(AP Photo/Henri Huet) Los Angeles Times. It seems that the author was likely part of the cavalry platoon as . ago. [35], For official US military operations reports, there was no established distinctions between enemy KIA and civilian KIA. The attack on the prisoner of war camp resulted in about 26 North Vietnamese dead and no U.S. or South Vietnamese casualties. Political turbulence there and two alleged North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. naval vessels spurred Johnson to demand the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. After recovering from my wound, I taught basic trainees at Fort Knox. According to Powells report, although there may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs, this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the division.. In the middle of the mountain, about two-thirds of the way up, I observed three Viet Cong coming out of a cave. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. Although that is no bad thing, it also demonized General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, which was something Eddie Adams was extremely sorry for. According to the South Vietnamese military, Lm's squad had just killed 34 people associated with the police, at least 24 of whom were civilians, when he was captured on February 1st. The Vietnam War (1955-1975) effectively became a proxy Cold War battle over communism, with North Vietnam supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies, and the South supported by America and anti-communist allies.. Johnson raised the number of South Vietnam deployments to 23,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of his first year in office. 1, 2, 3, 4 United States Marine Coprs, READ MORE: How the Armys Cover-Up Made the My Lai Massacre Even Worse. Get the best deals for 1/35 viet cong at eBay.com. 20% of black males were combat soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Marine Maj. Hubert G. Duncan, operations officer with the 4th Combined Action Group, instructs a Vietnamese. [15][16][17] Walter Mead estimates that approximately 365,000 Vietnamese civilians to have died as a result of the war during the period of American involvement. Then jets were called; they also attempted to take out the machine gun, but the VC again hid inside the cave and came back out to fire at our soldiers after the jets left. The us troops who followed down those holes were called tunnel rats. Estimates of casualties of the Vietnam War vary widely. American troops tending to a casualty on Hill Timothy during an action against the Viet Cong, Vietnam War, April 1968. . Answer (1 of 58): I have no independent confirmation on this. Our first operation, Operation Seward, took place in the vicinity of Tuy Hoa. and Kennedy did not oppose a coup that overthrew it a few months later. Viet Cong (VC) operatives detonated explosive charges causing the entire building to collapse. By Spencer C. Tucker ", Viet Cong and Peoples Army of Vietnam use of terror in the Vietnam War, Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate, "Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme", "20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate", http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/, http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a032189.pdf, Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. To fire a round into the cave, I had to elevate the recoilless rifle upward and fire the round in an arcing trajectory, more like an artillery piece. My Lai (4) and My Khe (4) (collectively the My Lai Massacre) claimed the largest number of victims with 420 and 90 respectively, and in five other places a total of about 100 civilians were executed. Transcript of 1994 Tulane University My Lai Conference. [36][37][38][39] The My Lai Massacre was initially written off as an operational success and covered up. I never been to Vietnam Two! "Like World War I . Once I had the shot lined up, we loaded a 35-pound white phosphorus round into the gun. According to RJ Rummel, from 1964 to 1975, an estimated 1,500 people died during the forced relocations of 1,200,000 civilians, another 5,000 prisoners died from ill-treatment and about 30,000 suspected communists and fighters were executed. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. the Vietnam War). The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995. War and Conflict, The Vietnam War, pic: October 1965, Chu Lai, South Vietnam, Two US, marines drag away a dead Viet Cong from a river after he had. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. Based on the current dollar value, the Vietnam War cost the equivalent of about $1 trillion. Ronald H. Spector is Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. We have a great online selection at the lowest prices with Fast & Free shipping on many items! I went through basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., and took AIT at Fort Dix, N.J., where I trained as heavy weapons infantry. On a run (on a run) Drug and alcohol use increased among soldiers, and an official report in 1971 estimated that one-third or more of U.S. troops were addicted. According to a 2009 study, one third of land in the central provinces of Vietnam is still contaminated with unexploded mines and ordnance. Moki Martin joined the Navy to become a "frogman," like those in World War II. The database also estimates combat deaths in Cambodia for the years 196775 to total 259,000. [21] During the peak war years, another scholar Guenter Lewy attributed almost a third of civilian deaths to the VC. We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons. Knowing news of the massacre would cause a scandal, officers higher up in command