Myth about the Vietnam conflict persists

[sfc_darrel]

Sunday, September 07, 2003
Copyright ? Las Vegas Review-Journal

LETTER: Myth about the Vietnam conflict persists

To the editor:

In response to the Aug. 31 commentary by Thomas Withington of Newsday:

Mr. Withington writes, "After all, the outgunned North Vietnamese were able to defeat the United States." He is completely wrong in this statement.

Richard Nixon in his book "No More Vietnams" said, "No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic." The tragedy is that people keep printing the wrong information as truth and reporting it as facts. The following are the facts and can be checked out at any library:

The peace accords were signed in Paris on Jan. 27, 1973. It called for the release of all U.S. prisoners, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the limitation of both sides' forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful reunification. We fought to an agreed stalemate. The last American combat troops departed in their entirety on March 29, 1973. In other words, the United States was out of Vietnam by the end of March of 1973. Remember that date.

From that date on, the South Vietnamese conducted and were responsible for all combat operations within their country. In 1974, the North Vietnamese learned that they could conduct attacks into the south with little to no resistance. The fall of Saigon happened April 30, 1975, just more than two years after the American military left Vietnam. The 140,000 evacuees in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, not American military running for their lives.

In a speech some years after the war had ended, Gen. William Westmoreland quoted Douglas Pike, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, and a renowned expert on the Vietnam War, as saying, "The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance."

Yes, mistakes were made ... there are mistakes made in all wars. Hindsight is always 20/20. I have heard some people say that the fighting was not as intense in Vietnam as it was in World War II. I couldn't say, I wasn't there in World War II. I have, however, found out that the average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter, and I can attest to that fact.

It is too bad that our history books and history teachers haven't taken the time to read just three minutes worth of information in order to get the facts straight. I served there proudly for almost two-and-a-half years straight in the infantry. Maybe Mr. Withington and those of his ilk should do a little more research and a little less pontificating about things they don't have the true "facts" about.

ROBERT THOMAS

HENDERSON

The writer is a retired U.S. Army Ranger.

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