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The War in Vietnam: A Story in Photographs

The war in Vietnam has been described as the war America watched from their living rooms. Images of combat and American GIs were projected through our TV screens and across our newspapers daily. During the war in Vietnam, the American military gave the press unprecedented freedom of access to combat zones. This allowed newspaper reporters and photographers and television crews to document a war involving American sons and daughters on the other side of the world. This willingness to allow documentation of the war was also extended to the military's own photographers. Between 1962 and 1975, military photographers for the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force took millions of photographs of the American conflict in Vietnam. Almost a quarter of a million of these images are now located at the National Archives. These photographs serve publishers, historians, and students who want to learn more about Vietnam. They include images of almost every aspect of the war.

The jobs of the military photographers were not only to document the war, but also to capture images for the historical record. One photographer, Chuck Cook, describes it as follows: "What the photographers did was worth doing--maybe not for the reasons the military said. They just felt that what the soldiers were going through was worth saving." In his book Vietnam: Images from Combat Photographers , author C. Douglas Elliott describes the images that came in from the combat operation as ones "that did not show winners and losers. They showed soldiers--often teenagers--coping as best they could with unrelenting heat and humidity, heavy packs, heavy guns, and an invisible enemy whose mines, booby traps, and snipers could cut life short without a moment's warning." In order to capture these images, photographers took many risks and suffered many of the same hardships as the soldiers and personnel they were covering.

The operations and direction of the military photography was organized by the Army Pictorial Center (APC), which dispatched a series of teams for brief visits. These teams were organized into DASPO (Department of the Army Special Photo Office). DASPO rotated photographers into Vietnam for three-month tours of duty from a base in Hawaii. It wasn't long before the Marines sent their own photographers into the field, quickly followed by the Army and its 221st Signal Company. The DASPO and the 221st were considered the Army's elite photographic units. Smaller numbers of photographers worked for the Public Information Office (PIO), the Air Force and the Navy. The Air Force photographers assisted in aerial reconnaissance and documentation of bombing missions. The Navy photographers worked from the Combat Camera Group-Pacific (CCGPAC) photographing river patrols, counterguerrilla missions, and SEAL teams. The mission of DASPO was to provide a historical record of the war for the Pentagon archives. These photographers were not there as journalists, but rather to create a visual record of operations, equipment, and personnel. After the photographs were processed by the Pentagon, they were made available to military publications, the press, and the public at a photographic library at the Pentagon.

As these photographers worked to document the war, they covered a variety of people and circumstances including combat missions, GIs, support personnel, medical units, and visits by dignitaries, politicians, and entertainers. While they may have been there to provide visual record of operations, equipment, and personnel; their photographs also tell a story. It is a story about the young men and women who fulfilled served their duty to their country by serving in the war in Vietnam.

https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/vietnam-photos

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A guide to Vietnam War resources

Government documents, oral histories, antiwar movements

This past April marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces, recognized as the official end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Despite the passage of time, the legacy of that conflict, which resulted in the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and possibly millions of Vietnamese, weighs heavily on the present. This has prompted one of the war’s leading historians to write: “With the possible exception of the Civil War, no event in U.S. history has demanded more soul-searching than the war in Vietnam.”1 There is little doubt that this anniversary year will spark new research projects on the part of both students and faculty, suggesting the need for librarians to have a readily available resource list.

Over the years, the Vietnam War has been the focus of thousands of books, films, and articles. While there is already an abundance of online resource lists on the topic, the goal of this guide is to emphasize government sources, oral histories, and the increasingly rich array of material concerning the antiwar movement.

Government websites

The LBJ Library Reading Room. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library has digitized a small number of its 45 million pages that relate to his administration. This digitized content includes Johnson’s daily diary, and excerpts from his famous telephone conversations. Two parts of the digital reading room in particular are most interesting to Vietnam researchers. The first is a collection of Johnson’s National Security Action Memorandums, which are presidential directives that relate to national security. The second is a collection of contemporary interviews with key Cold War figures—such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Foreign Policy Adviser Walt Rostow, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara—which are helpful to understanding the war from the administration’s perspective. Access: http://www.lbjlibrary.org/research.

Nixon Presidential Library & Museum Virtual Library. The website of the Nixon Presidential Library is a good companion site to the Johnson Library, as it includes President Nixon’s own daily diary and National Security Action Memorandums. This is augmented by Nixon’s speeches, news releases, press conference transcripts, some private memos, and the diary of Nixon aide H. R. Haldeman. The library also places online the full text of the famous Pentagon Papers, which were leaked by Daniel Ellsburg and revealed the United States’ covert role in the Vietnam conflict starting in the 1940s. Access: http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/index.php.

Research in Military Records: Vietnam War. This site is the National Archives portal to their records on the Vietnam War. Most of the records relate to casualty counts, available for both the United States and Vietnamese. U.S. casualty counts are further broken down by state, year, branch of service, and other pertinent factors. Files on prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action can also be searched and downloaded in PDF form. When searching, however, users are kicked over to the National Archive’s Access to Archival Databases website, where they must redo their search from scratch. Access: http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/.

Vietnam War Commemoration. This website was created by the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a $15 million effort to honor veterans and mark the 50 years since U.S. ground troops arrived in Vietnam. Commemorative events are still ongoing, and can be tracked on an interactive map. The site also includes a helpful dose of educational material, including an interactive timeline, printable fact sheets and posters, and links to primary source documents. Readers be warned, however, that the site is not without controversy. According to media reports, the site glosses over some of the war’s more notorious incidents and pays little attention to antiwar movements. For example, the timeline does not attach the word massacre to the events at My Lai, and omits John Kerry’s testimony at the Fulbright hearings. Access: http://www.vietnamwar50th.com.

