Mr. Huffman’s U.S. History
U5C21S2-3 (The Brutality of the War & Student Protest)
Pages 622-629
1) Fighting a Guerilla War
a) When Vietnam started, most Americans felt that it would be fought as other
wars had been, with battlefield & maneuver, armor, artillery, and air support
b) Instead, they faced a guerilla war, where the enemy refused to come out and
fight "fair," and had favorable local conditions which helped them avoid
detection, such as jungles, swamps, friendly locals, and escape across the
borders into Laos or Cambodia
2) Many US troops arrived in Vietnam enthusiastic for the task: they were going
to protect the South Vietnamese from the aggressive Communists to the North
i) They were surprised to find the locals indifferent and unenthusiastic
about their presence, and unsupportive of their own government
b) Instead of the battlefields of Europe, they faced jungle conditions where
they had to push through swamps, rice paddies, and elephant grass, all the
while carrying a 60 pound pack and watching for enemy activity
i) Dangers included leeches, rats, & snakes, as well as fevers, "jungle rot"
c) Viet Cong- could be anywhere, lurking in the foliage, disguised as civilians
i) Viet Cong could not hope to defeat the Americans in conventional fight,
so they used traps, mines, ambushes to make most of scarce resources
Mr. Huffman’s U.S. History
U5C21S2-3 (The Brutality of the War & Student Protest)
Pages 622-629
(1)
Punji stakes- sharpened stakes of bamboo sunk into a shallow
depression & covered over- often covered with horse manure
(2)
A favorite mine was the "Bouncing Betty"- when triggered it
jumped 3’ in the air > exploded horizontally- wounding, but killing few
3) Effects on Civilians
a) Destruction to civilians was severe, in part because the Americans were
never able to fully distinguish Viet Cong from the civilian populations
i) Civilians had their villages destroyed & their people killed both by
accident and deliberately, even spitefully
b) In 1966, the Americans began using B-52s to do saturation bombing (aka
“carpet bombing” of targets in the North and South
i) This practice dropped hundreds of bombs from high altitudes over a
target area, destroying with little discrimination of targets
ii)While this would destroy roads or bridges, it also often destroyed the
villages next to those roads and bridges, and killed the inhabitants
c) Chemical weapons were used by the US, although not gasses or bioweapons
i) Agent Orange was an air-dropped defoliant, which killed the plant life
exposed to it- thus eliminating hiding places for the VC
Mr. Huffman’s U.S. History
U5C21S2-3 (The Brutality of the War & Student Protest)
Pages 622-629
ii)Originally thought to be safe to use near people, but causes cancer, etc.
iii) Also used napalm- jellied gasoline- burns, & sticks to whatever it might
be splattered over- needs to be scraped off
4) The My Lai Massacre- March 1968
a) Assumptions/Mission
i) US Intelligence had heard that there were about 250 VC hiding in the
village > sent in an infantry company to destroy the VC- ambushed
b) When they got there, tired, wounded, angry, they found only women,
children, and old men- Lt. in charge ordered his men to round up the
villagers, and then ordered them to be executed
c) A passing helicopter pilot landed between the soldiers and some surviving
civilians who were running away, and saved a few by threatening to shoot
the soldiers in pursuit, but as many as 400 may have been slaughtered
5) Hue
a) The Communists were not without their atrocities, as well, although they
tended to treat civilians better in order to win them over
Mr. Huffman’s U.S. History
U5C21S2-3 (The Brutality of the War & Student Protest)
Pages 622-629
b) In the city of Hue, which had been seized during the Tet Offensive, the
NVA ordered all who had worked with the Americans to report to special
locations, and then executed those who showed up