1 War Briefing

WAR BRIEFING: The Vietnam War by Ann McNeill American Wars & Conflicts Class The Vietnam War is the commonly used name for the 2nd Indochina War, 1954–1973. This war took place during the period when the United States and other members of SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces of the Republic of South Vietnam against Communist forces comprised of “South Vietnamese guerrillas” known as the Viet Cong (VC), and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Along with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), the Viet Cong (VC), were our enemy. The Viet Cong were South Vietnamese supporters of the Communist movement in Vietnam. At times, it was very difficult for our U.S. troops to tell who was who. Everyone could potentially be the enemy. Women & children located within the South were often times working against the U.S. and aided the enemy in killing many of our soldiers. The Viet Cong (VC) were the military branch of the National Liberation Front (NLF), and were commanded by the Central Office for South Vietnam, which was located near the Cambodian border. For arms, ammunition and special equipment, the Viet Cong built & depended on the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” to transport supplies to their men in the South. The Ho Chi Minh Trail The Ho Chin Minh Trail ran along the Laos/Cambodia and the western border of North and South Vietnam. The trail was dominated by jungles. In total, the trail was about 622 miles in length, and in places, it was 50 miles wide. It consisted of many parts. There were thousands of trails, and thousands of rest spots along the way, where enemy troops could seek refuge and build up. The trail also consisted of “dummy routes” that served the only purpose of confusing the Americans. It is thought that up to 40,000 people were used to keep the route open. The natural environment gave the trail excellent cover as the jungle could provide as much as three canopies of tree cover, which disguised what was going on at ground level. The American response to this was to use defoliants – the most famous being Agent Orange (see explanation below) – to kill off the greenery that gave cover to those using the trail. However, while large areas of jungle were effectively killed off, the task was too great and the Ho Chi Minh Trail was used for the duration of the war against the Americans in South Vietnam. How did the U.S. Get Involved in Vietnam? During WWII, France could do little to protect its Colony from Japanese occupation. After WWII, the French tried to re- establish control but faced organized opposition from the Viet Minh (short for Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, or League for the Independence of Vietnam), led by Ho Chi Minh and Giap. The French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to negotiations that ended with the Geneva Agreements, July 21, 1954. Under those Agreements, Cambodia and Laos—which had been part of the French Colony—received their independence. Vietnam, however, was divided at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh led a Communist government in the North (Democratic Republic of Vietnam!) with its capital at Hanoi. South of the 17th parallel, a new Republic of South Vietnam was established under President Ngo Dinh Diem, with its capital at Saigon. The division was supposed to be temporary. In 1956, elections were to be held in both sections – the North and the South - to determine the country’s future. When the time came, however, Diem, in the South, resisted the elections, thinking that the more populous North would certainly win. In the North, Hanoi re-activated the Viet Minh to conduct guerilla operations in the South, with the intent of destabilizing President Diem’s government. In July 1959, North Vietnam’s leaders passed an ordinance called for continued socialist revolution in the North and a simultaneous revolution in South Vietnam. A Vietnamese Civil War was in full swing. The U.S., which had been gradually exerting influence after the departure of the French government, backed Diem in order to limit the area under Communist control. (China’s Mao Zedong’s Communist Party had won the Chinese Civil 1 War in 1949, and Western governments—particularly that of the U.S—feared Communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia). This fear evolved into the "Domino Theory" – the U.S. believed that if one country fell to Communist control, its neighbors would also soon fall like a row of dominos. (The Communist takeover of China and subsequent war in Korea (1950-53) against North Korean and Chinese troops, had focused a great deal of attention on Southeast Asia as a place for the U.S. to take a strong stand against the spread of Communism). American involvement began to escalate under President John F. Kennedy’s administration (January 1961–November 1963). North Vietnam had by then established a presence in Laos and had developed the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” through that country in order to resupply and reinforce its forces in South Vietnam. Kennedy saw American efforts in Southeast Asia almost as a crusade. The Kennedy Administration believed that by increasing the Military Advisor Program, coupled with political reform in South Vietnam, it would strengthen the South and bring peace between the North and South. Our presence began small enough: Two U.S. helicopter units arrived in Saigon in 1961. The following February, a "Strategic Hamlet" program began; it forcibly relocated South Vietnamese peasants to fortified Strategic Hamlets. This program was based on a program the British had employed successfully against insurgents in Malaya. However, it didn’t work in Vietnam. The peasants resented being forced from their ancestral lands, and consolidating them gave the VC better targets. The program, which had been poorly managed, was abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. President Lyndon Johnson took over as Commander in Chief. Johnson was instrumental in increasing U.S. boots on the ground, and in escalating the war. The Importance of Da Nang to a U.S. Soldier During the Vietnam war, Da Nang was one of the most important ports in the Central Lowlands of Vietnam. It became the second largest urban area in South Vietnam, after Saigon, due to the large concentration of refugees and troops. It is located on the South China Sea (Eastern Sea) at the mouth of the Han River. At 9.03am on 8 March 1965, at “Nam O” Beach in Da Nang, 3,500 U.S. Marines disembarked from their landing crafts and waded on to Vietnam’s shores, becoming the first American ground troops to arrive in the country. The U.S. built a large U.S. Air Base at Da Nang. Da Nang was the first place U.S. soldiers saw in Vietnam. Today, Da Nang is a beautiful city. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident The Gulf of Tonkin is a body of water located just east of Hanoi (capitol of North Vietnam), off the coast of North Vietnam and southern China. It is the northern arm of the South China Sea. On August 2, 1964 two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in broad daylight engaged a U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, which was gathering communications intelligence in International waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two nights later, Maddox and the destroyer USS Turner Joy were on patrol in the Gulf and reported they were under attack. The pilot of an F-8E Crusader did not see any ships in the area where the enemy was reported. Years later, crew members said they never saw any attacking craft. An electrical storm was interfering with the ships’ radar, and may have given the impression of approaching attack boats. As a result of this incident, back home in August 7, 1964, Congress swiftly passed the ”Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia. This resolution shifted power which was solely Congressional power (from the legislative branch), to give the President power which he did not have under our Constitution (to the executive branch). 2 U.S and North Vietnam both Escalate the War By the end of the year in 1964, 24,000 American military personnel were present in South Vietnam. Though a congressional investigative committee the previous year had warned that America could find itself slipping into in a morass that would require more and more military participation in Vietnam, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war, hoping to bring it to a quick conclusion. Ironically, the leaders in North Vietnam came to a similar conclusion: North Vietnam had to inflict enough casualties on Americans to end support for the war on the U.S. home front and force a withdrawal before the U.S. could build up sufficient numbers of men and material to defeat North Vietnam. U.S. Antiwar Demonstrations On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. The war became the central rallying point of a burgeoning youth counterculture, and the coming years would see many such demonstrations, dividing generations and families. An Unholy Night at the Brinks Hotel On Christmas Eve 1964, in Saigon (Capitol of South Vietnam, now known as Ho Chi Minh City), U.S. soldiers were making small plans to celebrate a quiet Christmas at their officers’ billet (a civilian house or private business where troops are quartered) in the Brinks Hotel.

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