Innehållsförteckning för April 2017 från Vietnam

March 17 A San Francisco counterculture band, with lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia, releases its first album, Grateful Dead. Other albums and concerts spawned a passionate following of “deadheads.” March 28 NBC broadcasts A Man Called Ironside, a TV movie starring Raymond Burr of Perry Mason fame as Robert T. Ironside, who solves crimes from his wheelchair after a bullet ended his career as a detective. The series premiered Sept. 14, 1967. March 25 The Who performs in the United States for the first time. The British rock band played in New York at the RKO 58th Street movie theater for nine days. April 4 Martin Luther King Jr. delivers one of his strongest, most controversial statements against the Vietnam War in a speech at Riverside Church in New…

Cavalry troops remember the utter exhaustion and backbreaking physical misery of a combat unit, a tough and brutish way to exist. I had the honor to command B Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, during the intense and bloody fighting of Vietnam during 1968-69. When I arrived in-country, veterans of the battalion had already survived the terrible 1967-68 battles in South Vietnam’s northernmost provinces. The 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry had been the lead battalion in the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) during the Operation Pegasus push in April 1968 to reach the besieged Marine combat base at Khe Sanh. The incredibly courageous Marines of the 26th Marine Regiment had held the combat base against waves of attacking North Vietnamese Army troops and a massive enemy artillery bombardment for 77…

Improvements in medical care from World War II and Korea allowed for better outcomes during the Vietnam War. One of the main advances was the use of helicopters for evacuation of wounded troops, known as a dustoff. In 1968 at the height of the conflict, 116 air ambulances evacuated more than 200,000 troops. This rapid movement resulted in an average time from battlefield wound to hospital admission of just 2.8 hours. Once stabilized and evaluated in the air, the incapacitated were taken to a mobile army surgical hospital, made famous in the TV program M.A.S.H., set in Korea. A MASH facility, typically 60 beds in tents, could be expanded to 200 beds using easily moved inflatable shelters designated as “medical unit, self-containted, transportable,” or MUST. Small arms, grenades and booby…

The most important part of any military is not the tanks, helicopters, artillery or other machines of war. It’s the people who serve, and that’s the emphasis of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum being built in Columbus, Ohio. The museum will feature the experiences of veterans from all eras, conflicts and branches of the military. The project started as a place to honor Ohio’s veterans, but its organizers quickly expanded the museum’s coverage to include veterans from across the country. The museum has received congressional support to be designated a national facility. “Nothing like this has been done,” said retired Air Force Col. Tom Moe, who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp and is now assisting the museum effort. “We want to focus the…

he Marine Corps launched multiple search-and-destroy missions on Aug. 6, 1966, in the Que Son Valley, a populous, rice-rich area that was one of the key locations in the fight for control of South Vietnam’s northernmost provinces. The valley, astride the boundary between Quang Nam and Quang Tin provinces, was the stomping ground of the North Vietnamese Army’s 2nd Division, a firstrate combat formation, also known as the 620th Division, tasked with maintaining control over this vital strategic area. In the Que Son Valley campaign, officially Operation Colorado, Col. Charles F. Widdecke’s 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, and South Vietnamese troops from the 2nd Division, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, set out to eliminate the NVA 2nd Division. The 5th Marines’ 2nd Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Walter…

As the American South’s politicians, press and public debated the wisdom of going to war in Vietnam, Southern soldiers served, died and received Medals of Honor in Vietnam in numbers substantially exceeding Dixie’s share of the nation’s population. This participation reflected the region’s devotion to its military tradition; intense concern for patriotism, honor and manhood; and depressed economic conditions. Although the experiences and responses of Southern warriors generally coincided with those of other American troops, they often did so in a more pronounced fashio Southern soldiers repeatedly played a central role in important decisions and events. For example, Gen. William Westmoreland, a native of South Carolina, commanded U.S. combat forces in Vietnam from 1964 through 1968 and helped devise the military’s flawed ground strategies. Lt. Col. Harold G. “Hal” Moore…

A popular automatic weapon with North Vietnamese infantry squads, the Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryov, or Degtyaryov light machine gun, was designed in the late 1940s by Vasily Degtyaryov to replace the DPM light machine gun in Soviet rifle platoons. The new 7.62 mm RPD was 10 pounds lighter than any machine gun then in service and used a round that inflicted far less recoil and was easier to feed into and eject from the firing chamber. Like the AK-47 assault rifle, the RPD fired over an open bolt and was gas operated. The final service model entered production in 1958. Incorporating improvements based on experience with other weapons, the RPD had a recoil buffer in the butt and a longer gas cylinder to reduce the firing rate and recoil. Changes also…

After commanding a combat unit for the first seven months of my Vietnam tour, this reviewer was reassigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, as an adviser for my last five months in the country. I received no training, instruction, advice or orientation in preparation for this abrupt shift in duty from leading a U.S. Army outfit to advising South Vietnamese counterparts. Moreover, far from being in a mercifully quiet backwater, the unit I advised was hotly engaged in the horrifically bloody operation to recapture Quang Tri in northern South Vietnam after the North Vietnamese Army’s 1972 Easter Offensive. It was a situation hardly conducive to quiet reflection or leisurely study to help me “ease into” a new and unfamiliar job. The situation gave a personal meaning to the phrases “hitting…