The most important question concerning the Vietnam War is how Vietnam matched and resisted the USA’s superior technology and military might. The answer lies in the VC’s use of Guerrilla tactics.
Vietnam was no stranger to fighting a war using Guerrilla tactics. They were first used in 1859 against the French, soon after the fall of Saigon. In 1862, the French complained of rebel bands, destroying everything and disappearing without trace. These tactics were used again against the Japanese and French in the 1940’s, against Diem’s corrupt government in the 1950’s and against USA in the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Guerrilla tactics are usually used when there is an “imbalance of troops”. This means one side is inferior in terms of troops, weapons, technology and money. Generally, Guerrilla warfare operates in three stages. Firstly, the revolutionaries build up support and strength and attack the enemy in small groups then disappear. The groups now control the countryside where they respect the local population whom they rely on for food and shelter. Finally, once strong enough, the Guerrillas attack towns and even cities because they outnumber government troops.
The type of landscape and vegetation in South Vietnam was one reason why Guerrilla warfare was used. Much of the country was mountainous and covered in tropical rainforest. This allowed the VC to move around the country without being detected. Other types of terrain in South Vietnam were swamps, paddy fields and hilly jungles. These conditions were very different from what the American soldiers were used to and they were unable to make good use of the conditions, unlike the VC who were fighting on home soil. The VC moved around the country easily without being detected and usually attacked at night. This helped make the decision for the US forces to leave Vietnam.
The Vietcong employed many ingenious tactics, one of which was the Vietcong’s network of tunnels, in which they moved and lived undetected. Over 150 miles of tunnels are said to have been built under South Vietnam. A single network could be 20 miles long. The Americans believed the Vietcong were forced to build these tunnels because of the devastation of America’s bombing. However, these tunnels housed sleeping quarters, hospitals, storage for weapons and even lecture theatres. The tunnels were well booby-trapped, making it dangerous for the US soldiers who had to investigate them. Historians have tended to see the tunnels as a sign of the Vietcong’s determination rather than their weakness.
The development of several routes was vital to the Vietcong for moving equipment, weapons, men and food around the countryside. The most famous was the Ho Chi Minh Trail which connected North and South Vietnam and ran through Cambodia and Laos. It is said that 40,000 people worked constantly to keep this route open. In parts, it was 50 miles wide and was subject to bombing raids by American B-52’s from 1965-1972.
The Vietcong were especially skilled at constructing booby traps. Some were simple, such as a concealed hole under a path. More lethal was “the fuel tank trap” which was a grenade, with a rubber band holding on the pin, in the fuel tank of an enemy vehicle and the “Bouncing Betty,” a mine planted just under the earth’s surface. Other traps included the Punji trap, a deep hole with upturned metal spikes covered in human excrement (to cause blood poisoning) and “the tin can trap” which was a grenade with the pin removed and wedged inside a can to prevent detonation – until an American set it off by tripping over a wire.
The Vietcong were proficient guerrilla fighters and the Americans had no solution to this nature of warfare. The Vietcong imitated the tactics the Red Chinese had used. These tactics can be summarised as:
• the enemy attack, we retreat
• the enemy camps, we raid
• the enemy tires, we attack
• the enemy retreats, we pursue.
It was almost impossible to win a battle against a guerrilla army because you could never find out where it was. It attacked you then vanished into the jungle. The over-use of American weapons did not encourage the natives to side with them. The Vietcong had the support of many of the peasants on whose land they were fighting. They could move freely around the country, sheltered by villagers. The Guerrillas were very difficult to identify, they wore the same black “pyjamas” as most peasants in the country and were men and woman or all ages. The Guerrilla tactics quickly sapped the moral of the American soldiers, many of them raw recruits who had just left school.
The majority of US troops sent to Vietnam were conscripts. These young men were drafted into the armed forces as part of compulsory military service. They had to fight in unfamiliar surroundings, had no experience of rainforests and had no knowledge of the Vietnamese language or customs. To make matters worse, it was very difficult to identify the enemy. The VC might be a peaceful farmer during the day but by night a VC guerrilla.
