The Vietnam War - from the point of view of a Viet Cong

[DetlefK]

http://www.cracked.com/article_22206_8-facts-about-vietnam-war-i-learned-as-viet-cong.html

- Few were communists, most wanted independence and revenge.

- They were just as scared of the jungle as the american soldiers.

- Most fighting was long-distance firefights, barely seeing the enemy. And the tunnels were collapsing death-traps.

- The recruits were absolutely inexperienced, had to be trained as guerillas on-the-job, and some accidently killed themselves out of sheer stupidity.

- They had to make do with whatever old scrap that had been left over after the Chinese and the North Vietnamese Army had taken their share of the soviet weapon-deliveries. The Viet Cong used outdated american rifles, but distrusted the M16, because it was prone to malfunction.

- Yes, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong committed atrocities. They bombed medical areas on purpose. Sometimes they razed villages just to be safe.

- The village where the Viet Cong writing this article came from was wiped out and everybody killed and thrown in a mass-grave. He found hints that it was most likely the North Vietnamese Army.

- The Viet Cong lost lots of relatives and got PTSD, struggling to reintegrate into society.


Nowadays the US is viewed favorable in Vietnam, because, unlike China and France, you guys apologized.

[KingCharlemagne]

1. The U.S. 'apologized'??? When? Who specifically apologized? - nt

[DetlefK]

2. Beats me. The article says so at the very end.

[KingCharlemagne]

3. Shit. My bad. The page was so cluttered with graphics at the bottom that I failed

to see the arrow pointing to 'Page 2'. And you're right, the author says it, although he uses the phrase "more or less apologized." I actually don't think he's right about that; McNamara issued a rather mealy-mouthed mea culpa in Errol Garner's awesome documentary Fog of War. But the U.S. has steadfastly refused to pay Vietnam the reparations it promised them in the Paris peace accords negotiated by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. That's a non-apology apology if ever there were one.