History of the Vietnam War 101 FAQ's
Note: This post is compiled from the contributions of several authors.
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Q: What period does the Veteran's Administration consider being the "Vietnam Era" for benefits?
A: The Vietnam War started, for U.S. veterans benefits, on Feb. 28, 1961 and with an ending date of May 7, 1975. These dates include what the Veteran's Department regards as being the "Vietnam Era."
Q: How many women served in Vietnam and how many were killed.
A:
As for women who served in the military in Vietnam:
Total Served - 5,905
Army - 4,675
Navy - 423
Marine Corps - 36
Air Force - 771
Military KIA - 8
02-18-66 2nd Lt. Carol Ann Elizabeth Drazba (A), KIA
02-18-66 2nd Lt. Elizabeth Ann Jones (A), KIA
11-30-67 Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander (A), KIA
11-30-67 1st Lt. Hedwig Diane Orlowski (A), KIA
07-08-68 2nd Lt. Pamela Dorothy Donovan (A),
Died of pneumonia
06-08-69 1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane (A), KIA
08-69 Lt. Col. Annie Ruth Graham (A),
Died of a stroke
04-04-75 Capt. Mary Therese Klinker (AF),
Died in the crash of a C-5A during Operation BABYLIFT
Australian Nurse Corps
1971 Barbara Black
As for the number of civilian women who served, and died, there is
currently no definitive listing available. What follows must be considered
a "work in progress" meaning new names will be added as necessary.
American Red Cross
1969 Hannah Crews - Died in a jeep accident.
1970 Virginia Kirsch - Raped and murdered by a U.S. soldier.
1971 Lucinda Richter - Died of Gillian-Barre disease.
Army Special Services
1968 Rosalyn Muskat - Died in a jeep accident.
1967 Dorothy Phillips - Died in a plane crash.
Catholic Relief Services
1969 Gloria Redlin - Shot to death.
Central Intelligence Agency
03-30-65 Barbara Robbins - Died in the Christmas bombing of the American
Embassy, Saigon.
United States Agency for International Development
1967 Lynn Allen - Murdered by U.S. soldier.
Journalists
1965 Georgette "Dickey" Chappelle - Killed by a mine on patrol with
Marines outside Chu Lai.
1966 Phillipa Schuyler - Killed in a firefight, Da Nang.
Missionaries
1968 Carolyn Griswald - Killed in raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot
during Tet/68
1963 Janie A. Makel - Shot to death in an ambush in Dalat. Janie was five
months old.
1968 Ruth Thompson - Killed in raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during
Tet/68.
1968 Ruth Wilting - Killed in raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during
Tet/68.
POW/MIA
Evelyn Anderson - Captured and burned to death in Kengkok, Laos, 1972.
Remains recovered and returned to U.S.
Beatrice Kosin - Captured and burned to death in Kengkok, Laos, 1972.
Remains recovered and returned to U.S.
Betty Ann Olsen - Captured during raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot
during Tet 1968. Died in 1968 and was buried somewhere along Ho Chi Minh
Trail by fellow POW, Michael Benge. Remains not recovered.
Eleanor Ardel Vietti - Captured at leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot, May 30,
1962. Still listed as POW.
Operation BABYLIFT
The following women were killed in the crash, outside Saigon, of the C5-A Galaxy transporting Vietnamese children out of the country on April 4, 1975. All of the women were working for various U.S. government agencies in Saigon at the time of their deaths with the exception of Theresa Drye (a child) and Laurie Stark (a teacher). Sharon Wesley had previously worked for both the American Red Cross and Army Special Services. She chose to stay on in Vietnam after the pullout of U.S. military forces in 1973.
Barbara Adams
Clara Bayot
Nova Bell
Arleta Bertwell
Helen Blackburn
Ann Bottorff
Celeste Brown
Vivienne Clark
Juanita Creel
Mary Ann Crouch
Dorothy Curtiss
Twila Donelson
Helen Drye
Theresa Drye
Mary Lyn Eichen
Elizabeth Fugino
Ruthanne Gasper
Beverly Herbert
Penelope Hindman
Vera Hollibaugh
Dorothy Howard
Barbara Kauvulia
Barbara Maier
Rebecca Martin
Sara Martini
Martha Middlebrook
Katherine Moore
Marta Moschkin
Marion Polgrean
June Poulton
Joan Pray
Sayonna Randall
Anne Reynolds
Marjorie Snow
Laurie Stark
Barbara Stout
Doris Jean Watkins
Sharon Wesley
Q: How, and Why, did the United States get involved in the Vietnam War?
