Vietnam: The Lost Lie

Credit for this slightly edited post goes to Bill Collins, a retired Deputy District Attorney in California and a former US Marine Corps Sergeant.  This is his response to a question posed on Quora back in 2018. The questions was:

“The US Marine Corps was experienced in jungle warfare after fighting the Japanese in WW2. How is it then that they lost to Vietnam in similar conditions?”

Bill’s Response:

Apparently, you weren’t there. I was from January 1968 to February 1969. In case you’re not aware, that was the Tet Offensive, touted by the press at the time as a vast, effective success for the insurgent forces attempting to take over South Vietnam. It was not.

On January 30, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a coordinated attack all across the country. At first, they did surprise us considerably since they had previously stuck to the accepted guerrilla warfare practice of hitting us where we were weak and never confronting us where we had strength. However, the surprise didn’t last, and they found themselves confronting the most powerful military forces on earth.

They never won a battle. We always won. In time, the Viet Cong largely disappeared, and the NVA suffered major casualties, with many of their fighting units being annihilated. By about August or September, they were really not an effective fighting force.

I was at Hue, Phu Bai, Hoi An, and Chu Lai, and by the time I left the country, I truly thought the war was over, as I hadn’t seen effective NVA activity for months. In Hue, where the NVA had taken over the city and slaughtered 6000 of its inhabitants, burying them in mass graves, which I saw, they were utterly and fittingly destroyed.

Subsequently, President Nixon forced the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table in Paris, and after some wrangling, they signed the Paris Accords, agreeing to cease hostilities. American units, including whole divisions of Marines, left the country.

It wasn’t until April 30, 1975, when I had left the Marine Corps, graduated college, and was in my 2nd year of law school, that the North Vietnamese, having rebuilt their army, swept south with no resistance due to the withdrawal of American forces and the refusal of congress to enforce the Paris Accords, capturing South Vietnam.

American forces didn’t lose; we weren’t there. Congress and the administration capitulated, breaking faith with over 58,000 young Americans who had gone there at their country’s behest and given up their lives to accomplish its stated goals.

Thank you, Bill!

Bill saw much more action than I did. I left the Asian theater one month before Tet, never to return. But we all knew the answers to this question as time went on. It's heartening to hear it from a combat Marine that was in the shit.

JWB