Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What I was struck by was that the M16 rifle jammed all the time. Seems even if it was cleaned regularly, it still jammed.
The show described a group of Marines going into rescue a squad who had been under attack and finding that they were all dead, many holding a jammed M16.
Just read where the Marines started replacing it with the M4 carbine a few years ago.
Why keep issuing rifles the jam up?
I never experienced a serious jam in ten months of combat. I never had a problem with the over-and-under, either. And I'm damn glad I didn't have to go up against the AK-47 with the old M-14 issued to early troops in Vietnam.
I tried to watch it a couple of nights ago but got depressed. I just turned it off. I studied Agent Orange in graduate school. I was an 80s teen and recall that none of my teachers in grade school or middle school or HS would discuss Vietnam. It was a taboo topic with some strange "code of silence" by teachers. Ironically, it created a tremendous amount of curiosity and zeal in me. I read many books about Vietnam. Examples include "Nam" by Mark Baker, General Westmoreland's autobiography, the "Tunnels of Cu Chi", "Hell In a Very Small Place" (Dien Bien Phu), "Combat Medic", "Aftermath" by Frederick Downs, "Chained Eagle", etc.
I also read many scientific journals and documents about Agent Orange. I studied Operation Ranch Hand in detail and learned advanced, upper-division biochemistry to study the biochemical pathway of the contaminants of Agent Orange in human tissue. I reviewed advanced studies of clinical epidemiology pertaining to Agent Orange, birth defects, cancer, chloroacne, etc. Most recently, I read about brain cancer and Agent Orange claims which came to the forefront after John McCain, a Vietnam Veteran, was diagnosed with brain cancer.
I also met many Vietnam Veterans over the years - particularly at construction sites doing hard labor. I was deeply curious about the history of Vietnam. I was born in 1969 at the height of the war. In general, the inner details are deeply depressing. The stories of tragedy are simply overwhelming after years of personal research. The "Nam" was hell on earth as I understand it.
This singer from Generation X (my age group), made a music video about the Vietnam Veteran in his family back in the 90s. It starts with a recollection by a Nam veteran.
I have a question. I had a granddaughter who was Born prematurely with Spina Bifida. Born dead. I read that Children of Veterans exposed to Agent orange having Spina bifida could attribute that to Agent orange. But not Grand children. How could that be?
What I was struck by was that the M16 rifle jammed all the time. Seems even if it was cleaned regularly, it still jammed.
The show described a group of Marines going into rescue a squad who had been under attack and finding that they were all dead, many holding a jammed M16.
Just read where the Marines started replacing it with the M4 carbine a few years ago.
Why keep issuing rifles the jam up?
Only the original, early variation of the M16 jammed. Part of it was due to improper instructions, and training on cleaning it, and the lack of a chromed lined barrel, and chrome plating in other critical parts, plus the powder was wrong for the cartridge, and climate. These were all resolved in later variants. The Marines did not get rid of their M16's because they failed to operate properly, but the other Armed forces went to the M4 long ago, which for all intents, and purposes it is just a shorter barreled M16 with a collapsible stock. I have one (semi auto, not select fire). It is a superb rifle.
I have two AK pattern rifles. A Hungarian AK-47, and a Romanian AK-74 clone. Both have had jams, and are not nearly as accurate as the M4, or M16. I also have two Russian SKS's which are excellent, never jam, and are more accurate than the AK. The SKS was widely used by the NVA, and VC in Vietnam, maybe more so than the AK. Just my anecdotal experience.
What I was struck by was that the M16 rifle jammed all the time. Seems even if it was cleaned regularly, it still jammed.
The show described a group of Marines going into rescue a squad who had been under attack and finding that they were all dead, many holding a jammed M16.
Just read where the Marines started replacing it with the M4 carbine a few years ago.
Why keep issuing rifles the jam up?
Here is the best explanation I can find quickly. This pretty much sums up what I have heard over the years. I have very little experience with its use. I used the M-60 mostly.
of course we learned from the tactics that worked and didn't work in all our battles and wars.....we didn't become a Super Power and have the best military in the world by having dumb people running our military.
Once again, do you believe an attack on our soldiers and our allies is an ACT OF WAR?....if you do then we are not in disagreement that the communist aggression had to be dealt with our military especially when our sworn enemies the Soviets, Red China and their satellite states were constantly testing us.
yes, Vietnam was worth it because it prevented other communist aggression around the world when our enemies know what we are capable of doing and prevented a global war.
If I punch your face and you don't do anything, I will punch you again and again until you make me stop. ..........that was the Cold War. It was dealing with communism aggression without going into a global nuclear war.....a reason North Vietnam isn't a parking lot today.
