The Vietcong promised the peasants more land, and told them that the Americans and South Vietnamese Army would take it from them, which increased the support of the Vietcong. It persuaded peasants to agree to food, shelter and give them a hiding place. Although most peasants supported the guerrillas, some did oppose the Vietcong and were tortured and beaten, despite the code of conduct. The Vietcong were able to use the jungles to great effect in order to attack the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) and the US as they had the backing of the peasants’ villages as their base. They attacked in small groups and ambushed American troops. When the American reinforcements arrived, there were no sign of the Vietcong as they had built tunnels linked to the jungle to hide in as well as the village houses. The Vietcong built tunnels in order to protect them from US bombing and easily get away. The US counteracted this by using Agent Orange to destroy all woodland to defect the Vietcong tactics of hiding.
As the war went on, the Vietcong changed tactics as they had gained better weaponry like heavy artillery and explosives captured from the Americans, rather than the old daggers and swords used in earlier tactics. They were also supplied weapons by China and the USSR. The guerrillas also started to use booby traps of sharpened bamboo staves, mines, grenades, and artillery shells against the US, which put the American soldiers through hell. With the war slowly starting to turn in their favour, the Vietcong started to become more adventurous in their tactics, and ditched the ‘quick attack and hide’ method and instead launched full-scale attacks on the Americans. During 1967, the NLF began attacking US garrisons, which initially pleased the Americans, as they believed that the war was starting to turn in their favour, as it appeared the Vietcong had left the jungle. The Tet Offensive of the 31st January 1968 took place during the Tet New Year festival. 36 cities and town across South Vietnam were ambushed in a surprise attack by 70,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and the Vietcong. This threw the Americans into a frenzy as they were shocked by how well organised the Vietcong were in going about their attacks, and how easy it was for them to recruit 70,000 new soldiers in a short period of time after having lost 90,000 in 1967. This sent shockwaves through the politicians and people back in America as it appeared they could not win the Vietnam war as previously thought, because the increasing number of NLF soldiers coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail would eventually out number them.
The US started off using the ‘Strategic Hamlets policy’, also known as safe villages, introduced by President Kennedy in 1962. This was used to cut off the Vietcong from the South Vietnamese villages and deprive them of food, shelter and a place to hide. The Strategic Hamlets policy resulted in villagers being moved into new villages, away from the Vietcong, surrounded by barbed wire and guns for protection. This policy failed, as villagers hated being moved from their old villages, which had sentimental ancestral values and hated building trenches for their new villages. This policy became increasingly unpopular but by September 1962, a quarter of the South Vietnamese people were moved into strategic hamlets. This led many villagers to greatly resent the Americans and actually did the Vietcong a favour as many peasants joined the Vietcong to fight against the US. The Americans then started to use ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaign in order to win back support from the peasants, aimed at persuading them that Capitalism was the way forward, and communism was wrong, and that the Americans were on their side. However, just like the strategic hamlets, this policy also failed.
As President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Lyndon Johnson took charge and American tactics then changed to take on a more aggressive approach in fighting the war in Vietnam, and resulted in a huge bombing raid on North Vietnam. Also, the Vietcong started to win an increasingly significant amount of battles against the south, so the US was becoming more desperate. In March 1965, ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ began where 8 million bombs were dropped in North Vietnam over 8 years. Its aim was simple – to destroy the economy in the north and decrease support for the Vietcong in the south. The scale of ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ was unprecedented as it resulted in three times as many bombs being dropped in North Vietnam that in World War Two. Many innocent civilians lost their lives as the intended bombing of military and industrial targets in North Vietnam failed, as it was mainly a farming country. This greatly weakened the ‘Hearts and Minds’ strategy. Also, China and Russia, replaced all the destroyed military supplies so the operation failed in its objective. During 1965, America deployed ‘Search and Destroy’ tactics, which was simply to find the Vietcong in the villages and kill them. This saw many peasants being killed, as it was impossible for American soldiers to know the difference between the guerrillas and the peasants, for example the My Lai massacre. However, many were also killed deliberately in anger, which infuriated the Vietcong, and they responded by torturing US prisoners. The Americans constantly dropped Napalm bombs on Vietnam. This was a mixture of petrol and chemical thickener which produced a thick sticky gel that attaches itself to skin burning it all the way through. Many innocent Vietnamese people, including children, suffered as a result and led to an increase in hate for the Americans.
The tactics used by both the Vietcong and the US developed from ‘soft’ tactics to more aggressive approaches. The tactics used by both sides were similar at the start as they both went about trying to win the hearts of peasants. However only one side could be successful, and that was the Vietcong. The Americans then upped their game and went on to ‘Search and Destroy’, which led to the Vietcong updating their tactics using booby traps designed to destroy the US soldiers’ morale. Whatever one side did, the other responded to escalating the violence of the war. When the Vietcong were using the jungle to hide in, the US deployed ‘Agent Orange’. This is an example of the US counteracting the Vietcong tactics. This continued throughout the war, but with both sides counteracting each other in order to gain an advantage. During ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’, the Vietcong began to build underground tunnels. The Vietcong became more and more powerful after gaining better artillery from China and the USSR, and also became wiser in how they went about attacking the Americans. After all, they were on home soil so had much greater knowledge of landscape and guerrilla warfare. However, the Americans seemed to outweigh this disadvantage at the start as they had much better artillery to fight with than the Vietcong and used it to their advantage, such as ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’. The US were used to conventional warfare, so the guerrilla warfare used by the Vietcong was new to them, as well as the landscape. As the war went on, the morale of US soldiers started to decrease and affect them greatly, with the My Lai massacre in 1968 being the end result. This led to tactic changes because as the Vietcong weaponry improved, they decided to come out of the Jungle and launch organised attacks on the US, such as the Tet offensive. This was a turning point for the Americans as they realised that could not win the war in Vietnam as previously thought.
