VIDEO HERE (18:06 minutes)
Friday, April 11, 2025
Death in Da Nang | US Marines' First Contact with Viet Cong | Vietnam War Combat Footage (1965)
On 8 March 1965, the first contingent of US Marines landed at Da Nang, marking the beginning of America's direct military involvement in the Vietnam War. Two months later, Sandy Gall reported on the Marines' experience of combat around Da Nang, and American efforts to adapt to an unfamiliar kind of warfare. Joining patrols through the countryside, Gall examined the technology and tactics being employed by US forces to counter the guerrilla insurgency being waged by the elusive Viet Cong. And he asked whether the United States might one day face its own Dien Bien Phu, the 1954 battle which saw French forces finally defeated by the Communist Viet Minh.
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There's only one thing you can say about that war; What a waste of young mens' lives for no reason.
ReplyDeleteYep, all those that got us into that mess should have been hung from a tree, every damn one of them
DeleteJD
JD, hanged after they had been shot. And from lamp posts at each gate of entry to the 5 sided puzzle palace.
DeleteRick..... 👍👍👍👍
DeleteJD
my dad, who had fought in ww2 AND Korea was going to ship my ass north if they drafted me. dad had a damn shoe box full of medals too. as he said, "there no good reason why we are there" I have two cousins that went over there. one came home NUTS according to his folks. LOTS of PTSD. and the other one was drinking all day long until he died from it. about 6 years later.
Deleteand after joining myself in 74 and seeing what happened to some of the guys who
came back from there. YEAH. there a whole lot of assholes who damn sure should me hung by the neck until dead. and then left for the birds to pick clean.
mom gave the book "the arms of Krupp" to read about that time.
nothing has changed . it is just the MIC in another name, or country. the bastards making the money never go and neither do THEIR KIDS. so, when I say fuck the lot of them, I mean every damn word of it. dave in pa.
Pretty much sums up every war...
DeleteDad was there. He had been called back from TDY in Spain to help set up their radar.
ReplyDeleteWe were at Cherry Point MCAS. I watched as the sky darkened for several hours with hundreds of helicopters of every sort fly out. Fixed wing went the next day.
It was in 1967 that he came home. We had moved to San Diego with several of our Cherry Point neighbors.
I forget which months in '65 and '67. Maybe 18 months between the two.
Long, long time ago. 57 years for me. Although, it seems like yesterday.
ReplyDeleteSome dates one don't easily forget. Arrived "in country" on April 11, '68. Got back to The World on October 16, '69 and cleared OAB the next day. Glad we never had to fix bayonets like those Jarheads in the video.
DeleteAll these years and I still wish I could've strangled LBJ to death.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about you "keyboard warriors," but I spent 12 months and 29 days in Vietnam as a US Marine tank commander (1968 - 1969). My point of view is that at the time, the US believed that Russian-backed communism was slowly eroding the Free World. Very much like Chinese-backed communism today. The difference was the Russia was backing the violent overthrow of various democracies. versus Chinese doing it today through economics. The Russians not only paid massive amounts of money to supply the Vietnamese weapons but after the "truce" was signed, the Russians paid massive amounts of money to fix-up and repair the SE Asian nation. Those massive expenditures helped bankrupted the Soviet Union. So, our misguided and costly participation in the Vietnam War helped end the Soviet Union. A "waste"? Not on your life.
ReplyDeleteThat's about how I see it, too, John. I'd do it again.
DeleteI spent a year in Iraq and a year in Afghanistan. Sure, the US stopped the Soviets. But so what? The murderous ideology of communism is still alive and well and in our very country. We are losing the war. They play the long game.
DeleteMy country said they needed me. I joined the Corp. If they say they need me again, I'll limp on down and join up in a heartbeat.
DeleteYour government openly hates you. They give preference to every group but you, Straight White Man. You already fought a war for them. Why another? You owe them NOTHING. All their wars benefit themselves, never the people.