I understand what you are explaining in some pretty simple/basic terms, and I'm all too familiar with these sorts of analogies that people like to use, but I have a REAL hard time thinking in terms this simplistic when it comes to global politics/dynamics.
Take for example your question about whether an attack on our soldiers and our allies is an ACT OF WAR. Then you use this face punching analogy to further your point...
Answer to your first question is yes (to keep things simple), but whether that is an ACT OF WAR that could have been avoided is really the question. You also like to use WWI and WWII as example, and if you look at those examples, there was plenty time there when we felt the ACT OF WAR of consequence to us was an attack on our soil. Right? Only when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor did we start considering ourselves "punched in the face."
I don't recall Vietnam or any other country bombing America back then. Do you? So much of what we eventually consider and ACT OF WAR depends largely on where and why we put our troops in harms way, more often than not on foreign soil rather than our own. That's where the judgement comes in that I call into question.
One thing is if you punch me in the face without provocation. Another thing if you punch me in the face because I'm messing around in your homeland. Right? Either may be considered an ACT OF WAR, but the question is what such act can be avoided, where, why and how? This same question is very much at the heart of what we've been dealing with in the Middle East for a long time now. Did Afghanistan bomb us? Did Iraq bomb us?
Would we be getting "punched in the face" if we weren't over their in their sand box? Are we maybe willing to get our face punched and declare war, so we can get to that oil maybe? Just maybe?
I never said it didn't happen but I will stand by what I said about it being extremely rare.
This happened in March, 1968 right after the Tet offensive when we were losing 400 Americans a week.. that is weekly and not monthly.
Not excusing it mind you but when your buddies get killed some can go off the deep end.
I was in a couple fire fights, not a lot just a couple... maybe 2 during my entire time there, and it is one scary thing. It isn't like video games where you can think but in a real fire fight you live just one second at a time trying to make sure you live just one second more. I remember being in elephant grass about 2 feed deep and I could hear the bullets wizzzing through the grass and all I could think of is would it hurt if I got hit? Survival is all you think about and if it moves you kill it. If it is on the ground and moves again you kill it again.
That fire fight was on the night of 18 March, 1969 which just so happened to be the first day of Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia. They flew the entire battalion out... must have been 100 helicopters and our job was to stop the infiltration from Cambodia. Never saw so many men on one mission.
When it started to get dark we broke into platoon size units setting up ambushes on trails. I don't know how many tried to get by us but we counted 16 NVA dead the next morning, this certainly wasn't all of them as they attempt to drag the wounded and dead away, while we lost two of our men. That was my worst night in country.
But the fear is there and the fear is very real. When death is very near you stop thinking and start shooting... in My Lai, especially during Tet 1968, all you needed to hear was one round go off and I would guess half the guys in the unit would start shooting too. And they are not bad guys, they are not war criminals they are simply human and want to live to get back home.
If all you've ever done is play computer war games you can not comprehend what it is like. For the record I can not stand computer war games because they are not real. Now, if only PlayStation would mount a real AK47 on the monitor that could fire real bullets back at you you'd then have a sense of what real war is really all about.
It is not a game.
The ones I saw in the hospital? Yes, they received the same care.
In the field? Of course I took care of any wounded Americans first. That was my job and then I moved on to enemy wounded when I was finished which was the right thing to do.
I spent a couple weeks in the hospital while there. I wasn't wounded but fully loaded, mostly water, I attempted to step over a rice paddy **** and I busted open a hernia. How is that for a war wound? Anyway, needed a hernia operation and spent a week in Vung Tau which to us was a resort area. It even had FLUSH TOILETS and we had to be instructed how to use them because it had been so long......
But we had some wounded soldiers next to our "wing" (barracks really) and they had the same amount of nurses, doctors and IV's that we had.
I had hoped my hernia was a ticket home but not to be. Hard to remember but I think I was out of commission for about a month and when I got back I got the cushy job of burning the stuff from the toilets that wouldn't flush. 55 gallon drums cut in half.
Being the medic I was in charge of sanitation and this was part of it.
Best job ever and I mean that. Any job you didn't have to worry about being shot at was a good job.
My job was to go to the gate, pick up four village women who rode in the back of the truck, go to the fuel dump to pick up two 55 gallon drums of diesel fuel and two 55 gallons of gasoline. From her we would head to the place of business and I would fall asleep in the truck or go goof off.
At about 2 in the afternoon the burning business was done and the rest of the day was mine.
I had my own pick up truck that was off record. The army had no record of it existing. It had a name "The S___ Burning Truck" and for obvious reasons it was never messed with. I had free reign to drive anywhere I wanted I could even go into the village to the USO club.
How many enlisted men in Vietnam had their very own vehicles that they could drive anywhere they wanted? I was never stopped; the MP's at the gate knew what the truck was and the last thing they ever wanted to do was stop it... I always got waved right through.