U.S. allies

Australia and the Vietnam War. Starting in 1962, Australia sent some 60,000 of its military personnel onto the battlefields of Vietnam. This website, created by the Australian Department of Veterans Affairs, seeks to educate readers on Australia’s role in the war. The website focuses on battles fought by Australian troops, but also includes detailed sections on how Australia became involved in the war, equipment and weapons, public opinion and the home front, and the eventual pullout of Australian troops after the Tet Offensive. Access: http://vietnam-war.commemoration.gov.au/.

New Zealand and the Vietnam War. New Zealand’s own role in the war is remembered here, in the form of photos, audio, video, and memories submitted directly to the site by veterans. Articles cover military operations, the home front and antiwar activities, the homecoming of New Zealand troops, and the aftermath of the war on New Zealand society. There is also a timeline as well as teaching resources. Access: http://www.vietnamwar.govt.nz/.

Primary sources

The Avalon Project. A project of the Yale Law School’s Lillian Goodman Law Library, The Avalon Project collects primary sources in law, history and diplomacy ranging from 400 B.C.E. to the present day. The section on Indochina spans from 1950 to 1964, ending with President Lyndon Johnson’s reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and thus provides an intriguing narrative of the run up to war told in diplomatic cables, government statements, and presidential addresses. Unfortunately, the documents are provided without any context, making the site difficult to use for less experienced researchers. Access: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/indoch.asp.

Virtual Vietnam Archive. Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and Archive is the largest online source for information on the Vietnam War. The archive was formed by Vietnam veterans in 1989 with a mission to “collect and preserve the documentary record of the Vietnam War.” The center holds annual guest lectures as well as regular conferences and other events. The digital archive contains more than 550,000 items, and can be searched or browsed. Because of the sheer amount of material available, users are well advised to take advantage of the curated subject guides, with topics ranging from the Tet Offensive and Fall of Saigon to the experiences of Vietnamese Americans. Access: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/.

Veterans issues

Vietnam Veterans of America. Founded in 1978, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) is a national nonprofit organization designed to promote issues important to veterans, as well as provide outreach and resources to veterans in need. This organization was one of the first to raise national consciousness concerning the plight of returning veterans, many of whom struggled to receive care for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other health problems related to their service in Vietnam. The VVA website contains information on how veterans can take advantage of benefits, as well as information on PTSD and the risks of exposure to Agent Orange. Those interested in politics can also find information on VVA’s legislative action initiatives. Access: http://vva.org/.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. This site contains more information than the site of the National Park Service, which is centered on visiting the memorial in Washington D.C. Visitors to this site may scroll through or search an interactive wall of faces, each one linking to the profile of one of 58,307 (as of May 2015) fallen soldiers whose names are ascribed on the wall. Visitors may also take a virtual tour of the Education Center and download teaching and learning resources on the Vietnam War. Access: http://www.vvmf.org/.

Oral histories

The Rutgers Oral History Archives. Calling itself the “#15 oral history site in the world,” this site is contributed to by Rutgers graduates who served in Vietnam. All four branches of the military are presented, and interviews may be downloaded in HTML or PDF format. Access: http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/military-history/29-conflict-index/170-vietnam-war-indexv.

Veterans History Project. A project of the Library of Congress (LC) American Folklife Center, the project “collects first-hand accounts of U.S. veterans” ranging from World War I through the post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of LC’s most reliable partners since this crowdsourced project has been public libraries, which often coordinate local projects and provide space for interviews. Thousands of these interviews have been digitized, an online search tool allows users to filter search results by the interviewee’s gender, branch of service, and even whether the veteran spent time as a prisoner of war. Access: http://www.loc.gov/vets/.

Vietnam Era Oral History Project. A project of Utah Valley University, this site contains 20 interviews with Vietnam veterans. Most of the interviews were conducted in 2010. Although the interviews were videotaped, only excerpts are provided, but full interviews are available in audio and transcript form. Access: http://contentdm.uvu.edu/cdm/search/collection/Vietnam.

The Antiwar Movement

Antiwar and Radical History Project. From the University of Washington, this site seeks to provide an overview of antiwar activities from around the Pacific Northwest. In doing so, the site gives us a history from World War I to the present. The section on the Vietnam War is further broken down into four sections: student activism, draft resistance, scanned photos and documents, and antiwar voices from within the military. Access: https://depts.washington.edu/antiwar/.

FBI Files on the Antiwar Movement. During the Vietnam War, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acted as a kind of secret police: spying on antiwar activists and other dissidents, compiling dossiers, and engaging in what some might call “dirty tricks” to disrupt their organizations. Today the FBI’s website makes some of its investigative files from that era available to the public, including thousands of pages relating to the antiwar movement. Here users can search subcollections of files on famous personalities (such as historian Howard Zinn) and prominent antiwar organizations (like the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee). Depending on the browser being used, some of the e-readers on this website will be nonfunctioning and require users to download the PDF version. Access: https://vault.fbi.gov/antiwar-movement.

FBI Files on Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was founded in 1967 and quickly became one of the most visible antiwar groups of the 1960s and 1970s. This archive, containing 21,477 pages of documents received in response to VVAW’s Freedom of Information Act requests, chronicles the group’s organizing activities across the country. (Fully searchable versions of these documents are available to subscribers of Gale’s Archives Unbound database). Access: http://www.wintersoldier.com/index.php?topic=VVAWFBI.

Oral History of Utah Peace Activists. Another Utah Valley University Project, this site focuses on local peace activists and features transcripts and audio interviews with a wide range of activists, including military veterans who turned against the war and longtime peace activists. Access: http://www.uvu.edu/library/archives/peace.html.