A: Since this a very complex issue, I feel it necessary to answer it twice, with two different audiences taken into consideration: Those who are at the Middle/High School Level, and for those who are College or Graduate Students.
Middle/High School Level
How and why did the U.S. get involved in Vietnam? America first became involved in what would become Vietnam during World War II (it was called French Indochina then). When the French surrendered to the Germans in 1941 in Europe, its colony, Indochina, came under the "supervision" of Germany's ally in Asia, Japan. Japan allowed the French to keep political control of Indochina initially, but they used the Indochinese ports and mineral resources for their own ends. With the U.S. fighting Japan during this period, they would raid Japanese targets in and around Indochina, which resulted in an occasional plane being shot down. Because the French were in cahoots with the Japanese there (though reluctantly in most cases) the only organization that these downed American flyers could look to for help was a non-governmental organization called the Viet Minh, headed by a man called Ho Chi Minh. During the war, the Viet Minh helped the U.S. fight the Japanese and helped rescue a number of American flyers. The U.S. thought so much of the Viet Minh's help-- even though it was known that Ho Chi Minh was a communist--that they sent them a lot of military supplies and a number of OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) agents to teach the Viet Minh how to use the equipment they were receiving. When the war ended, Ho Chi Minh really thought that the U.S. would back his desire to have Vietnam become an independent country, and not stay a colony of France. President Roosevelt was on record saying that he favored a new world order that would have the former colonies of European powers obtain their nationhood. FDR's successor, Harry Truman, was even more convinced that this was the proper thing to do. France, however, did not want to give up its colonies in Asia (and neither did the British) so, after the Japanese surrender, the French put pressure on Truman to permit them to reclaim Indochina. The French, in effect, blackmailed Truman. They told Truman that if he, and America, wanted French assistance in Europe to keep the communists from taking control of all Europe, then Truman would have to permit France to regain control of Indochina. In the end, Truman, seeing Europe as more important at that time than Asia, gave in, and France reoccupied Indo- China in 1946. Ho Chi Minh, naturally, felt like he had been betrayed by the U.S. and he and his organization began a guerrilla war against the French, a war of independence for them.
Between 1946 and 1950, the French fought the Viet Minh with little direct help from the U.S., however, when China fell to the communists in 1949, and North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, an anti-communist paranoia overtook the U.S. government. They saw Indochina as just another stepping stone for the communist's ultimate conquest of all of Asia. Yet, with the U.S. involved militarily in Korea, we had to let the French do the fighting against the communists in Vietnam--but now with ever increasing U.S. support. By 1954, the U.S. was giving France over $1 Billion a month to help in their fight in Vietnam. It was all to no avail. The French were fighting a people who were fighting for their freedom, for their independence, and the French eventually lost. In 1954, after the decisive French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French finally surrendered. In the peace treaty that was signed in Geneva Switzerland in 1954, called the Geneva Accords, France agreed to gradually remove all their troops from Vietnam.
The U.S. by this time, however, was not willing to accept a French surrender that would mean that another Asian country would fall to the communists, so they manuvered things around to where the Americans took responsibility for the southern part of Vietnam while the Viet Minh took responsibility for the northern part. Originally, the Geneva Accords, recognizing that there were two completely different political systems involved (communism and capitalism) stated that the communists would be allowed to consolodate their positions in the north and the capitalists would do the same in the south. Then, in two years, in 1956, there would be a national election which would determine what form of government the entire country would have. In effect, the Geneva Accords gave both sides a two year breathing spell. This two year period though, proved disastrous for Vietnam. The U.S. backed government in the south (not a national government yet, just a bureaucracy to take care of necessary business) refused to sign the Geneva Accords (France and the Viet Minh did). Thus, because they did not sign, the southern Vietnamese leaders felt (with U.S. encouragement) that they were not obliged to live up to the terms of the Accords.
