Gooooood Moooorning Viiiieeetnaaaaam!

[Gunther]

I've had decades to study and interview people on the subject. Everyone from mech-infantry, LOACH-pilots, paymasters, and coast gaurdsmen, to fighter stick jockies and pig-gunners.
-I've been told it gets annoying when I try getting into the specifics, as some of them had the luck of Jack Lucas and John Ripley.

@Foster

I feel your angst, Foster. I spent 21 years in uniform and have been reading military history books and articles for almost 43 years. I didn't need to interview anyone. I lived it. But I have had thousands of conversations with combat veterans over a tall cold one.

We all -liked the idea- and signed on. That means being supportive. If you want, we could have a different GM per scenario? Or you can just run it and we can support you here.

@HeySeuss

@Lady Selune What he said is spot on! ^

[HeySeuss]

At UMD I interviewed Vietnam vets for their accounts.

People will talk to a stranger. I also got the uncle that fought in Hue to open up. He was relieved that I didn't judge a damn thing. It also equipped me for when friends came back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Someday, it would be interesting to write a book with the gathered vets from certain units for different chapters because the war differs for different units.

[Gunther]

That is wonderful, HeySeuss. I am glad that he felt comfortable enough to open up to you. I tried to talk to a WWII veteran, my brother-in-law's father. He served with the 8th Infantry Division in France. He was with an Infantry battalion's Anti-Tank platoon. They used 57mm AT guns, towed by 6x6 trucks or jeeps. He would not say anything to me about it. In fact, he later told my sister to please ask me to not question him about his experiences. It saddened me greatly. He died about three years ago. :(

[HeySeuss]

That is wonderful, HeySeuss. I am glad that he felt comfortable enough to open up to you. I tried to talk to a WWII veteran, my brother-in-law's father. He served with the 8th Infantry Division in France. He was with an Infantry battalion's Anti-Tank platoon. They used 57mm AT guns, towed by 6x6 trucks or jeeps. He would not say anything to me about it. In fact, he later told my sister to please ask me to not question him about his experiences. It saddened me greatly. He died about three years ago. :(

@Gunther

My grandfather managed to not tell me a thing about his time on the Pusan Perimeter. I had to discover the circumstances of his combat record through meticulous research after he died. I don't think anyone quite understand what he went through. My other grandfather was in WWII serving as a Seabee, which meant that they were attached to Marine units and so his service was also very bloody and he didn't talk about it.

I still really think that relatives don't want to open up to their own families, so yeah, Eddie opening up to me about the siege of Khe Sanh and Hue was unusual, and he disclosed guilty things about how he walled himself off from new replacements and didn't help them and it ground his gears for years afterward-- in particular, one guy was seriously WIA/KIA and he felt like he only told him, 'watch out for the RPG's' instead of screaming at him to get down or pulling him down. Still, he came out better for it once he started opening up to the point of talking to relatives and loved ones.

Now, of course, I am also certified in mental health first aid, but it turns out I was doing it right even when dealing with guys that were coming back early during Iraq and were pretty rattled. In most cases, it's simple. You let them do the talking and don't judge, but the fear of judgment thing is what seems to drive people away from wanting to talk to people, especially close relatives.

[Foster]

My late next door nieghbor was unfortunate enough to be on New Guinea by Christmas of 1942. Had a very detailed description of a halftrack plowing through the woods (driver dead), on fire, until it became wedged between two trees. Treads spinning in the air.

It took 2 weeks to recover the remains of the driver.

Six months later, the British forces in the area had confirmed that the Japanese were cannibalizing the dead, wounded, and captured.

Ultimately, what they went through was dusted-off, polished a bit, and turned into official US policy just in time for Vietnam.
-Including landing planes in elephant-grass up to your head.

---

A paymaster descibed how -in order to avoid snipers- the truck carrying him would not stop to let him off, instead it would slow down to about 30 mph, and two guys would catapult him out the back, he'd perform a half-turn in mid-air, and land running for the nearest ditch armed with just a pistol and payroll for an entire battalion.