The Pacifica Radio/UC Berkeley Social Activism Sound Recording Project. UC-Berkeley was a hotbed of student activism during the Vietnam era, and Pacifica Radio reporters covered most of the major events of that time. This website provides a timeline of antiwar actions in California with links to audio, video, and primary sources such as newspaper articles. While the timeline is extensive, unfortunately many of the links require UC library access, and the age of the site (it was first created in the 1990s) means the audio clips are short and of low quality. Access: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificaviet.html.

Vietnam War Ephemera Collection. Part of the University of Washington Libraries’ digital collections, this site collects leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on campus by the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s and 1970s. Users may search through a large collection of scanned documents related to the antiwar movement, as well as other hot social issues of the time. All of the scans are high-quality. Access: http://content.lib.washington.edu/protestsweb/.

Miscellaneous

Antiwar Movement Curriculum, Stanford History Education Group. A recent survey of 13 commonly used high school and college history textbooks showed that only one provides an in-depth treatment of the Vietnam antiwar movement.2 Teaching faculty who want to make up for those deficiencies or move away from textbooks entirely will appreciate what the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) is doing. As a partner with the Library of Congress’s Teaching with Primary Sources Program, SHEG advocates the use of primary source documents in the K–12 classroom in an effort to help students “read like an historian.” This site lets registered users download online curricula, including a unit on the Vietnam Antiwar Movement that includes a lesson plan, original documents, and a graphic organizer. Registration is free. Access: http://sheg.stanford.edu/anti-vietnam-war-movement.

King and Vietnam Curriculum. Stanford University is also home to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. King began to speak out against U.S. involvement in Indochina beginning in 1965 and most forcefully after his speech at New York’s Riverside Church in April 1967. In addition to compiling the King Papers, maintaining an online encyclopedia, and many other valuable services, the King Institute provides curriculum to teach about King’s opposition to the Vietnam War. Access: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/liberation-curriculum/create-your-own-classroom-activity/king-and-vietnam.

Vietnam War Bibliography. A compilation of hundreds of books, articles, and dissertations by Edwin Moise, professor of history at Clemson University. France has a long history of involvement in Vietnam, and some researchers will surely appreciate the inclusion on this list of several French-language sources. While its length and layout make this bibliography appear daunting at first, very specific categories help the user find materials on their topic. Another helpful feature—many entries are also annotated. Access: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/bibliography.html.

http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/9/511.full

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enjoy... p.s. this was taken at 1:00 in the morning.

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Silhoutte

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Art

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Peace

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How Many People Died In The Vietnam War?

Tom Valentine April 11, 2014 Leave a Comment

Don't Miss Stories Follow the Vietnam War

KeywordsARVN Casualty Viet Cong

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It is not easy to come up with exact war casualty figures particularly in a long guerrilla war like Vietnam. Since the end of the war in 1975, there are a number of estimates of its casualties drawn up, but they often vary and sometimes even contradict each other. In the entire war, estimates of the total death toll range widely from 1.3 million, according to Guenter Lewy1, to 3.9 million, according to R. J. Rummel2.MilitaryUSA, South Vietnam and AlliesOwing to relatively low casualty rates & careful records from their governments, estimates of U.S. and allied forces fatalities except South Vietnam are quite reliable. During the war, the United States lost 58,220 military personnel, in which 47,434 were killed in action while 10,786 died by other causes3. All of them were listed on the Vietnam War Memorial located in Washington D.C. Among the allies, South Korea suffered the highest casualties with 4,407 killed in action4; Australia had 5005; Thailand, 351; and New Zealand, 834.Compared to the solid estimates of U.S. casualties, estimates of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) casualties vary. A low figure is 110,357 killed in action, while other figures range as many as 184,000 or even as high as 250,0006. According to an estimate provided by R. J. Rummel, the figure is a bit higher at around 313,000 dead during the war2.North Vietnam and Communist AlliesIn 1978, Guenter Lewy, in his book “America in Vietnam”, estimated that total Communist losses were put atsome 666,000 dead. He even suggested that one-third of the reported “enemy” killed might have been civilians, and concluded that the actual figure was probably closer to 444,000 deaths1. However, this figure is significantly low compared to than other estimates. Hanoi in its official report in 1995 claimed that 1.1 million Communist fighters, included both Viet Cong and NVA personnel, had died during the war. This figure is more acceptable and closer to the U.S. Department of Defense’s estimate of 950,765 communists killed from 1965 to 19747 and R. J. Rummel’s estimate of 1,011,000 North Vietnamese combatant deaths. As regards the communist allies, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) reported losing 1,100 soldiers. Soviet Union lost around 16 men while North Korea lost 14, 11 of whom were pilots4.CiviliansThe exact number of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War is also uncertain. Estimates of Vietnamese civilian casualties were only conducted under pressure of Senate committees led by Senator Edward Kennedy7.The estimate, based on alternative extrapolations from the number of hospital admissions of war casualties, ranges between 195,000 and 430,000 civilian war deaths in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. According to R. J. Rummel’s estimate, some 164,000 South Vietnamese civilians were killed by NVA/Viet Cong forces, including 17,000 South Vietnamese civil servants2. As for the allied forces, the ARVN and U.S. Army committed around 60,000 democidal killings2. In addition, around 2,500 South Vietnamese civilians who were suspected to be Communists fell victim to massacres conducted by South Korean Army.According to Lewy’s estimate, the number of North Vietnamese civilians killed by Americans bombing was 65,0001. This figure is more than twice as many as the U.S. government estimate of 30,000 people killed in North Vietnam4. However, according to the official estimate of Hanoi in 1995, the number of civilian deaths in the entire war were almost 2 million people8, which is four times higher than other estimates.