Then, with U.S. military and economic help, a U.S. picked southern Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, assumed the leadership of a U.S. sponsored Republic of Vietnam The U.S. even wrote the constitution for the new "country." All with the idea that they were saving at least a part of Vietnam from falling to the communists. From 1956 until his assassination in 1963 (just weeks before John F. Kennedy's assassination) Diem ran South Vietnam (SVN) as a tyrant, with the U.S. backing his every move. The U.S. also kept increasing the numbers of U.S. servicemen serving in SVN, ostensibly as "advisors" to the SVN Army (ARVN). These numbers rose from a few hundred in 1956 to over 15,000 in 1963. But what of the Viet Minh? After all, they HAD won the war. Well, Ho Chi Minh spent most of the period from 1954-1959 consolidating his hold on North Vietnam, all the while hoping that the international community would force the South Vietnamese and the Americans to live up to the Geneva Accords.
When this didn't happen, he, first, encouraged the communists still living in SVN to actively combat the Diem government. This was the start of the guerrilla war in SVN with the southern communists--which came to be called the Viet Cong--fighting the ARVN troops. Americans were not yet involved in the day-to-day fighting except as advisors. In 1959, North Vietnam started infiltrating Northern Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops into SVN and the government of SVN started to fall apart at the seams. To keep the SVN government from collapsing, the U.S. had to keep increasing its aid to SVN. When Diem was assassinated by his own generals in a coup in November 1963, SVN was very close to falling to the Viet Cong and NVA forces. In short order, the U.S. government decided that if SVN was to be saved, it would have to be done through the use of American troops, thus, in March, 1965, Lyndon Johnson sent the Marines into SVN, which began our military part of the war.
College and Graduate Students
At your level of education, I won't mince words with you, nor try to give you a (the) "generally accepted" theories on the why's and wherefor's of our involvement in Vietnam. American politics got us into Vietnam and American politics kept us there, and American politics finally ended the war.
It all started right before the end of WWII when, with victory in sight, some politicians (at home and abroad) began to realize that our allie in the fight against Hitler, the Soviet Union (and their communist political regime) would more than likely pose an even greater future threat than had Naziism. After all, being a communist or openly supporting the Soviet Union had been considered unpatriotic before Germany invaded Russia in 1941.
While FDR thought that Stalin was a pragmatic politician and as such, could be dealt with logically, Truman distrusted Stalin immensely. So, from the end of WWII to about 1948 when the Turkey/Greece civil wars resulted in our containment policy, and both the Marshall Plan and NATO were well on their way to enaction, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were like two boxers in the first round of a 15 round fight.
During this period, Truman spent an inordinate amount of his time (he really had to) on foreign considerations, what with the Russians taking over as much of Eastern Europe as they did and with the formation of NATO and the UN. He neglected to properly address the question of communist influences in the U.S. proper. The Republicans jumped on this issue and, when they held brief superiority in the House during 1946-1948, they began what would be called the 2nd Red Scare. This was the time of the beginning of the excesses of HUAC, of public red-baiting, and the time when Joseph McCarthy was getting comfortable in his first Senate term.
Truman, his advisors, and the Democratic Party quickly scrambled to catch up with the Republicans on this issue, resulting in a situation whereby the Democrats began to out-do the Republicans in their chasing after "Reds" in the American society and government. Paranoia became an equal-opportunity condition in American politics.
Even though the Democrats regained control of the House in 1948, they continued to pursue the anti-communist agenda of the Republicans, but, with the fall of China in 1949, and the invasion of South Korea in 1950, the Republicans could and did maintain that the Democrates, because they were the more "liberal" than the Republicans, had HELPED the communist cause (after all to the Repubs way of thinking, being a Dem and being a communist was only a matter of degrees). The events in China and Korea, and the pressure of the Republican members of Congress, forced Truman to get rid of his old "China Hands" in the State Department--after all, why keep people around that patently could't do their jobs or who MIGHT be tainted. This action alone greatly exacerbated our diplomacy in the late 50's and 60's because there was now no-one in the State Department that really knew what was going on in the Far East.
The Cold War that deepened in the 50's, coupled with the anti-communist hysteria of the 2nd Red Scare in the U.S. began to trickle down to grass roots American politics. Both Democrat and Republican members of Congress had to come out with a firm anti-communist position. The Democrats, though, still were faced with the Republican charge that they (the Dems) had "lost" China.