I was never messed with... if someone wanted me for extra duty somewhere all I had to say was "I gotta go burn some S___...." and I was immediately waved away. Really, think about it, how do you mess with a guy whose job it is is to burn S___? Exactly.
I remember a big deal inspection by the inspector general. The company commander told me my only job was to get the truck away from the came before the inspector general arrived and not come back until after he left. He didn't care what I did or where I went as long as I wasn't around.
The truck was clean... it was washed every day and I was the only person ever allowed in the cab.
Oh, how did I warrant this job? At this time I was approaching DEROS so I was a short timer... short timers were given preference to the good jobs. I had also been promoted to Spec 5 which is an NCO rank and being one of the higher ranking medics I got to pick the best job. This was it and I s___ you not.
Latest News: FDA Grants Breakthrough Therapy Designation for MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD, Agrees on Special Protocol Assessment for Phase 3 Trials
Our highest priority project is funding clinical trials of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) as a tool to assist psychotherapy for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Preliminary studies have shown that MDMA in conjunction with psychotherapy can help people overcome PTSD, and possibly other disorders as well. MDMA is known for increasing feelings of trust and compassion towards others, which could make an ideal adjunct to psychotherapy for PTSD.
One thing is if you punch me in the face without provocation. Another thing if you punch me in the face because I'm messing around in your homeland. Right? Either may be considered an ACT OF WAR, but the question is what such act can be avoided, where, why and how? This same question is very much at the heart of what we've been dealing with in the Middle East for a long time now. Did Afghanistan bomb us? Did Iraq bomb us?
Would we be getting "punched in the face" if we weren't over their in their sand box? Are we maybe willing to get our face punched and declare war, so we can get to that oil maybe? Just maybe?
Whether 9/11 can be used as justification for our involvement in the Middle East is a matter for speculation. I don't have a good answer for that. I think it can be, but only tangentially. Is the U.S. safer that we are fighting terrorists in the M.E.? I don't have an answer for that either. My gut tells me that I'd rather fight them there, than here, but again, I don't know if that is true or not. I thought Obama was going to get us out of Iraq, and Afghanistan, but he escalated them, as well as getting us into Syria, and Libya. I thought Trump would get us out of Iraq, and Afghanistan also. So far he has not.
I think Vietnam helped end the Cold War by showing the Russians, and Chinese we would fight. However, we did not fight the war in Vietnam properly, and the politicians screwed it up yet again.
The life of a single American is not worth the lives of all the people in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria for that matter.
And then Bush messed up with Saddam took over Kuwait. Saddam should have been our ally and let the creeps go at it.
Trump gets it; not all the people in the world want our type of government. Some like dictatorships and I am all for letting them have what they want.
Trump is re-uping our presence in Afghanistan and you declare Trump gets it? Nevermind Trump not too long ago essentially argued against all involvement in the ME. What worries me are the people who think Trump gets it and why...
The real issues with countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and much of the ME in general is not about who wants our type of government but who keeps invading who, making enemies left and right. We supported Iraq in the Iraq/Iran war for lots of years, pretty well making sure Iran became our enemy. Then decided Iraq was our enemy too. How much of any of that had to do with the United States promoting "our type of government?"
Even if we could, understanding what is necessary to bring about democracy in some of these places would save us a lot of time, money and people...
Regarding your last sentence: don't you think it would have been more instructive for a comment on that subject to come from one of the North Vietnamese soldiers?
It is too narrow to imagine that every circumstance in global politics is Germany marching into the Rhineland & invasion of Poland.
The best way to "handle" Vietnam would have been not to facilitate the coup in South Vietnam in the first place. South Vietnam was no liberal democracy. From the very start, it was corrupt and anti-democratic. Our troops should never have been there in the first place: this was not a valuable ally or an ideological partner. It was a bogus regime propped up by outsiders. If you can't make choices about how to use your resources--about what interests are vital--then you will pay immense costs, human, moral, and financial.
The Soviet collapse was fundamentally the result of its political fragility.
North Vietnam would not "be a parking lot" if we had never been there. We survived the Cold War, yet the risk of nuclear accident & conflict remains. Indeed, the rivalry with the Soviets has been replaced by a rivalry with Russia, which uses asymmetric means to undermine the liberal West.
If you won't take Vietnam as a counterpoint to the rhetoric of appeasement that fuels aggressive foreign policy, then take World War I. For reasons of "credibility" and "deterrence" and "answering" rivals, the Europeans entered into a long, bloody conflict over a Balkan backwater and achieved less than nothing: setting the stage for global atrocities and the next World War. 18 million died; there were 23 million military wounded; and the civilians maimed were uncounted.