http://thevietnamwar.info/how-many-people-died-in-the-vietnam-war/

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Vietnam War story 'Wasteland' reveals a lot about today

October 21, 2012|Chris Jones |

THEATER REVIEW: 'Wasteland' 3 stars. Through Dec. 30 at TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Ave.; 1 hour, 40 minutes $32-$42 at 773-281-8463 or timelinetheatre.com

Faced with the notion of a two-character drama set in underground prison cells during the Vietnam War, and armed with the additional information that you only ever actually see one of the two American prisoners (the other being represented by a disembodied voice from the other side of a mound of earth), you might well not feel inclined to rush to the world premiere at the TimeLine Theatre Company. Susan Felder's new play, which opened this weekend, comes with the terrible title of "Wasteland," which sounds either like an adaptation of the modernist T.S. Eliot poem or a post-apocalyptic drama, or both.

The other advance strike against this play, of course, is that the idea of prisoners from disparate backgrounds bonding under duress is not exactly new. Let's see, "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me" (currently playing in Oak Park, actually), "Hostage Song" (a musical seen recently at Signal Ensemble Theatre in Chicago) and "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" all mine this theme, at least to a large degree. And that's by no means a complete list.

But "Wasteland" still manages to do something that none of those other plays or movies actually does, and it does it at TimeLine with the benefit of a superbly directed production from William Brown that progressively pulls you deeper and deeper into its carefully honed subterranean landscape.

By focusing her drama on two Americans from very different backgrounds, set at a remove from the current era, Felder somehow makes it possible to very clearly feel the drama as a metaphor for Red State-Blue State America (a timely notion in this political moment). The two prisoners are both named Joe (as in G.I.). One, a Yankee, is a kind of stand-in progressive. Played by Nate Burger, this is the one we actually see. The other Joe, also known as Riley, played by Steve Haggard, is a Southern conservative, inclined toward anti-gay jokes and yet possessive of a stalwart sense of humor and all-around strength of character upon which the other, less-rooted Joe comes to rely. As their chatter through the earth and between cell walls goes on, you come to see "Wasteland," which is quite subtly written, as a kind of metaphor for political division — and, better yet, it's quite the ambivalent metaphor.

One can see the piece as lamenting that these two frequently noncooperative sides of American political discourse have thrown up an unsurmountable wall within the country, a wall that you might well argue was first erected in the Vietnam era, with "Hanoi Jane" and ubiquitously rancorous anger. Or you can see the play as suggesting that the only way for the MSNBC/Fox News die-hards to be able to deal with their fellow Americans on the other side would be to be A: forced to listen to them for lack of anyone else and B: unable to see them and let prejudice take over. I sat there for the 100-minute running time (we could lose at least 10 of those) pondering how one of the great obstacles to modern bipartisan cooperation is our current ability and inclination to get almost all of our information and entertainment from the same side. It was not always thus. Maybe that, too, began with Vietnam.

I was in the company of two very fine actors. Burger, a vulnerable performer most revealing of the contents of his character's internal fears, offers the most obviously excellent piece of work. But Haggard, whose calling card has to be merely his voice, is yet more impressive, building an entire character, under Brown's guidance, from vocal patterns alone. He becomes yet more interesting as he goes.

Felder's piece skips over some day-to-day details of life underground (not all we're told fully adds up, and the little stuff matters). And the arrival of their captors — who might just decide to shoot both these enemy moles, ending their growing relationship — could be far more terrifying, both from a script and a production point of view. There are many other times when the slow build of the piece seems repetitive and you crave more intensity, more staccato rhythms, more risk.

But with some cutting, adding and (most crucially) intensifying, "Wasteland" could be a very powerful and timely play. You already believe this involving and strikingly emotional show throughout. Kevin Depinet's set, a great mountain of earth that acts as a kind of K2 in reverse, is a formidable piece of design in service of a Vietnam drama that turns out to be very much about the American present.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-21/entertainment/ct-ent-1022-wasteland-review-20121021_1_wasteland-post-apocalyptic-drama-prisoners

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From the archive, 18 March 1968: 300 arrested after Vietnam protest

Originally published in the Guardian on 18 March 1968

Wednesday 17 March 2010 20.17 EDT First published on Wednesday 17 March 2010 20.17 EDT

Britain's biggest anti-Vietnam war demonstration ended in London yesterday with an estimated 300 arrests; 86 people were treated for injuries, and 50, including 25 policemen, one with a serious spine injury, were taken to hospital. Demonstrators engaged police – mounted and on foot – in a protracted battle throwing stones, firecrackers, and smoke bombs. Plastic blood added a touch of vicarious brutality.

It was only after considerable provocation that police tempers began to fray and truncheons started to be used. The demonstrators seemed determined to stay until they had provoked a violent response of some sort, and this intention became paramount once they entered Grosvenor Square.

Later Commander John Lawlor, in charge of the police covering the demonstration, said: "The organisers had no control over their supporters and as a result the agreed arrangements were not carried out. The demonstration degenerated into a disorderly rabble."

After marching from Trafalgar Square with Vanessa Redgrave, among others, at their head, thousands of young people burst into the gardens in front of the American Embassy. After clashes lasting more than an hour, the demonstrators were forced back by policemen. Small groups of demonstrators made for the Dorchester and Hilton hotels but did not succeed in getting in.

Mr Peter Jackson, Labour MP for High Peak, said last night that he would put down a question in the House of Commons today about "unnecessary violence" by police; especially the use of mounted police. Earlier members of the Monday Club, including Mr Patrick Wall, MP, and Mr John Biggs-Davidson, MP, had handed in letters expressing support to the United States and South Vietnamese embassies.