The effectiveness of Vietcong guerrilla tactics persuaded the US military to find a way of combining their technological power with some form of guerrilla tactics. Helicopters were used to “search and destroy,” the speed of which gave the VC little warning. The helicopters could land troops close enough to VC controlled villages, to give the troops they were carrying the chance to attack before the Vietcong fighters had time to organise themselves. Search and Destroy also involved sending army units into the field to search for and kill any VC. The brutality and torture used on VC suspects was so horrific, many American soldiers suffered panic attacks and nightmares long after their return to the US. The ill-treatment of VC suspects did much to advance the Vietcong’s efforts rather than harm them.
President Johnson came into office in 1963 and his policy concerning the war was intensification, in order to end it. Operation Rolling Thunder which began February 11th 1965 was a joint military operation by American and South Vietnamese warplanes, on key military and industrial targets in North Vietnam. It was ineffective because safe areas were created which protected 80% of industry and 75% of population.
Another tactic was Saturation Bombing (also called blanket bombing). Hi-tech American B-52 bombers were first used April 1966 to bomb everything in sight and this was even less effective than Operation Rolling Thunder. It strengthened the Communists’ determination to resist and between 1965-68, 1400 US warplanes were shot down.
From February 1965, to the end of all-out US involvement in 1973, South Vietnamese forces mainly fought against the Vietcong guerrillas, while US and Allied troops fought the North Vietnamese in a war of attrition marked by battles in such places as the Ia Dang Valley, Dak To, Loc Ninh, and Khe Sanh—all victories for the non-Communist forces. During his 1967-68 campaign, the North Vietnamese strategist, General Vo Nguyen Giap, launched the famous Tet offensive (from the name of the Vietnamese lunar new year in mid-February), a co-ordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 urban targets. Despite its devastating psychological effect, the campaign, which Giap hoped would be decisive, failed, and Vietcong forces were ultimately driven back from most of the positions they had gained, losing 85,000 of their best troops.
The USA decided to use chemical warfare. The rainforests gave the Vietcong plenty of cover so US pilots found it difficult to target them from a plane or helicopter. The army came up with the answer; clear the trees and strip away the foliage so the VC had nowhere to hide. This was done using napalm to burn off leaves and vegetation, spraying chemical agents, dropping huge bombs to destroy large trees and using mechanical ploughs to tear down the trees.
Agent Orange was the most deadly herbicide used by US forces in extensive spraying operations. Over 86 million litres were dispersed in South Vietnam between 1961-70. Tens of thousands of soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were exposed. By 1969, people became sick with symptoms such as still births and birth deformities. This was to play a large part in the withdrawal of US forces in 1973.
Napalm is jellied petroleum. The word “Napalm” is derived from the words napthenic and palmitic. Napalm was used to attack areas in the North and enemy positions in the south. Several thousand civilians were killed by Napalm as it sticks to the skin and burns to the bone. It burns slowly at a temperature of 675ºC.
The media played an important role in stimulating protest, the impact of which played a large part in the withdrawal of US forces.. The war in Vietnam was the first to be covered night after night on television. It made people realise what was being done to Vietnam in their name. Photographs, magazines, films and newspapers had a similar effect. Film and photographs of the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire helped to convince President Kennedy that Diem should be replaced.
Images of South Vietnamese children fleeing along a road with their skin burning and peeling from the napalm of a misdirected bomb stay in the mind. For those in America, this was enough to convince them that the US had to withdraw from the war.
Millions of litres of defoliants such as Agent Orange were dropped on Vietnam, but US government scientists claimed that these chemicals were harmless to humans and short-lived in the environment.
US strategists argue that Agent Orange was a prototype smart weapon, a benign tactical herbicide that saved many hundreds of thousands of American lives by denying the North Vietnamese army the jungle cover that allowed it to ruthlessly strike. So did the US know the effects? New scientific research, confirms what the Vietnamese have been claiming for years, portraying the US government as one that has illicitly used weapons of mass destruction, stymied all independent efforts to assess the impact of their deployment, failed to acknowledge cold, hard evidence of maiming and slaughter and pursued a policy of evasion and deception.
