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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (130140)	4/26/2004 6:15:59 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Bilow, you make sense in many respects but in some I have a different view. There were lots of reasons for our higher kill ratio. I was referring specifically to my company's ratio in unit-on-unit combat. I wasn't referring to the number of NVA that were killed on the periphery through gunships, bomb runs or artillery. If you add in the number of NVA that were killed through our superior air support and artillery, the ratio for most units was very favorable. In addition I wasn't using "official" types of enemy kia figures. Those figures, in most units, were totally corrupt. Almost every "career" officer wanting to get his combat ticket punched inflated those figures. Like college grade inflation that results from cheating, the more the lying occurred, the more lying was necessary to "compete." I suspect the military's reports of "success" are still usually grossly exaggerated because, after all, how many officers get promoted if they get their ass kicked? From the junior officers all the way up to division commanders the game was to build a "successful and competent" reputation; truth be damned as it often is. The "why" of the success of many units is harder to explain than your post would indicate. In many ways we were at a disadvantage even though we owned the air. The NVA had the benefit of the heavy jungle cover where it was almost impossible to see more than a few meters. They were often fighting on ground they chose. They were often dug into bunkers that looked just like ant and termite mounds and had been there so long that they were indistinguishable. They usually knew we were coming and were waiting, silent and unseen, for us to enter the killing zones of their ambushes. We, on the other hand, were moving from place to place and very rarely set foot on the same piece of ground twice. Every step we took was often a step into growth and vistas we'd never seen before. The jungle was the link between the NVA and, in an ephemeral sort of way, the good ones could communicate with the NVA through the sounds and smells of the jungle and calls, or lack of call, of the animals and birds that lived there. While it's true that the army learned how to teach some men to actually overcome the reluctance to kill another, it's also true that a significant number, and maybe a majority, of men still wouldn't shoot at the enemy. I don't think, however, that we were "better trained." Like many jobs, training is overrated and doing the job is the real "training." I think two factors distinguish really effective units from others. One is the amount of combat experience the unit has. "Battle hardened" IS a big deal. Units learn to recognize the talents of the individual men of the unit and in combat it's a true meritocracy because if you screw up people die right then and don't come back. In units that have learned to survive long enough to get that edge, there is real teamwork, division of responsibility and high efficiency. Squad leaders in Vietnam could be e-2s with some men in the squad outranking them as e-5s. The second thing that distinguishes the really effective units is leadership, and I don't mean from the officer core. In Vietnam the war was up close and personal and the firefights were usually frighteningly intense and short termed. The key was to avoid getting caught in a killing ambush and for sure to avoid getting caught in a deep ambush. In every "good" unit there were one or more men in the company that "everyone" knew were the guys who knew what was going on. They had to have good judgement and a sixth sense that told them when it was getting hot, who could do what, and how to move or not move. They had to be the guys that when they said "now," people moved without thinking. And they had to be right almost every time. Those men could be officers but that was an extreme rarity. Sometimes those guys only had a month or two in the jungle before they rose to that level; it was more about talent than it was about experience, but experience was huge too. The thing that I think made Americans good in the "gunfight" types of clashes that occurred so often in Vietnam's jungles was that we are, in many ways, a "cowboy" culture and it is easy for us to take individual initiative without waiting for someone "officially in charge" to give us direction. In the mercurical and deadly war in Vietnam that quickness of action and individualism served us well. My experience is, therefor, that if those people you call the "effectives" kill the other effectives, that leaves the "duck and cover" types vulnerable. In those units that actually lose their "effectives" the results are deadly. One of our sister companies never seemed to keep its leaders alive long enough to develop the wisdom needed. They trailed after us into some of the jungle we covered and lost men dead and wounded at such a rate that I don't want to think of it even today. As far as the innate "goodness" or "betterness" of American soldiers, I wonder if there is such a thing in times of war and after men have gotten good and scared and angry. It's not something that distinguished us in Vietnam. Kerry was right. In the end our culture and our military institutional checks and balances will determine if we're inherently "better" morally than the other guys. Finally, I can't say about desertion except to say that I went AWOL for two weeks before I went because I thought I might not be coming home and, for some reason, I wanted to see my sister's child born. I would have gone awol again on rxr in Australia except for the fact that there was someone home waiting for me and I had only a month left in country. I know that for many that served with me there was nothing worse in life than what we were doing. One of the common refrains when someone thought of something that might have a penalty attached to it was, "what they gonna do, send me to Nam?" Sometimes desertion, like suicide, is a rational alternative course of action.