Mr David Bruce, the American Ambassador, issued a statement in which he thanked the police. "We are most grateful for the magnificent way the police handled the attack on the embassy."

More than 1,000 police were waiting for the demonstrators in Grosvenor Square. They gathered in front of the Embassy while diagonal lines stood shoulder to shoulder to cordon off the corners of the square closest to the building.

About 2,000 spectators had gathered at the corners of the square to wait for the demonstrators, among them a few hundred Conservatives and Monday Club supporters who shouted such slogans as "Bomb, bomb the Vietcong" and "Treason" when scattered knots of anarchists leading the procession marched past them.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/mar/18/vietnam-war-protests-london-trafalgarsquare

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In the Vietnam War many civilians were brutally killed and slaughtered by American soldiers. This secret was kept from the American public for a long time, until the media started to report these occurrences.

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American continues to drag ourselves down by trying to watch out for others.

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Vietnam War nurse: ‘I saw people do stuff they’d never do at home’

By Ruth Tam November 8, 2013

(Courtesy of Edie Meeks)

Edie Meeks, a former Army nurse, is one of 10,000 women that served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  When Diane Carlson Evans, her former hoochmate, asked her to join a campaign for a memorial for female Vietnam vets, Meeks was at first hesitant but joined the cause and later became a Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation board member.

Why did you enlist as an Army Nurse?

I have two younger brothers. One was in the Marine Corps and one was draftable age. I figured someone who wanted to be over there should take care of them, so I volunteered to be in the Army Nurse Corps, as did all the nurses in Vietnam.

How did you feel about being there?

I ended up in the ECU in Saigon in July 1968. It was like a year out of time. I came from Minneapolis where it’s green, there were cows and people talked to each other and went to church. Vietnam was an intense 24 hours a day. You had to shut your emotions down anyway. There were so many traumatic things that happened. I hadn’t seen a movie in a long time when I finally saw “Apocalypse Now.” It wasn’t what happened in the movie but the feeling that it gave. … That intense insanity felt like Vietnam. Francis Ford Coppola nailed it. I saw people do stuff they’d never do at home. It wasn’t the real world.

What was your relationship like with other women?

If a nurse finished her tour, another nurse went in. We had to regenerate a whole new relationship. My Saigon roommate Judy Harrington and I were very close. She worked in ECU. Before she went home, I went to Pleiku. The day I arrived there was the day Diane arrived. Diane and I kept each other sane. Being from Minnesota was a big tie because we have the same thought process and morals. We became very close and could talk about anything.

How did you deal with the politics of the Vietnam War while you were still in service?

We would get North Vietnamese prisoners in Saigon. We had to stabilize them to be interrogated. I had to stop myself, you are not the judge and jury. You are a nurse and you’ve taken an oath. That is who you’re going to be no matter who the patient is. It was hard because at the time, I was so angry at the Army for what it was doing to its own people. They wouldn’t let them win. The Viet Cong had no rules at all and yet our guys had rules about where they could and couldn’t go. Soldiers who came in were so frustrated by that. I expected the Army to value them and not just use them up. That was a tough thing for me when I got home because I felt our government wasn’t taking care of us.

How did you reenter civilian life?

When I got out of Vietnam in July 1969, it was the height of the anti-war movement and we were told to take our uniforms off immediately because we would not get a good reception. I was so disgusted with our government and the army for what they were doing. I went to the ladies room, took off my uniform and I threw it away. I came back a different person and everyone expected me to be the same. I expected to be the same and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t.

When did you first hear about Diane’s idea to make a memorial dedicated to women?

I got a call from Diane. She said, you know, I think we need a Women’s Memorial. I’m organizing and how would you like to be the East Coast person? I told Diane, I don’t know how you can talk about this. I literally cannot speak about it. Every once in a while, she’d call and I’d tell her, Diane, I just can’t. I thought that if I looked at a memorial, I’d start crying and I’d never stop.

What was the turning point for you?

In 1992, my daughter was at Mount Holyoke College. She was taking a class on 1960s American history and her professor told her class, “You women will never know what it’s like to be in war.” My daughter was horrified and asked her professor if I could come and speak. I stood up in front  of her class and my daughter introduced me: “This is my mother, Edie Meeks. She was an Army nurse in Vietnam. I’m so proud of her.”

It was the first time anyone had said that of me about Vietnam. I told them that I didn’t know the history of the war but I could tell them what it felt like to be there, as a woman. A bunch of women came up afterwards and the last told me she would have welcomed me home. Because my generation is still conflicted about that war, I think it took the next generation to truly welcome us home. I went back to my room and called Diane. It took 23 years for us to finally talk about it together.

How have you supported Diane since?

The interviews helped a little bit. I decided I would go down on Veterans Day to see Diane. I got more at ease with it. Diane had been given a rough time by some people against the memorial. I told her I would come every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day to watch her back. If you’re alone, I told her, come to me and I’ll set your head straight about how great you are. She said she needed me on the board and so every Memorial and Veterans Day, I go down.

What was it like seeing the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in person?

The difference between that feeling and how I felt at the memorial dedication was 100 percent turnaround. The corpsmen came out with flags and the band and I stood up and I thought for the first time since Vietnam, I can say that I’m proud that I was an Army nurse. I still didn’t like what had happened and how it had happened but I was proud of my service. I participated in life instead of complaining about it.

How have other veterans responded to the Vietnam Women’s Memorial?

I can remember this one fellow who had never been to D.C. He was a Vietnam vet who had come to the Vietnam Women’s Memorial first. The other one might be too difficult, he said. But I feel safe here. I met another vet who went through Bridgefield Hospital in Saigon around the time I was there. This vet had returned, has a family of three daughters and started his own business. It’s good for him obviously and it’s good for us to see what happened to our boys.