Getting picked up was never really described. But it probably involved being a human-mailbag. At night. With the driver in blackout conditions.

---

On a lighter note: Tony Stark impersonating Nick Fury.

[Bee]

when's the OOC going up?

[Lady Selune]

when's the OOC going up?

@Bee

I want maybe one or two more people, then I'll see what I can do.

[Copperpen]

I should have kept up with this a lot more, oh dear.

In any case, I probably know very little about Vietnam- my relatives are European and therefore were more involved in avoiding communist secret police, and even the compulsory service didn't send them off to any theaters. I'll do some research for the RP, definitely.

[Foster]

I'll see about getting one more person.

I should have kept up with this a lot more, oh dear.

In any case, I probably know very little about Vietnam- my relatives are European and therefore were more involved in avoiding communist secret police, and even the compulsory service didn't send them off to any theaters. I'll do some research for the RP, definitely.

@Copperpen

-Vietnam was a cluster-crap that makes the Ukrainian civil war look simple and easily resolved. But in this thing even direct military intervention by major global powers just seemed to make the situation worse.
>But for the most part, if they shot at you, they were either enemy, or really dumb friendlies.

General US strategy/goal was to make sure Vietnam was "anything but a communist state" as per the policy of containment
-US Army approach to victory was to seek a series of decisive victories (according to paper), and attrition.
-USMC's approach was to generally just teach the locals how to handle the shit that was very obviously going to roll their way the moment they pulled out (see also: Sino-Vietnam war and Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to upset Pol Pot)
+Both approaches had problems, the Army approach tended to alienate the villagers, and the marine approach tended to accidentally arm and train the insurgents. While both had to ignore whatever corruption went-on in the provisional government of southern Vietnam.

Vietnam's goal was to develop and maintain its soveriegnty. Unification would be nice, too.
-Viet Cong wanted all foriegners out. Communist leanings, but mostly they just wanted the military occupation and corruption to end.
-NVA was much the same, but heavy propoganda that capitalism is inherently corrupt and communism is inherently good.
-ARVN wanted to give democracy a chance
-RTA wanted to maintain their monarchy for the glory of their emperor and USA #1 (because we gave them a bunch of tanks 'n stuff, nothing sez "I wub you long time" like a few boatloads of free tanks, they still use them)
-Cambodia was a corrupt genocidal opium-smoking dictatorship, but US-Cambodian relations were still a better love story than Twighlight.

Russia and China saw this chunk of SE Asia as "Korean-war, second act" with a very strong chance of winning valuable allies.
-Both saw everyone else as Imperial expansionists, leading to Sino-Soviet tensions to come to a head around 1968. In 1972 China tried annexing Vietnam kinda like what happened to Tibet... except Vietnamese people aren't pacifist-pushovers.

[Gunther]

As a result of the Chinese Revolution and Harry Truman's frustration with Douglas MacArthur's handling of the Korean War, he fired MacArthur and anyone else associated with MacArthur. In a sense, he lost anyone who knew anything about the Far East. Eisenhower had no one available to him that knew anything about SouthEast Asia and those that were learning, weren't learning fast enough,

Ho Chi Minh asked Woodrow Wilson to help him remove the French from his country soon after the completion of The Great War. Woodrow Wilson would do nothing as France was one of America's strongest allies and they had just helped them get the Germans out of their country. Ho Chi Minh did not care if Vietnam was a Representative Democracy or a Communist state. His next stop was to Vladimir Lenin where he learned about the benefits of Socialism and Communism. Lenin and his successor Stalin agreed to help the fledgling Communist state eradicate its oppressive Western European masters.

The US bungling of the War in Vietnam as well as their Communist containment policy, vis-a-vis McCarthyism resulted from a lack of information. The US dehumanized the Soviets and built them as up as this dark evil the Americans all need to hate.

[Foster]

Funny thing is... George McCarthy happens to be the name of a tanker from A Company of 192nd Tank Brigade from Wisconsin.

boring WW2 trivia

It was the reargaurd for the retreat to Corrigidor.
Only 33 people from that tank company survived the war.

