I was to take No. I just wanted to get off No. A much better approach would be/have been: of all the combat-casualties, what was their No. Was it left behind on some forgotten battlefield? This makes calculations of those alive, even in 2017, difficult to maintain. A soldier or Marine in Vietnam had a 98% chance of survival if he was evacuated within the first hour of being injured the best odds in the history of American warfare up to that time. I was sitting on the ground one day trying to dry out my gear and better configure my ruck when my squad leader came walking over to me and said, Gow, youve got the radio. As he turned and walked away! We wanted a break. Im laying behind a rice paddie dike.I put my whole body as far down in the muck while the bullets were over my head. endstream
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I knew some of this, but certainly not all. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground. If there was anything to this life expectancy of a few minutes then myself and many of my friends that are still alive today would be a long time dead. https://open.spotify.com/show/5Th7BCpIKDE1hVTqNL3u0Q. We did interdictions, blocks and other fun things on the river. I was told my life expectancy was about 45 secs during a fire fight because of the weapons and demo I carried. While traveling through the boonies the first few men were usually always shot first. Still shaken, I grabbed the gun and crawled to the left inside the streambed. I was constantly untangling the barrel and bipod of the gun from grasping vines and branches. Then one hot, sunny day, while walking across rice paddies, we suddenly received small-arms fire from Viet Cong in some distant hills. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. I for one commend you for your courage and thank you for your service to your country. Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation. %%EOF
I was told to help carry one of the bodies. It was reported as an overwhelming success for the Communist forces and a decided defeat for the U.S. forces. Very interesting I carried theM 60 for 5 months that gun would cut down anything. (and yes, you cant ask them, so it would have to be derived from the AA-reports and survivors). No. An Hinglish word (Hindi/English). The Davis Station in Saigon was named for him. How could we lose a war we had already stopped fighting? The Vietnam War gave us trouble because we didnt know how to counteract against guerrilla warfare in a jungle (dont forget that the US Army was switching to M16s, which often jammed). It was a chaotic nightmare. It was very nearly my last. I was a cmbt engr demolition specialist carried a 45 auto and an M70 grenade launcher in addition to the C-4 and Det Cord. NFS. Over the next two months, we exchanged fire with groups of the NVA. 2. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. I was an Infantry Scout Dog handler. They used the callsign MEDIVAC and were armed. All the comments and replies are of absolute truth, I was only 18 when I got to Nam ,Im a country boy from NC so here I am Both my tours were in the Delta (IV Corps) where the only ground troops were regular ARVNs and RUFF/PUFFS. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book All That We Can Be, said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. The 140,000 evacuees in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives. Learned a lot from him. The Vietnam War was the first American war in which Black and White troops were not formally segregated, and even saw significant growth in the number of African Americans engaged in battlefield combat, [1] though some de facto segregation still occurred. At age 55, World War 2 Veterans We are a woman-owned small business and Veteran-owned incorporated in Ohio. I personally carried 300 rounds of ammo at all times, one belt in the gun and two across my chest. No trees or anything on the ground. Often as not he was right beside you with a stolen chicken and a bag of rice. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phucs brothers were killed in this incident. We went out typically in two boat patrols one lead one cover . We could not see any enemy soldiers, but we could see smoke coming from their weapons through the trees. What were the life expectancies of soldiers during the VietnamWar? EACH OF US CARRIES OUR OWN MEMORIES AND THEY RUN THE GAMUT. I kept the radio because I understood the power of having the first communication with the support mechanisms of the military. I had to rely on my gun more than before. You of course had the radio plus xtra batteries & handsets plus your rucksack with 7 to 8 canteens , 20 mags ( I used to carry 17 rounds in the mags instead of 20 ) because the springs would force the round into the chamber causing jams . The TOTAL number of CIB and CMB awarded would give you the answer !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! . Each company had eight M60s. Contents1 [] Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. The Army suffered the most total casualties, 38,179 or 2.7 percent of its force. But I made it back in one piece. The man with the carbine immediately dropped it, and the two VC surrendered. 5 Answers There is no word like addressal. As I made it back to the road I remember seeing the RIght there and the NVA we were usually up against knew this. Then the tempo changed suddenly and violently. It was just north of Saigon. Some were constantly exposed to combat, some not so often. I spent my year in Vietnam with the 1/22nd infantry part of the 4th division. Then I dropped back down in the streambed to organize our ammo. The dead were placed on ponchos. Needless too say I depended on Sgt. We do have infantry (why do you think we have that MOS? Shortly before 11 a.m. on May 18, the point squad in Company Bs 2nd Platoon spotted three NVA soldiers walking on a trail near the Cambodian border and attempted to capture them, but the NVA dashed off into the jungle. Because if only 1 RTO fought for say only 10 or 15 minutes before being killed, that would up the AVG for the total war! Despite initial victories by the Communists forces, the Tet Offensive resulted in a major defeat of those forces. 101st Airborne Division. There were usually 3 man (At least 2) point teams. I never thought of it that way before but have many times since. Eventually I found a spot where the bed leveled off and began firing on the NVA. His best friend is 86 and still alive. Fact: 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. He was killed in an ambush along with three others. Certainly got my attention. Welcome Home Brothers ! This makes our site more accessible to the blind, visually impaired, motor disabled, people with cognitive disabilities and more. We flew north, then made a stop, in Cam Rahn Bay. Bob Sanzone. The Department of Defense Vietnam War Service Index officially provided by The War Library originally reported with errors that 2,709,918 U.S. military personnel as having served in-country. Welcome Home Roger. Was No. I think those numbers are percentages of US KIA, not mortality times. by Zita Ballinger Fletcher 1/18/2022. They were a great bunch. (tirotactico.net). HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. approaching a village and a firefight starts). Spent my year in a Recon platoon 2/35th 4th ID. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance. 4 Joey Piambino were to my right in the streambed. 15 May he was killed by friendly fire, and a host of us were WIA, myself included. 9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975. Isolated atrocities committed by American Soldiers produced torrents of outrage from anti-war critics and the news media while Communist atrocities were so common that they received hardly any media mention at all. There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non-Vietnam Veterans of the same age group (Source: Veterans Administration Study). I am proud to have fought alongside of them. It resulted in the death of some 45,000 NVA troops and the complete, if not total destruction of the Viet Cong elements in South Vietnam. See my calculation below in the comments bogus indeed. We had been carrying machine guns for over seven months. The blasts from the AMMO, really lit up the whole area. They run into the fire to help the wounded and many get wounded or killed. His comparison to a FB was that if we were fired on we returned fire and requested assistance when needed. It may not have worked for some other wars, but they were pretty helpful. I sure feel for all you guys that went outside the wire. Take out the power center, youve got the edge. It began just as, it was getting dark. The enemy fire ceased, and we made arrangements to collect our dead before continuing on to Company A. I agree with all of the comments, however I would add Tunnel Rats to the group I was one and saw many of my friends die in those tunnels I was very fortunate or very lucky and was never a lead but was at the tail end. They were well-armed, well-trained and knew how to fight. DeLong had only fired the weapon once in training, so I let him fire off a few rounds to practice.