The first year, I saw a note on the bulletin board for the event. It said, “Edie, if you’re here, here’s my room number. It’s Judy.” We’d been roommates and best friends but I had totally forgotten her name, which was not abnormal. We reunited for the first time since Vietnam.

What has living with PTSD been like for you?

From what I observed, the women shut down when they came home and dispersed. Once when I was working at a hospital in the U.S., a patient asked me what Vietnam was like. I turned around and left. No sound bite could tell him what it was like. I went to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs for help and I found out I was living half a life emotionally. In being with all these women who served, I felt like I was with family that spoke the same language, a family that I didn’t have to explain anything to.

Can you tell me about a challenge you’ve dealt with post-Vietnam?

This is a big, big thing for me. Six years ago, Diane and I were asked to speak at Massachusetts General Hospital. We were out for dinner the night before. We were talking about things that had happened to us in Vietnam and I suddenly recalled being raped while I was there. My psychiatrist later told me it wasn’t uncommon to suppress your memories and forget. I was in shock when it bubbled out of my mouth and the memories came back. But Diane had understood. You couldn’t tell your commanding officer. It was Diane who talked me down and gave me purpose. I’m used to having my act together from day one. But your mind protects you from things you can’t deal with.

I’m so sorry you had to experience that. Is there anything you want to share?

The perpetrator was an Air Force pilot. At that time, pilots were gods. Somebody had set me up for a date. I thought we would just go out and have fun. We went and ate on the local economy, which I knew nothing about. I was pretty new to Vietnam then and when I got back to where I was staying … I was so upset. The next day, I was in the hospital for food poisoning. He visited me and brought flowers. I thought it was so bizarre. He probably didn’t even know he had done anything wrong.

Has remembering that changed how you feel about your service?

I think in remembering that, it explains my fear of talking about Vietnam. I must have been afraid that it would come out. Since I remembered and talked about it with my psychiatrist. I’m more free. When I feel down, I call my kids. When you hold it in and you only have yourself to depend on, that’s when you despair.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/11/08/vietnam-war-nurse-i-saw-people-do-stuff-theyd-never-do-at-home/?utm_term=.7871673e5f43

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Dolly Parton - Daddy Won't Be Home Anymore

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From As Long As I Love, 1970. For musichungry.

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Pete Seeger: Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

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Broken arrow: Universal code meaning that a ground unit or camp is being overrun and to send all available assets.  Also referred as a serviceman who tried to be a straight arrow and failed.
Straight arrow: serviceman who remains faithful to his wife or Stateside girl friend throughout his Vietnam tour.
Jody: make believe person who is said to be romancing your wife or girlfriend while you are training or stationed oversees.
Juicers:  Those identified as beer and whiskey drinkers (alcoholics).
Gooks in the wire:   Alarm for Enemy soldiers trying to infiltrate a basecamp or firebase.
Greased:  killed also referred as zapped and bought the farm
Flower seeker: a term used, especially in the Vietnamese press, to describe a man in search of a prostitute.

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The Postwar Impact of Vietnam

Harvard Sitikoff

Following the end of America’s combat role in Vietnam in 1973, and the subsequent fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) in 1975, the often prophesied and much feared resurgence of McCarthyite Red-baiting, the bitter accusations of "who lost Vietnam?" barely transpired. Rather than massive recriminations, a collective amnesia took hold. The majority of Americans, it appeared, neither wanted to talk or think about their nation's longest and most debilitating war--the only war the United States ever lost. That forgetfulness gave way in the early 1980s to a renewed interest in the war: Hollywood, network television, and the music industry made Vietnam a staple of popular culture; and scholars, journalists, and Vietnam veterans produced a flood of literature on the conflict, especially concerning its lessons and legacies. Much of it, emphasizing the enormity of the damage done to American attitudes, institutions, and foreign policy by the Vietnam ordeal, echoed George R. Kennan's depiction of the Vietnam War as "the most disastrous of all America's undertakings over the whole two hundred years of its history."

Initially, the humiliating defeat imposed by a nation Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had described as "a fourth-rate power" caused a loss of pride and self-confidence in a people that liked to think of the United States as invincible. An agonizing reappraisal of American power and glory dampened the celebration of the Bicentennial birthday in 1976. So did the economic woes then afflicting the United States, which many blamed on the estimated $167 billion spent on the war. President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to finance a major war and the Great Society simultaneously, without a significant increase in taxation, launched a runaway double-digit inflation and mounting federal debt that ravaged the American economy and eroded living standards from the late 1960s into the 1990s.

The United States also paid a high political cost for the Vietnam War. It weakened public faith in government, and in the honesty and competence of its leaders. Indeed, skepticism, if not cynicism, and a high degree of suspicion of and distrust toward authority of all kind characterized the views of an increasing number of Americans in the wake of the war. The military, especially, was discredited for years. It would gradually rebound to become once again one of the most highly esteemed organizations in the United States. In the main, however, as never before, Americans after the Vietnam War neither respected nor trusted public institutions.

