Shegina Begum
Study Source A. Do you agree with the interpretation of the problems faced by the United States soldiers in Vietnam? Use the source and knowledge from your studies to explain your answer
To some extent I agree with the interpretation given in source A of the problems faced by the United States soldiers in Vietnam. The source suggests that the US troops were not skilled enough to fight in the war, and that the soldiers were inexperienced, ‘an increasing number of recruits scored low on the intelligence tests that they would never had been let into the normal peacetime army’. Furthermore, it suggests the US army were desperate for as many soldiers as they could get hold of; this had been a major factor. From my own knowledge I know that the average age of a soldier from the US army had been 19, this implies that most soldiers were too young and therefore must have been inexperienced. I know that after the official trained US army had arrived in Vietnam, the US was forced to conscript. If you were not well educated, you stood a greater chance of being recruited. Therefore, a lot of new recruits in Vietnam were not very intelligent.