Because of these domestic political necessities, Truman began upping the ante of American aid to the French in Indo-china. With American troops fighting communism in Korea, he knew he had to let the French be the American proxie in fighting communism in Vietnam. Eisenhower just followed Truman's lead in this respect. When France was on the brink of defeat in 1954, Eisenhower was pressured to either commit U.S. military forces to the frey (mostly our airpower) or to use the atomic bomb to pull the French bacon out of the fire. To Eisenhower's credit, he vetoed both options.
However, his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (the "world-class" diplomat who refused to shake hands with Chou En Lai and maybe the most adamently anti-communist in the whole Eisenhower administration) and his director of the CIA (John Foster's brother, Allen Douglas) did manage to get Eisenhower to back the nation-building plan that would later result in the formation of South Vietnam. Remember, the two had a track record already in that regard, in ousting communist-leaning governments (democratically elected) in both Guatemala and Iran. Further, Ike didn't want to give the Democrats the issue of his "losing" all of Indochina to communism.
So, our getting involved in South Vietnam was a direct result of American domestic politics dominating our foreign policy decisions. It would stay that way. Both Kennedy and Johnson continued our presence because they feared that if South Vietnam fell on their watches, it would all but destroy the Democratic Party in the U.S.
Q: How and why did the Vietnam War end?
A: Basically, the war ended because the U.S. public became tired of the war. They became tired of the war because they could not see how it could be won and that, as the war was being waged, they thought that the U.S. would just expend more and more young American lives for year after year after year. And what was even more telling, their governments (both the Johnson and the Nixon administrations) kept lying to them about what were the American goals in Vietnam, what was really happening, and when the war would end. Even when the war was being fought in its earliest period, in 1966, the U.S. government had sought to sign a peace treaty with NVN to end the war. In the early years though, the U.S. was not really serious about these peace overtures since they thought that American military might would win the day and make a peace treaty merely a formality. By 1968, though, Americans began seriously to pursue a treaty with NVN, but they still wanted a peace treaty on American terms. As the war dragged on, and more and more protests against the war occured in the U.S., Nixon finally agreed to peace terms with the NVN in 1973. It was basically a capitualization to the North Vietnamese because the peace treaty signed in 1973 contained almost the exact terms and wording of a peace treaty the North Vietnamese had advanced in 1968. According to the treaty, the U.S. would pull all their troops out of SVN, save for some advisory personnel, by the end of 1973. After that the ARVN would essentially be on their own against the NVA. The U.S. did tell the SVN government that they would continue to supply them with an almost unlimited stream of military supplies, even when the U.S. combat personnel were gone. The U.S. lied. After the U.S. troops left, the Congress of the United States first drastically cut all aid to SVN, then cut it off completely. The result, in 1975, the North Vietnamese invaded South Vietnam and conquered the country in a matter of weeks.
Q: What are the facts behind the My Lai massacre?
A: What follows is the VIETNAM WAR ALMANAC's entry on My Lai, written by Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr. Its an excellent accounting, and about as brief as you can get and still cover the story accurately and fairly.
My Lai Incident
The My Lai Incident has been called, with some justification, the worst disgrace that the U.S. Army has suffered, in its more than 200-year history. It occurred on March 16, 1968 in the hamlet of My Lai in Son My village, Quang Ngai Province, in I Corps (Bob's aside: There were several My Lai's in the area. The Americans just put numbers after them to designate them on maps. The My Lai in question was My Lai 4). On that day C Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division conducted a heliborne assault to secure the area.
Although C Company had suffered some casualties from enemy mines, it had never been in actual combat with the enemy. First Platoon leader Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. moved his 25 men into the hamlet and began rounding up Vietnamese civilians--old men, women, children, and babies--and herded them into a ditch. These estimated 150 unarmed civilians were then gunned down. Throughout the day, Calley's platoon and other members of C Company, under the command of Capt. Ernest L. Medina, committed murder, rape, sodomy and other atrocities. These gross violations of standing orders, military law, and human decency were not reported by Capt. Medina and were not investigated by either the Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Frank Barker (subsequently killed in action), or by the Brigade Commander, Col. Warren K. Henderson. The Divsion Commander, Maj. Gen. Samuel H. Koster, likewise took no action to investigate what should have been obvious discrepancies in the battle reports of the unit.