They were wary of official calls to intervene abroad in the cause of democracy and freedom, and the bipartisan consensus that had supported American foreign policy since the 1940s dissolved. Democrats, in particular, questioned the need to contain communism everywhere around the globe and to play the role of the planet's policeman. The Democratic majority in Congress would enact the 1973 War Powers Resolution, ostensibly forbidding the president from sending U.S. troops into combat for more than ninety days without congressional consent. Exercising a greater assertiveness in matters of foreign policy, Congress increasingly emphasized the limits of American power, and the ceiling on the cost Americans would pay in pursuit of specific foreign policy objectives. The fear of getting bogged down in another quagmire made a majority of Americans reluctant to intervene militarily in Third World countries. The neo-isolationist tendency that former President Richard M. Nixon called "the Vietnam syndrome" would be most manifest in the public debates over President Ronald Reagan's interventionist policies in Nicaragua and President George Bush's decision to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Despite the victorious outcome of the Persian Gulf War for the United States and its allies, and President Bush's declaration in March 1991--"By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"--the fear of intervention would reappear in the public debate over President Bill Clinton's commitment of U.S. peacekeeping forces in Somalia and Bosnia. Quite clearly, for at least a quarter of a century after the Vietnam War ended, that conflict continued to loom large in the minds of Americans. Accordingly, a new consensus among foreign policy makers, reflecting the lessons learned from the Vietnam War, became manifest: the United States should use military force only as a last resort; only where the national interest is clearly involved; only when there is strong public support; and only in the likelihood of a relatively quick, inexpensive victory.

Another consensus also gradually emerged. At first, rather than giving returning veterans of the war welcoming parades, Americans seemed to shun, if not denigrate, the 2 million-plus Americans who went to Vietnam, the 1.6 million who served in combat, the 300,000 physically wounded, the many more who bore psychological scars, the 2,387 listed as "missing in action," and the more than 58,000 who died. Virtually nothing was done to aid veterans and their loved ones who needed assistance in adjusting. Then a torrent of fiction, films, and television programs depicted Vietnam vets as drug-crazed psychotic killers, as vicious executioners in Vietnam and equally vicious menaces at home. Not until after the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., did American culture acknowledge their sacrifice and suffering, and concede that most had been good soldiers in a bad war.

Yet this altered view of the Vietnam veterans as victims as much as victimizers, if not as brave heroes, was not accompanied by new public policies. Although most veterans did succeed in making the transition to ordinary civilian life, many did not. More Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the war than had died in it. Even more--perhaps three-quarters of a million--became part of the lost army of the homeless. And the nearly 700,000 draftees, many of them poor, badly educated, and nonwhite, who had received less than honorable discharges, depriving them of educational and medical benefits, found it especially difficult to get and keep jobs, to maintain family relationships, and to stay out of jail. Although a majority of Americans came to view dysfunctional veterans as needing support and medical attention rather than moral condemnation, the Veterans Administration, reluctant to admit the special difficulties faced by these veterans and their need for additional benefits, first denied the harm done by chemicals like Agent Orange and by the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) afflicting as many as 700,000, and then stalled on providing treatment.

Although diminishing, the troublesome specter of the Vietnam War continued to divide Americans and haunt the national psyche. It surfaced again in 1988 when Bush's running mate, Dan Quayle, had to defend his reputation against revelations that he had used family political connections to be admitted into the Indiana National Guard in 1969 to avoid the draft and a possible tour of duty in Vietnam. It emerged four years later when Bill Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president, faced accusations that he had evaded the draft and then organized antiwar demonstrations in 1969 while he was a Rhodes scholar in England. In each instance, such charges reminded Americans of the difficult choices young Americans had to make in what many saw as at best a morally ambiguous war.

Mostly, remembrances continue to be stirred by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the most visited site in the nation's capital. Its stark black granite reflecting panels, covered with the names of the more than 58,000 American men and women who died in Vietnam, is a shrine to the dead, a tombstone in a sloping valley of death. Lacking all the symbols of heroism, glory, patriotism, and moral certainty that more conventional war memorials possess, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a somber reminder of the loss of too many young Americans, and of what the war did to the United States and its messianic belief in its own overweening virtue.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/vietnam/postwar.htm

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U.S. Successful in Recovering Vietnam War Remains

By DAVID RUPPE

The fatal crash of a helicopter mission to recover the bodies of U.S. servicemen missing since the Vietnam War is bringing new attention to the soldiers and civilians putting their lives on the line a quarter century after the war's end to bring home missing Americans.

Through a Pentagon program called Joint Task Force Full Accounting, created in 1992, 604 sets of remains believed to be unaccounted-for Americans have been returned to the United States.

As recently as October, the remains of 11 U.S. Air Force servicemen classified as missing-in-action from the Vietnam War were identified and being returned to their families for burial. More are expected to return May 4.

"The recovery effort has continued at a fairly steady pace," says Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Office, who says there are as many as 1,000 sites that await investigation.

A team of seven task force investigators and nine Vietnamese died April 6 when their Russian-made helicopter crashed in Vietnam. They were an advance team for future recovery sites and included the incoming and outgoing heads of the program there. It was the first loss of life for the program.

"These joint teams have maintained a truly remarkable safety record, particularly given the dangerous and difficult terrain in which they work," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Their loss will be a blow to the program, says Ann Mills Griffith, founder of the National League of POW/MIA families. Of the three military personnel who died, she said, "It's not easy to replace people like that, they're all volunteers. There's an awful lot of commitment on the part of these guys who operate in the field out there."

Currently, 1,981 Americans remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, many of them pilots believed lost on land or over the ocean. Some 600 of those are believed to be lost at sea are not expected to be recovered.

Coordinated Efforts

The task force was created in response to presidential, congressional and public interest, and made possible by increasing cooperation between the target countries, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, according to the program. The United States spends about $20 million annually on recovery operations in those countries.

The task force has more than 180 investigators, analysts, linguists and other specialists representing all four services and Department of Defense civilian employees. Teams of more than 90 visit Vietnam four or five times each year for monthlong operations. They do investigations, archival research, an oral history program and remains recovery operations.