Vietnam is entirely communist today. After we left, South Vietnam folded like the paper regime it always was. All of those lives lost to create exactly what we said we were fighting to prevent. And, without the extended Vietnam War, it's even possible that there would not have been a genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in neighboring Cambodia.
Cuba is not a threat.
And you are correct that we chose Afghanistan & Iraq as enemies after 9/11. Iraq was a particularly far afield choice. And to what end? Iraq is breaking up into three countries before our eyes. The Shi'a south is aligning with Iran. The Sunni triangle has been the source of insurgent opposition to the Shi'a government in Baghdad. And the Kurdish north risks a major conflagration among Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq--one which would invite major powers and could spiral out of control.
Afghanistan continues to have a central government lacking legitimacy and wide swathes of the country under de facto Taliban control. In 16 years, we have not defeated the Taliban. There is no apparent rational goal that this war would achieve or is achieving. The mountainous region traversing Afghanistan and Pakistan remains lawless and won't be pacified. Missiles could effectively shut down training camps in remote parts of Afghanistan. Why support this Afghan government? What can it achieve?
True. Thanks. Further describes all the issues at play well beyond just choosing our way of government and/or who punches who in the face...
PS: I should have been more clear about Vietnam also being among the communist countries today, but they're not quite as communist as some. The Economist described the leadership of Vietnam as "ardently capitalist communists".
I did not. I was drafted in 1966, when the majority of young men from my background (small town, working-class, blue collar) felt that we had an obligation to serve our country. I took my basic and advanced training in an armor regiment of the Fifth Infantry Division in Colorado. I trained as a 4.2 mortar crewman. With one year left in my two-year hitch, I got orders to report to Vietnam unattached to any unit. I was thrown into the replacement pool at Bien Hoa, and assigned to the First Infantry Division, or "bloody red one", as the clerk told me. Made me feel real good. Not. I reported to Di An, the First Division base camp, and learned that my MOS was now 11B, infantry rifleman. I was issued the first M-16 I had ever seen, and choppered into the base camp of the 1/28th infantry regiment at Phu Loi. A week later I was sitting on the red dirt of the runway at Quan Loi, waiting for the flight of slicks that would take us to the Cambodian border. Two days later I was in a series of firefights and VC ground attacks on our perimeter next to a special forces camp. A week later it was Christmas, and we ate our holiday meal in the rain, with the canned turkey, instant mashed potatoes, and jello, running together into a cold tan soup with red streaks. That marked the first month of the second year of my army career. The next nine months passed like those of many of my fellow grunts in line platoons, many of whom have posted movingly and truly in this thread. I was honorably discharged from active duty as Sgt.E-5, having been a rifle squad leader from April through September, 1968.
I try not to become too involved with the whole Vietnam argument, because I become upset with the uninformed views of many people, until I remind myself that it is not their fault that they weren't there; I certainly can't resent them for being more fortunate than I was. That way lies a kind of madness. One point I would like to reiterate, having read several posts stating the fact, is that I can't remember a single conversation among the troops I served with that dealt with patriotism, politics, or any similar dispute. We were too busy trying to stay alive, and -- more to the point -- trying to keep our buddies alive. The only exceptions to this general observation were the two assassinations of public figures that occurred during that terrible year: Martin Luther King in March, 1968, and Robert Kennedy in June. By coincidence, my unit had just returned from ambush patrols on the two mornings, three months apart, that we got the news. We were tired from the sleepless night we had just spent, our jungle fatigues were soaked to the skin (we wore no underwear, of course -- none of the infantry did, that I knew of), and we got the bad news from " the world." We avoided each others' eyes. We were quiet all day. We wondered what kind of country we were going home to -- if we made it. Many of us are still wondering.
The way I see it, America is going to have to wait until the generation of Vietnam veterans and war protestors dies out, for this evil era to be laid to rest. Ken Burns has done nothing but open old wounds for us veterans, particularly considering his attempt to show Vietnam vets as pathetic, sorrowful losers and/or sociopaths, and to establish a moral equivalence of the veterans and the protestors. I can understand his motivation, but I do not share it. And I cannot forgive him for doing this.
Not sure I've ever read a comment in this forum as well written as this one of yours. You a writer?
I was just too young for Vietnam, but I was soon to come of draft age, and I remember my dad declaring if the war continued, we were leaving the country. Like you say, the soldiers there weren't talking "patriotism, politics, or any similar dispute." They were just trying to stay alive, and I think my dad was just trying to keep me alive too...
Maybe I haven't seen enough of the documentary yet, but I have not picked up on how Burns insults you and the other American soldiers in Vietnam like you describe. I can fully understand the argument about politics, the right and/or wrong of Vietnam, but I can't for the life of me understand any general criticism of the soldiers who found themselves fighting there, by way of draft no less...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