First brought to light in a letter written by former combat infantryman Ron Ridenhour on March 29, 1969 (Bob's aside: Over a year after the incident), the incident was immediately investigated by the Army. The Secretary of the Army convened a formal board of inquiry, headed by Lt. Gen. William R. Peers, who had formerly commanded the Fourth Infantry Division from January 1967 to January 1968, to investigate the accusations. Eventually, court-martial charges were prepared against 12 officers for dereliction of duty. As a result of these charges, the Americal Division Commander, Maj. Gen. Koster, who was then serving as Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy (Bobs aside: the top man at West Point), was reduced in rank to Brig. Gen. His assistant, Brig. Gen. George Young, was censured. The 11the Infantry Brigade Commander, Col. Henderson, was tried by a general court-martial and acquitted on December 17, 1971. The court-martial charges against the other officers were dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence.
Thirteen officers and enlisted men were charged with war crimes.
The First Battalion intelligence officer, Capt. Eugene M. Kotouc, and the C Company Commander, Capt. Medina, were found not guilty. Three sergeants were also found not guilty and the charges against the remaining men were dismissed. Only Lt. Calley was found guilty of war crimes--specifically the murder of 22 unarmed civilians-and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Although the court-martial board was composed of combat infantry veterans, most of whom had served in front-line combat in Vietnam, the cry went up that Calley had been railroaded. Enormous public pressure was brought to bear on behalf of Calley, and even though the conviction was upheld by the Court of Military Appeals, the Secretary of the Army eventually reduced Calley's sentence to 10 years. On March 19, 1974, he was paroled (Bob's aside: He served about 2 years in prison).
Feeling about this incident ran high among combat infantry veterans of the Vietnam war. A common reaction was that those who actually committed the atrocities and the senior officers who covered up the whole affair deserved the harshest punishment for their gross dereliction of duty. This opinion, however, was not widely shared among those who had served in combat.
On the (Bob's aside: add Political) left many believed that the My Lai atrocities vindicated their charges that the Vietnam was was illegal, immoral and unjust. Many on the (Bob's aside: add Political) right saw Calley as the victim of the antiwar movement in the United States. Falling in the crack between these two poles of opinion, the public generally supported Calley in spite of his conviction as a mass murderer. Such support for Calley compounded the tragedy, for it rendered a major disservice to the overwhelming majority of American combat soldiers who risked their lives to protect--not harm--the men, women and children of South Vietnam.
Ok, a personal aside before I finish. I was a Marine in country when this happened--and I had previously been on operations around the same area--though I didn't know about it at the time. Anyway, since then, in my talks with dozens (hundreds?) of combat vets, the decision has been unanimous (not just a majority, unanimous). Calley and the whole gang should still be looking at the world from the lowest cells in Ft. Leavenworth--fed through whatever could be gotten to them from a slingshot. This was an Army action, but it brought shame on the entire military establishment.
Q: What were some of the more prominent men in government who came out against the Vietnam War before George McGovern? A: Probably the two most prominant political figures to take an early stand against the Vietnam War were Sen. Wayne Morse from Oregon and Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Sen. Morse was against America's involvement in Southeast Asia from the earliest debates--he fought the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to the bitter end, becoming only one of two people to vote against it. Sen. Fulbright was originally for the war, but sometime in 1966 he came out against it, and became the most damaging and vocal opponent in the entire Congress of Lyndon Johnson's Southeast Asian policies. You can check local library sources and get more detailed biographies of these two men.
Q: I am interested in obtaining some maps of the areas I was in during my tour in Vietnam. Can you suggest a place for me to go?
A: The VVHP has a large, and ever growing Map Room. We want to, one day, have EVERY map of EVERY type that concerns Vietnam and Indochina. You can access this room by going back to the A VISIT TO VIETNAM, click in on the "Maps of Vietnam" and see if there are any there you can use. If not, don't despair. As I said, the Map Room is always growing. Click on Jay Ebert's link button on the bottom of the page and tell him what you need. He'll then get back with you with either a,"nope, don't have it," or "yup, have it, just haven't had time to get it on line." More than likely, he'll answer with the latter.
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