Hello, and thanks for your upcoming discussions.
I was an Army Infantry 1LT, serving in Pleiku Province in 1970-1971, as a 5-man MAT team commander. Our team basically took over for the Special Forces 13 man "A-Teams" in the "Vietnamization of the war" changes made in the latter years.
Our team consisted of a commander, a lieutenant assistant, a SFC heavy weapons advisor, a SSG light weapons advisor, and an SFC medic.
We lived with and worked with the Regional Force and Popular Force (RF & PF) local militia forces in the northern 2/3 of Pleiku Province, stretching to the west to the Cambodian border, and to the east to the famous Mang Yang Pass, where an entire French Foreign Legion Division (mostly ex-WW2 Germans) were annihilated by the Viet Minh in the previous French-Indonesian war. Our RFs and PFs were mostly Montagnard indigenous tribesmen, but often Vietnamese as well, depending on the village or area we worked with.
I wrote a book on my experiences, but have not had it published.
The most important issue I would want to discuss is that we did NOT lose the war. Pleiku was the 'least pacified province in the country' at that time (and most ) of the war. And yet, I couldn't believe how relatively safe it was compared to my preconceptions. On my very first trip into the field, just a day after arriving at my home compound of LeTrung, I was riding in an open jeep, with two sergeants and our Montagnard interpreter, down a 10-mile jeep trail in the woods. In my training courses in the Special Forces Advisory and Vietnamese Language Schools, we were told we would never go anywhere without a helicopter or gun truck escort. What a surprise this was. And yes, another MAT team was ambushed and all were killed in the same way just 30 clicks south of us later in the year in the same fashion, but mostly it was relatively safe, as the area was under the Regional Forces' protection. Generally, if the enemy was moving through the area, it was known. We encountered very few Viet Cong, the enemy by now was mostly NVA, or North Vietnamese Army. The prisoners we caught were dirty, low morale, and in poor shape. During my tour, I had two Kit Carson Scouts assigned to my team. These were ex-NVA soldiers who surrendered and now were on our side. Both had surrendered after their battalions were wiped out by Nixon's B-52 raids. These two men told me they hated the North for lying to them, telling them they were coming down to 'free the people'. Instead, they were coming down to kill them.
I have read that at the height of the war, only one U.S. serviceman was 'in the field' compared to fourteen in support. When I was there, in 1970-71, only 2% of the remaining 130,000 Americans, or 2600, were actually in a fighting capacity in the country. I saw a good deal of combat, but some, like a friend of mine from the special training we had as advisors, saw none. This friend worked in the Delta, or IV Corps, and did not hear a single shot fired in battle over his entire year's tour. They "rode 50cc Hondas to villages at night to join in the rice wine parties". Amazing.
So, thanks to the Jane Fondas and Tom Haydens of this world, we stopped supplying our allies with arms and ammunition, and by 1975 there were units literally fighting without equipment and ammunition against the well-supplied NVA.
Bottom line: We won the war, militarily. We left. Our allies lost the war. Unless the head of the snake, the government, is not taken out, a war probably will not in finality be won. The great majority of America will never know this, relying on the movies and anti-war reporters' side to believe the history. I have more stories regarding the reporters I would like to share. Those servicemen opposing this opinion, I have found, were not combat troops.
I experienced a broken jaw (from an ambush-related jeep accident), Hepatitis (from the horrible food I had to eat with our Montagnard friends), and 13 years of a rare Epilepsy form, almost surely from the Dioxin in Agent Orange. I figure I paid more for the health care from the Epilepsy over and above insurance, that I made in pay during my tour in Vietnam. Sort of like paying for this great vacation in the far East, with lots of neat toys to play with (I even got the chance to fly a Cobra helicopter, my high point of the year).
Anyway, no regrets, and I consider myself lucky, indeed, as 20% of my Officer Candidate Class had been killed or wounded before I arrived in Vietnam, and I'm unscathed today. Never felt any PTSD, which, as I've long suspected, is considerably more common among the rear-area troops then the experienced combat troops. Counter-intuitive, but true, I believe. But, to be fair to those suffering from this PTSD, I was also older (25-26), voluntary (had to write my Congressman to get out of the Army fire department and into Infantry), and never saw an American killed. There weren't any, for the most part, except for my team.
I would be glad to be part of your discussions. Every serviceman saw a different war, based on their location, job, and time they were there. And there are just as many opinions.