of Charlie Company and the 11th Brigade immediately made efforts to downplay the bloodshed. The enemy by my count suffered at least 15,000 dead in the area.". [45], Air force captain, Brian Wilson, who carried out bomb-damage assessments in free-fire zones throughout the delta, saw the results firsthand. Civilian deaths were partly caused by assassinations, massacres, and terror tactics. I served in the Army for three years. [29] American bombing in Cambodia is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 150,000 civilians and combatants. Fought the Viet Cong Three! How Colin Powell's Service in Vietnam Shaped His Leadership, How the Armys Cover-Up Made the My Lai Massacre Even Worse. The United States had provided funding, armaments, and training to South Vietnams government and military since Vietnams partition into the communist North and the democratic South in 1954. After writing letters to President Richard M. Nixon, the Pentagon, State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff and several congressmenwith no responseRidenhour finally gave an interview to the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in November 1969. The relaxed atmosphere was suddenly shattered around 1 a.m. when the sounds of an explosion ripped through the base. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. [101], Agent Orange and similar chemical defoliants have also caused a considerable number of deaths and injuries over the years, including among the US Air Force crew that handled them. Rummel calculated PAVN/VC deaths at 1,062,000 and ARVN and allied war deaths of 741,000, with both totals including civilians inadvertently killed. He estimated that victims of democide (deliberate killing of civilians) included 214,000 by North Vietnam/VC and 98,000 by South Vietnam and its allies. [36][37][41] All individuals killed in declared free-fire zones, combatants or not, were considered enemy killed in action by US forces . My job was to be a gunner on the 106mm recoilless rifle. 1) One of the more amazing stories to emerge from the eight-year secret war during the Vietnam War took place on October 5 . Observing for about 30 minutes, we saw that no one came out of the cave. Time magazine, in an April 12, 1968, article titled "Victory at Khe Sanh," reported General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, after flying into Khe Sanh by helicopter, declaring: "We took 220 killed at Khe Sanh and about 800 wounded and evacuated. Army officials said they cannot determine whether any records were lost, or under what circumstances. Shelby Stanton, writing in The Rise and Fall of an American Army, declined to include casualty statistics because of their 'general unreliability.' From there, the Aussies spread their recon patrol range by several kilometers. The Vietnamese newspaper Nhn Dn reported in 2012 that the U.S. government was providing $41 million to the project, which aimed to reduce the contamination level in 73,000 m of soil by late 2016. In the summer, Davis led three other Green Berets and what the Army calls "an inexperienced company of the 883rd South Vietnamese Regional Force" on an audacious raid against a North Vietnamese base. Since 1941 Congress has declared war only six times, all during World War II. WATCH: Vietnam War Documentaries on HISTORY Vault. The revelations of the My Lai massacre caused morale to plummet even further, as GIs wondered what other atrocities their superiors were concealing. what is a blind trust for lottery winnings; "[56] Another Marine commander, Gen. Robert E. Cushman Jr., added, "we had a big problem with atrocities attributed to them, which I sent on down to Saigon. This group was made up almost entirely of either working-class or rural youth. At the time Captain Davis returned from war, the country is still battling segregation. Yet they proceeded read more, The Vietnam War started in the 1950s, according to most historians, though the conflict in Southeast Asia had its roots in the French colonial period of the 1800s. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Other atrocities, such as a similar massacre of villagers at My Khe, are less well known. On the night of November 1-2 . Capt. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History. [62] According to the Vice Minister Nguyn B Hoan, in 2022, nearly 200,000 PAVN/VC were still MIA (whose bodies were have not been found), and 300,000 whose bodies have been found, but buried anonymously and never identified. Soldier of the 25th Infantry Division and his scout dog walk past the bodies of more than 50 Viet Cong killed in the "battle of Good Friday" 80 miles. By the early 1970s, the American war effort in Vietnam was winding down, as the Nixon administration continued its Vietnamization policy, including the withdrawal of troops and the transfer of control over ground operations to the South Vietnamese. President Joe Biden stands with Vietnam War veteran, Retired US Army Colonel Paris Davis, before awarding him the Medal of Honor, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 3, 2023. Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam, South Korea had more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen. More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, and more than 150,000 were wounded. In 1968 US soldiers murdered several hundred Vietnamese civilians in the single most infamous incident of the Vietnam War. The assailants used. Many of the refugees failed to survive the passage, facing danger from pirates, over-crowded boats, and storms. Not a single shot was fired against the men of Charlie Company at My Lai. By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. [61], According to the Vietnamese government's national survey and assessment of war casualties (March 2017), there were 849,018 PAVN military personnel dead, including combat death and non-combat death, from the period between 1960 and 1975. [19], Other casualties for the ARVN included up to 1,170,000 military wounded,[59] and 1,000,000 surrendered or captured. In Vietnam, it was used to take out bunkers and even buildings. A notorious military operation called Speedy Express killed thousands of Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta, earning the commander of the operation, Major General Julian Ewell, the nickname. After arriving in country, we spent about a month digging bunkers for our future base camp in the Pleiku area. Then a 26-year-old captain, Paris Davis, now 83, led a company tearing through a larger enemy force, pushing the attack despite being shot, absorbing shrapnel and another bullet to get wounded comrades to safety, refusing to join them on the evacuation helicopter, choosing rather to stay and continue destroying the remaining adversaries. Cleveland Plain Dealer. Trong thng 2 va qua, ch s gi lng thc ca T chc Lng Nng Lin hp quc (FAO) l 129,8 im, gim nh so vi mc 130,6 im ghi nhn hi thng 1 v l ch s thp nht k t thng 9/2021. "We caught the guards that were sleeping," Davis said. Shot him in his head Four! Just in the U.S., "more than 58,000 American soldiers were killed while more than 150,000 others wounded". NVA General to SOG: We Suffered 90 Percent Casualties (Pt. However, the situation significantly escalated since 6 February 1965, the VC attacked the U.S. compound in Pleiku, leaving eight Americans dead and . We reloaded another white phosphorous round. According to the Information Bureau of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), a shadow government formed by North Vietnam in 1969, between April 1968 and the end of 1970 American ground troops killed about 6,500 civilians in the course of twenty-one operations either on their own or alongside their allies. According to the Vietnamese government, unexploded ordnance has killed some 42,000 people since the end of the war. [93][94] With the draft increasing due to the troop buildup in South Vietnam, the military significantly lowered its admission standards. These numbers do not include civilian and ARVN military deaths result from the communist mass-internment, the refugee crisis and subsequent exodus of Vietnamese people after the Fall of Saigon. (Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images). The killed in action figure comes from "Special Subject 4: The Work of Locating and Recovering the Remains of Martyrs From Now Until 2020 And Later Years," downloaded from the Vietnamese government website datafile on 1 December 2017. Among the U.S. Armys internal investigators of the My Lai massacre was Major Colin Powell, who later became Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. BBC News. [53][54] A separate study was carried out by RAND Corporation employee Terry Rambo, who conducted interviews in 1970 on reported Korean atrocities in ARVN/civilian areas. I looked through the scope on the 106 and could see Purple Heart Mountain. Rummel estimates 212,000 killed by Khmer Rouge (19671975), 60,000 killed by U.S. and 1,000 killed by South Vietnam (196773). [72], The Phoenix Program, a counterinsurgency program executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, and the Republic of Vietnam's security apparatus, killed 26,369 suspected of being VC operatives and informants. Regarding accusations of atrocities committed by American soldiers, Powell stated that, In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between Americal Division soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent, a statement that many critics have derided as whitewashing, and accusing Powell of being a participant in the My Lai cover-up. Amid the international uproar and Vietnam War protests that followed Ridenhours revelations, the U.S. Army ordered a special investigation into the My Lai massacre and subsequent efforts to cover it up. They were: Lieutenant Bob Kerrey, Lieutenant Tom Norris, and EM2 Mike Thornton. Noting Davis' wounds, Cole tells Davis to leave with the wounded. I was first assigned to the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Wash. Once there I was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. Where: In Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon, Vietnam. May 28, 2016 12 PM PT. "If we had obeyed that order, there would have been soldiers that would have been just mutilated, because there [were] no other friendly forces available," he said. The small village of My Lai is located in Quang Ngai province, which was believed to be a stronghold of the communist National Liberation Front (NLF) or Viet Cong (VC) during the Vietnam War. Estimates include both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Charlie Company was sent to the area on March 16 for a search-and-destroy mission. The boat people's first destinations were the Southeast Asian locations of Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. [11][12][13][14] It was difficult to distinguish between civilians and military personnel in many instances as many individuals were part-time guerrillas or impressed laborers who did not wear uniforms. Americans call it the "Vietnam War." The Vietnamese refer to it as the "American War" that dominated 30 years of Vietnam's history. "The general said 'If I was down there, I'd probably kick your ass.' The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. President Joe Biden on Friday awarded the Medal of Honor to a Black Army Special Forces hero from the Vietnam War who has waited close to 60 years to receive the nation's top award .