"Often times you excavate a site, you know which airplane it is, you may even find a dog tag of the serviceman, but you do not find his remains," says Greer. "So you keep looking, you move your excavation 20 yards to the south, or the west, or you find villagers who say, 'yes, we pulled him out of the cockpit and buried him over here.'"

The task force's operations are supported by casualty resolution specialists and anthropologists from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, representatives of the Defense POW/MIA office, and personnel from U.S. Pacific Command.

Task force teams also work with recovery officials from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Of the 2,583 American originally missing in 1975, most of the unaccounted-for, 1,923 of them, were lost in Vietnam, either on land or over water off the Vietnamese coast. Another 569 were lost in Laos, 81 in Cambodia and 10 in China.

Ordnance demolition specialists are important components of the teams, clearing recovery areas of land mines, bomblets from U.S. B-52s, and other unexploded ordnance. Other perils of the recovery missions include disease and wildlife, in particular a snake called the bamboo viper.

None Returned Alive

Finding and returning live Americans is the task force's highest priority. But no missing American has ever returned alive from Southeast Asia since "Operation Homecoming," the massive prisoner release of 591 Americans in 1973 by North Vietnam.

There have surfaced numerous, first-hand reports of unaccounted-for Americans alive in Southeast Asia, according to the program. But most of the reported "live sightings" turned out to be resolved through correlation with accounted-for personnel, and some have turned out to be fabrications.

The U.S. government says it has so far been unable to obtain definitive evidence that Americans are still being detained against their will in Southeast Asia. But officials say they don't discount the possibility.

A Global Effort

The Joint Task Force Full Accounting is just one part of a massive $100 million-a-year program to recover unaccounted for Americans from WWII to the present.

By far the majority of missing Americans remain unaccounted from WWII — 78,000, according to Greer. Thousands of them went down in ships and aren't expected to be recovered, he says. But the remains of airmen continue to be found, including some from recently excavated cites in Papau New Guinea and, in February, those of a 16-year-old P-51 Mustang pilot whose plane disappeared in heavy fog over northern France in January 1945.

Another 8,800 Americans are missing from the Korean War. And 124 are missing from the Cold War. Recoveries worldwide are on the rise, to about 100 each year, says Greer.

"We're doing many more a year ago than we were 10 years ago, because the pace has greatly increased in North Korea. It was zero, now we're doing 10 operations per year," says Greer.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81260&page=1

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President Johnson's speech projected the reasons why America is in Vietnam. Not only to protect the future of Vietnam, but to protect the spread of communism to America.

President Johnson's Speech:
"This is a different kind of war. There are no marching armies or solemn declarations. Some citizens of South Viet-Nam at times, with understandable grievances, have joined in the attack on their own government.

But we must not let this mask the central fact that this is really war. It is guided by North Viet-Nam and it is spurred by Communist China. Its goal is to conquer the South, to defeat American power, and to extend the Asiatic dominion of communism. There are great stakes in the balance. Most of the non-Communist nations of Asia cannot, by themselves and alone, resist the growing might and the grasping ambition of Asian communism.

Our power, therefore, is a very vital shield. If we are driven from the field in Viet-Nam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise, or in American protection.

In each land the forces of independence would be considerably weakened, and an Asia so threatened by Communist domination would certainly imperil the security of the United States itself.

We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else.

Nor would surrender in Viet-Nam bring peace, because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country, bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueler conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history.

Moreover, we are in Viet-Nam to fulfill one of the most solemn pledges of the American Nation. Three Presidents--President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--over 11 years have committed themselves and have promised to help defend this small and valiant nation.

Strengthened by that promise, the people of South Viet-Nam have fought for many long years. Thousands of them have died. Thousands more have been crippled and scarred by war. We just cannot now dishonor our word, or abandon our commitment, or leave those who believed us and who trusted us to the terror and repression and murder that would follow.

This, then, my fellow Americans, is why we are in Viet-Nam.

What are our goals in that war-strained land?

First, we intend to convince the Communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power. They are not easily convinced. In recent months they have greatly increased their fighting forces and their attacks and the number of incidents.

I have asked the Commanding General, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. We will meet his needs.

I have today ordered to Viet-Nam the Air Mobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately. Additional forces will be needed later, and they will be sent as requested.

This will make it necessary to increase our active fighting forces by raising the monthly draft call from 17,000 over a period of time to 35,000 per month, and for us to step up our campaign for voluntary enlistments.

After this past week of deliberations, I have concluded that it is not essential to order Reserve units into service now. If that necessity should later be indicated, I will give the matter most careful consideration and I will give the country--you--an adequate notice before taking such action, but only after full preparations.

We have also discussed with the Government of South Viet-Nam lately, the steps that we will take to substantially increase their own effort, both on the battlefield and toward reform and progress in the villages. Ambassador Lodge is now formulating a new program to be tested upon his return to that area.

I have directed Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara to be available immediately to the Congress to review with these committees, the appropriate congressional committees, what we plan to do in these areas. I have asked them to be able to answer the questions of any Member of Congress.

Secretary McNamara, in addition, will ask the Senate Appropriations Committee to add a limited amount to present legislation to help meet part of this new cost until a supplemental measure is ready and hearings can be held when the Congress assembles in January. In the meantime, we will use the authority contained in the present Defense appropriation bill under consideration to transfer funds in addition to the additional money that we will ask.

These steps, like our actions in the past, are carefully measured to do what must be done to bring an end to aggression and a peaceful settlement.

We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences that no one can perceive, nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power, but we will not surrender and we will not retreat."

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President Lyndon B. Johnson, "Why We Are in Vietnam"

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President Lyndon B. Johnson, "Why We Are in Vietnam" Press conference, July 28, 1965

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