George MCCarthy was the only one to evade capture from the Japanese while subsisting on 22 varieties of bananas... was briefly and very traumaticly interrogated by communists (who also stole all his clothes).

No relation to Joseph McCarthy.

Before being mobilized as part of the 192nd, it was attached to the 32nd Nat'l Gaurd Division, which happened to be one of the first deployed into the Pacific, and the first to occupy Japan. The divison had spent over 15,696 hours in combat (48% of America's time served in WW2) and was not sent stateside until well after the war ended, and had to be used as a substitute for the 3rd Marine Division well into 1946 as they occupied the area around Nagasaki. Much inter-unit shuffling occured as only can happen in a government-operation.

The Mayguez incident was... *Military intellegence failure intensifies*

OTOH, we now know that it's a bad idea to drop a bomb known to make a 100 meter wide crater on 200 meter long island with friendlies still on it.

Anyways, now for a pep-talk

tech-trivia: Why Americans loved napalm: Napalm bombs, unlike high explosive, had no significant blast. Meaning 'danger close' was much closer-in, and was often utilized to counter the communist tendancy to 'hug' US units, allowing an overwhelmed position to break contact or reconsolidate a defensive position.

It was also of immesnly greater psychological value.

And it utterly wrecked VC tunnels.

[HeySeuss]

Ho Chi Minh also had good relations with the US, but Roosevelt was more committed to decolonization than Truman was. Truman was persuaded to essentially stay out of it by Churchill and de Gaulle. The Brits did send assistance right after the surrender of the Japanese in the form of a Gurkha unit to help secure Indochina until French Forces could get there...they rearmed Japanese troops to keep Ho Chi Minh from taking over.

At the same time, there was an OSS team on site that advised the Viet Minh and it didn't end well once the hostilities started. Until that point, we were pretty cordial with the Viet Minh.

I've done some extensive reading of sources on that, particularly Bernard Fall's books, which are interesting and instructive. The American war in Vietnam was very much an extension of the French one, particularly as Eisenhower was roped into increasing support for the French Forces in Indochina in return for concessions from the French in Europe (staying in NATO, for example.)

[Eisenhorn]

Huh, well, as much as I hate interrupting a most excellent discussion, figured I'd drop my interest in here. I do have some familiarity with the era, nowhere near as much as most of the other folks here though. No qualms with asking questions or doing my own research as necessary though.

[Lady Selune]

Well, that's enough.

Before I start writing though, what would you guys be interested in:

A. Highly lethal small-scale combat situations requiring new characters thanks to casualties.

B. Changing theatres of war/time periods within the war (perhaps even different types of soldiers, maybe even going PAVN) requiring new characters.

C. Something else?

[Eisenhorn]

Slightly more partial to B, both are good ideas though. B gives a wider range of character options, and a larger view of everything going on during the war. Definitely fine with either though (Or third options, for that matter, can't think of many at the moment though).

[HeySeuss]

B without a doubt.

[Bee]

B.

[Foster]

Well, that's enough.

Before I start writing though, what would you guys be interested in:

A. Highly lethal small-scale combat situations requiring new characters thanks to casualties.

B. Changing theatres of war/time periods within the war (perhaps even different types of soldiers, maybe even going PAVN) requiring new characters.

C. Something else?

@Lady Selune

B, differnt theaters, POVs and whatnot... Perhaps allowing us to see some of our own characters from the perspective of other units.

Such as starting with french and Viet Minh units, then to when the USMC started showing still armed with M14s in their "policing action" (1965, Operation Starlite), then to the VC efforts... then double-track to the rough-puffs with a few ARVN NCOs as instructors and revisit some surviving 'old timers' in the USMC part (1966-1967)...

And the roil it all down to Hue in '68.

[Gunther]

I am quite flexible. I can do either.

[HeySeuss]

Well, realistically, it starts with advisors and moves into Marines securing Da Nang. During that time, there's covert action. We can do so much with B. ;)