DeleteHow silly of me. Of course, all their wars benefited themselves, you are correct. Next time I'll do the manly thing and go to Canada. Then they can send someone else's kid to go in my place. Bummer others did not feel as you. I always wanted to be bilingual. We could be speaking German or Jap. Honor, pride and knowing I'm a man is not something I got from the government by the way. But I understand with clarity what you are saying.
DeleteSorry man, it wasn’t meant to be an attack on you. Why do so many of us feel such loyalty to a government that openly hates us? Maybe because when you grew up they didn’t? But they do now, unrepentantly. Like you, I went when *my* country called…but nothing got better because of it. We have less freedom now than we did before I went to Iraq and then Afghanistan. Things didn’t get better, they got worse. It was an absolute waste of young White men that we desperately needed at home.
DeleteAs the meme goes, speaking German would be better than having a transsexual mulatto grandson.
Anon, you sound like me when I came home in 69. I was angry, confused and bitter. I probably voiced some of the very things you are saying. I stayed angry and stoned for years. One day I got clean and had also aged. You gotta do what ya gotta do man but don't let the fuckin government take your pride and self respect too. You served, be proud. I'm sure proud of you for serving. I beleive several in this room feel the same. You showed up for America not some government. You showed up for your family and friends. Cherish that man. Don't let anyone take that away from you. If anything, you showed the world the Americian fighting man is nothing to fuck with. Y'all kicked some serious ass over there. Was it a right or a wrong war? Who's to say. Regardless, your generation let the world know we aint a bunch a pussies. I thank you with all I have to muster for that.
DeleteThanks bud. I disagree with you, a lot, but I have always known you come from a good place.
DeleteAnd I’m really not bitter about it, and hardly ever think about it. I just hate that our government hates us. Look at how they pivoted from Much dIvErSiTy in recruiting ads once it looked like America needed to fight a war again. Can’t have their pet projects do the fighting; better get a bunch of Whites to sign up and do the dying again.
Well as a " keyboard warrior " my points are these
DeleteI missed Nam by a couple of years but I did have many older relatives that were drafted into it, strong happy young men when they left, many came back broken both physically and mentally.. The VA couldn't care less about them dispite being summoned to go.. We accomplished nothing beneficial there, the communists took over the country while we made war criminals of our sons.. Neither Russia nor China were hurt by the war, infact they were the ones that benefited..
I would never tell anyone that served they made a mistake doing so but I do think it's past time to stop sending our children to die in foreign countries that don't give a flying fuck about us..
That's my " keyboard warrior " .02¢
Thanks for reading
JD
Damn, it almost sounds like some lefties want to drag race into a discussion about troops and fighting. IIRC, the two guys who carried me and got me on a dust-off were black, as was the SSG next to me who'd just earned his third PH. Main thing was, we all had baggy green skin over there.
ReplyDeleteRight, if someone brings up race they MUST be a leftie. 🙄
DeleteSure, I knew some blacks who were okay when I was in the Army too. But get a few of them together, or run into one off-duty…generally they were a whole different species.
Why did you even bring up race?
DeleteBecause the government hates Whites. Why White men are so eager to continue fighting for it is beyond me. Sure, I did too once, but I will never do it again.
DeleteLook, I grew up in the 80’s and I don’t recognize America anymore. A lot of you grew up waaaay before me and seem to think it hasn’t changed a bit. Demographics are the main reason that it’s so different now.
Yeah, never mind all the black, hispanic and asian soldiers that have died in all our wars.
DeleteI'm not saying the US hasn't changed and for the worse at that, but I don't know how to tell you that all of our problems don't revolve around race.
Not all of them, no. Going from 90%+ racial homogeneity to this current hodgepodge has been 100% detrimental. It’s so easy for Whites to recognize that drawing borders and mixing different ethnic groups into one state (Iraq) causes huge problems; however we can’t seem to realize that those same problems happen here. Any time you mix disparate groups of people together, there will be conflict.
DeleteUnfortunately we have two classes of Americans: brave patriots who serve their country, and cowardly elitists who create wars for profit.
ReplyDelete