Author: Fast Freddy

Commemorating the War

Fast Freddy Posts ,

Commemorating the War

The Vietnam Memorial, like the POW-MIA flag, stands as the physical embodiment of the desire of the American people to understand the meaning of the Vietnam conflict and remember the men and women who took part in it. During the late 1970s both public and private efforts began to congeal around the idea of establishing a monument to the 58,000 American dead in Vietnam. Influenced by the film The Deer Hunter (1978), Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran, teamed up with two other servicemen in 1979 to create a non-profit organization known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Continue reading →

American Veterans

Fast Freddy Posts ,

American Veterans

The Vietnam conflict impacted veterans in a variety of ways. Most combat soldiers witnessed violence and lost friends to the horrors of war. The dedication of eight new names to the Vietnam War Memorial on 28 May 2001 brought the American death toll to 58,226, a number that will continue to rise as the classified casualties of the covert war in Laos and Cambodia continue to surface. Some American veterans bore emotional and physical injuries that they would carry for the rest of their lives. Most remained proud of their service and of the role of the United States in the conflict. During the war approximately twenty-seven million American men dealt with the draft; 11 percent of them served in some fashion in Vietnam. As a consequence of college deferments, most U.S. soldiers in Vietnam came from minority and working-class backgrounds. The average age of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, nineteen, was three years lower than for American men during World War II and Korea. Continue reading →

Refugees and “Boat People”

Fast Freddy Posts ,

Refugees and “Boat People”

The immigration of thousands of people from Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s impacted American-Vietnamese relations and gave rise to new communities of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong Americans in the United States. Known as boat people for escaping Southeast Asia by sea, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians (predominantly Vietnamese) generated a political and humanitarian firestorm for the international community, the United States, and Vietnam. Continue reading →

Vietnamese Veterans

Fast Freddy Posts ,

Vietnamese Veterans

For Vietnamese veterans on both sides of the conflict, the violence of war remained firmly with them for the rest of their lives. For the victorious communist troops, the end of the war meant a return home to participate in village life and the rebuilding of a united nation. Compared to South Vietnamese veterans, many northern veterans suffered long isolation from their families whom they had not seen in some cases since the mid-1960s. The communist government forbade the returning veterans to fully take part in village politics due to fears that ex-soldiers would take on increased power through their enhanced status as war heroes. Over the next two decades the veterans fared poorly and received paltry rations of rice, meat, and cigarettes in compensation for their war service. Even more so than for American veterans, Vietnamese veterans were largely forgotten by the government, and the service of women was utterly ignored. Only near the end of the twentieth century did the Vietnamese government fully honor the women who fought as front-line troops during the war. Continue reading →

Last Days of The Infantry in Vietnam 1972

Fast Freddy Posts

By the final full year of the war, American grunts were a rarity in the field.  The last of them would die by enemy action in early June.  For light wepons infantrymen and their constant companions – mortarmen, combat medics, armor recon and crewmen, artillery forward observers and their field radio operators – it was a lonely end.  It was the same for a handful of Special Forces advisers.  Three task forces would close out GI ground operations. Continue reading →

The Ho Chi Minh Trail

Fast Freddy Posts , ,

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a complex web of different jungle paths that enabled communist troops to travel from North Vietnam to areas close to Saigon. It has been estimated that the National Liberation Front received sixty tons of aid per day from this route. Most of this was carried by porters. Occasionally bicycles and ponies would also be used.

At regular intervals along the route, the NLF built base camps. As well as providing a place for them to rest, the base camps provided medical treatment for those who had been injured or had fallen ill on the journey. Continue reading →

Mining of Haiphong Harbor

Fast Freddy Posts ,

Haiphong is the major port and third largest city in North Vietnam. The majority of North Vietnam’s imports arrive through the port of Haiphong, which is connected by railroad with Hanoi. During the Vietnam War, Haiphong was a major supply depot and was heavily bombed from 1965 until 1968, when bombing was curtailed by President Johnson. During the attacks, much of the population was evacuated and the industry dispersed. Continue reading →

Arc Light Operations

Fast Freddy Posts ,

Code name for the overwhelming aerial raids of B-52 Stratofortresses against enemy positions in Southeast Asia, the first B-52 Arc Light raid took place on June 18, 1965, on a suspected Vietcong base north of Saigon. Elements of the 2nd and 320th Bombardment Wings, of the Strategic Air Command, had deployed from the United States to Anderson Air Force Base, Guam. Shortly after this strike, the results of which were inconclusive, many Americans began to question the advisability of “swatting flies with sledgehammers.” Such criticism became increasingly common during the eight years of Arc Light operations. Continue reading →

Vietnam War’s Legacy Is Vivid as Clinton Visits Laos

Fast Freddy Posts

Mrs. Clinton at the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise Center which provides artificial limbs for victims of the Vietnam War, in Vientiane, Laos.

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: July 11, 2012

VIENTIANE, Laos — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a brief stop on her Asia tour on Wednesday in Laos, the first visit by an American secretary of state here in 57 years and one that brought into stark relief the enduring legacy of the Vietnam War.

At an artificial-limb center, Mrs. Clinton met a 19-year-old who lost his forearms and eyesight when a bomb, dropped by the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War and unexploded for decades, finally blew up three years ago. Continue reading →