The massacre of men, women and children at the village of My Lai was one of the most horrific incidents of the war. Just after dawn on 16th March, nine US helicopter gunships landed close to the village of My Lai. Three platoons of American soldiers left the helicopters. One of the platoons, lead by Lieutenant Calley spent the next two hours killing in cold blood. How many were killed varies from 175 – 500 people. It is impossible to gauge the significance of My Lai, and for many it is enough to remember it and learn from it. The media’s focus on My Lai had an impact on the protest movement, helping it to spread further than the Universities. This was to eventually lead to the US withdrawal from Vietnam.
The first major impact of Vietnam on the American people was when the Government was forced to draft (conscript). Only 3,000 men were needed per month in February 1965 but by October, 33,000 were drafted. Many men burned or tore up their draft papers or fled to Canada or Europe.
Many Americans said the war was immoral and that the US government had no right to impose its views on a poor nation like Vietnam. Leading scientists criticised the use of chemical weapons and the effects they were having on the environment. The protests were strongest among young people. Many teenagers “dropped out” of society in protest. The hippies told people to “make love not war” One peaceful demonstration in May 1970, at Kent State University resulted in four students being shot by National Guardsmen. Anti-war protests increased but how important they were in ending the war is difficult to judge.
As casualties mounted, demonstrations grew bigger and bigger. In 1971, over 300,000 took part in the Veterans’ March. When they threw away the medals and honours they had been given for fighting in the war, many Americans were deeply shocked.
War coverage in the press and on television had earlier given the American people the impression that victory was almost in sight. The impact of the Tet Offensive helped in the withdrawal of US forces in 1973. When news on the Tet Offensive broke, Americans thought they had been misled by the army. Walter Cronkite, the leading American television newscaster dismayed President Johnson when he read the news agency messages from Vietnam and was heard to say: “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.”
Many in the US military saw the Tet Offensive as a victory for them as the VC was now severely weakened; however, the media had a different view. The images of fighting in Saigon, the fall of Hue and even the subsequent recapture failed to convince Americans that the war was going their way. Congress refused General Westmoreland’s request for 200,000 more troops. The public started to believe the war was impossible to win and the rest of the world felt the war should be ended. The war had been so damaging to President Johnson he didn’t seek re-election, thus leaving the way open for Richard Nixon to be elected. He promised the American people he would end the war
The huge cost of the war (£100,000,000,000) caused tax rises and inflation. Because of the huge cost of Vietnam, military forces elsewhere were left without funds. Soldiers who handled chemical weapons were severely at risk of cancer and having children born with deformities. As many as half a million veterans suffered mental problems. The returning soldiers were unjustly treated as second-class citizens, causing many to take to a life of violent crime. Inparticular, Vietnam was blamed for the massive drug problems in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s. Many people across the world were delighted to view Vietnam as a humiliating defeat for the most powerful nation on Earth. Vietnam was even blamed for increasing racial tension as many blacks believed their boys had done a disproportional amount of the fighting. US forces in Vietnam faced charges of war crimes for the dropping of 4 million tonnes of bombs on Vietnam, killing and disfiguring people with napalm and for using chemical weapons such Agent Orange.
Nixon’s doctrine led to the Vietnamisation of the Vietnam War. US troops would gradually withdraw from the conflict and the South Vietnamese Army would be trained to fight the war on its own. On 7 July, 1969, the first US troops started to go home. Vietnamisation did not end the war but it did reduce US losses. In 1972, the Communists launched a successful Easter offensive, but by September the well-equipped ARVN forced them back. The North Vietnamese government now realised it would not win a quick victory.
The United States withdrew its forces from Vietnam because the Vietcong were a ruthless and effective enemy, particularly in fighting a Guerrilla War. They were prepared to keep fighting even when the Americans pulled off victories and inflicted high casualties. The South Vietnamese peasants disliked their own government and brutal treatment by the Americans meant they gave their support to the Vietcong. America’s attitude in the war was strongly criticised by its own people and allies. America lost the will to fight. Expense, defeatism, conduct, broadcasts and protests meant that eventually the American people did not support the war and the American people are America so the war had to stop. Some historians claim that the US Army did not actually lose the war but were prevented from winning it by the attitude of politicians and the public. Finally though, President Nixon withdrew troops with his policy of “Vietnamisation.” As for the US military, it would not be easily drawn into a Guerrilla war again.
