Author: Fast Freddy

Donut Dollies

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During the Vietnam War, Red Cross workers provided services to U.S. military personnel and assisted Vietnamese refugees (1962-1974).  In 1962, the American Red Cross sent its first paid field staff to Vietnam to assist the growing number of servicemen at various bases and hospitals.  At the height of its involvement in 1968, 480 field directors, hospital personnel, and recreation assistants served throughout Southeast Asia.  Red Cross workers, who provided 1.9 million services to U.S. military personnel, shared the hardships and privations of war with the soldiers.  Five Red Cross staff members gave their lives, and many others were injured as they helped servicemen resolve personal problems or get home when emergency leave was granted due to death or serious illness in their immediate family. Continue reading →

Nurses of the Vietnam War

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Like many of the men going over to Vietnam to serve their country, young women from all over the nation volunteered to serve as nurses in the hospitals and medical facilities in South Vietnam. These women volunteered for a variety of reasons: to serve their country, to help the service men who were wounded, to receive training and an education, to further their military careers, to prove themselves or just to have an adventure. The nurses served in the hospital ships of the Navy, the airlift helicopters and airplanes of the Air Force and the hospitals and field hospitals of the Army. They arrived in Vietnam with various levels of nursing experience, from newcomers to the field with barley six months of Nursing under their belts to experienced veterans of twenty plus years. Usually the more confident and experienced the nurse, the better they were able to cope with the stress and the sheer number of casualties they treated on a daily basis. Continue reading →

Effects of the Tet Offensive

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The Tet Offensive

Indeed, with U.S. forces still north at Khe Sanh, the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive, the large “general offensive” that Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communists had been planning for years. On January 30, 1968, on the Vietnamese new year holiday of Tet, separate Viet Cong and NVA cells attacked twenty-seven different U.S. military installations throughout South Vietnam at the same time.

Fighting was intense, but U.S. forces managed to kill or capture the bulk of the Viet Cong raiders within several weeks. The toughest combat occurred in the city of Hue, which the NVA actually conquered for a few weeks before U.S. troops took it back. Fighting occurred as far south as Saigon, taking over the streets. Amid the chaos, an Associated Press photographer captured South Vietnam’s chief of police, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, executing a Viet Cong captain in the streets of Saigon—a brutal image that shocked the American public and became a symbol of the Vietnam quagmire. Continue reading →

Vietnam Veterans get Medals for Heroic Actions

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SAN DIEGO (AP) September 20, 2013   — Two Vietnam veterans were awarded the Silver and Bronze Star medals Friday for their courage in a battle on a jungle hillside where more than 75 percent of the troops with them that day were killed or wounded.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in his citation to the president that Joe Cordileone and Robert Moffatt showed extraordinary heroism during the first Battle of Khe Sanh in 1967. Marine Brig. Gen. James Bierman apologized to the veterans for the 46-year-wait, saying “I’m sorry that it took so long for these awards to work their way around to you.” Continue reading →

Future Infantry BCTs to Stay on Their Feet

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Army: Future Infantry BCTs to Stay on Their Feet

Sep 12, 2013

Military.com| by Matthew Cox
 

FORT BENNING, Ga. — The U.S. Army is currently developing four new combat vehicles, but maneuver officials here maintain that infantry brigades of 2020 may still traverse the battlefield on foot.

Officials at the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence here outlined how tomorrow’s infantry brigade combat teams will likely change during the 2013 Maneuver Warfighter Conference.

In addition to adding a third maneuver battalion, each IBCT will have an additional engineer company, a third cavalry troop and a new artillery battery of six M777 155mm howitzers.

But one weakness of the IBCT formation that infantry officials here continue to wrestle with is the speed small units move round the battlefield. Continue reading →