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The greatest service one can do for your country is to fight for it and protect it. In the late 1950's, American men and women began to be increasingly present in the southeast Asian country of Vietnam to help the South Vietnamese fight off the communist North Vietnam. Almost three million American soldiers fought in Vietnam until April 30, 1975, when South Vietnam surrendered to the communist North Vietnam (Esper 5, 201). The Vietnam War affected many American soldiers both mentally and physically due to their constant presence around violence and exposure to the chemical called Agent Orange.
173rd Airborne chaplain Roy Peters described that he "had never seen [hell]" until being in the war in Vietnam. The hell-like conditions caused many of the soldiers to suffer from post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD).
The obvious major factor triggering to this stress was not just the constant violence, but the thick jungle environment of Vietnam presented an even more difficult challenge with easily hidden enemies and bases. Even as the Americans rested in their camps at night, there were always the horrifying sound of shell-fire and explosions in the distance (Esper 70). It was common for the North Vietnamese to surprise the Americans with guerilla attacks that could not have been detected; caution and/or fear would not be scarce at the camps. As much as the American soldiers might have tried to prevent it, their Vietnam experience would bring life-long effects.
"[The Viet Cong] dragged [a Marine] only about three to four feet away from me... I could hear them go through his pockets and cartridge belt. I heard him moaning and then a second later I heard a shot. They shot him in the face," recalled 23 year-old Navy medical corpsman, Billie Holmes.
A few minutes afterward, the enemy snuck towards Holmes. "As [they] reached out to grab hold of my shirt, one of our men shot across me and hit him in the face... The other three or four backed down the slope" (Esper 74, 75).
American soldiers in Vietnam dealt with many horrifically violent close calls such as what Holmes had encountered. It did not help that the Viet Cong enemy outnumbered the American soldiers. As Vietnam-veteran-turned-author Tim O'Brien wrote: "A true war story is never moral. [If] you feel uplifted, or you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made a victim of a very old a terrible lie" (Webster).
A disadvantage for the United States was that they did not know the jungle land very well. American soldiers relied on the assistance of their South Vietnamese allies in this way, which was not always reliable. The Viet Cong enemy often camped along roadsides and trails, hidden from plain view. Often times, American soldiers were ambushed unexpectedly when traveling.
Staff Sergeant Miguel Seise wrote:
We started getting fire all of a sudden.
It was coming from everywhere, the
ground, the trees. Suddenly, everyone
around me was getting hit and dying.
I could hear screams all over the place.
We fought for what seemed hours.
It was no good. [The little remainder
of my troops] had a fifty-fifty chance
of getting out. We started crawling
away under terribly intense fire. We
crawled two hundred and fifty yards,
then started running. I never ran so
fast before.
Seise had to leave many of his wounded friends behind. "Someone shouted out, 'Don't leave me!' A lieutenant called out 'Please shoot me!'" (Esper 64).
High tensions, stress and exhaustion were common among the cautious Americans: from the thick Vietnamese jungle land and rice paddies, to the urban city of Saigon. But there was yet another disadvantage for the Americans. It was extremely difficult to find the Viet Cong, therefore, American soldiers often had to wait for the attack (Esper 67). A lot of the time, the Viet Cong traveled in small groups and fought guerilla-style warfare. It was not known where exactly the Viet Cong were based a lot of the time. Constantly going on the defensive against North Vietnam was extremely unfavorable for the interest of the safety of Americans. Unexpected attacks could occur at any moment, and often did.
It cost too many lives, in too short amount of time, in battles such as the ones at Dak To, Khe Sanh, Hue, and one of the bloodiest battles: Hamburger Hill. The total death toll at the end of the war in 1975 was close to 58,000 American soldiers (Esper 5). But the combination of the South Vietnamese Army, North Vietnamese Army, and the citizens had a higher death toll than the United States.
On January 13, 1962, the United States Defense Department's experiment, called Operation Hades, had embarked (Esper 66). Later named Operation Ranch Hand, millions upon millions of gallons of an herbicide called Agent Orange, were sprayed all over the jungles of South Vietnam (Dunnigan 135, 136).
Agent Orange's purpose was to kill all of the vegetation the chemical landed upon (Esper 67), thus helping the United States in two ways: denying the enemy a thick jungle to easily keep out of sight , and killing farmland that the enemy used as a food source (Gettleman 467). However, a Food and Drug Administration study in 1969 reported that 2, 4, 5-T, a component in the Agent Orange chemical, caused malformations in test animals (Esper 67). But it was later found that the dioxin found in Agent Orange, TCDD, is the most toxic known substance (Gettleman 465).
The United States government made a very poor choice to decide to experiment during war-time; clearly in the presence of their very own fighting Americans, merely being used almost as guinea pigs. Although the good intentions were there, and Agent Orange did accomplish helping the American soldiers in the war, it would later hurt the American soldiers for the rest of their lives and many of their future children.
"16,000 Agent Orange related illnesses were filed in the late 1970's" (Esper 67). Some of the effects included difficulty breathing, low blood pressure and optic nerve trouble (Gettleman 465).
The Vietnam veterans of the United States, probably America's greatest heroes, attempted to prevent the spread of communism, and the freedom of the South Vietnamese. They unfortunately paid a price that would affect them for the rest of their lives, physically and/or mentally. Some of the veterans went on to have children after returning home, to learn that their child has cancer or a disease, because of the veteran's exposure to Agent Orange. It is an unfortunate and unfair result for trying to do good. But too many of the great American heroes -- almost 58,000 brothers and sisters -- were never able to step back onto American soil again.
-Lauren Polanski
Works Cited
Dunnigan, James F., and Albert a. Nofi.
Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Esper, George, and The Associated Press.
The Eyewitness History of the VietnamWar: 1961-1975.
New York: Random House, Inc., 1983.
Gettleman, Marvin E., Jane Franklin, Marilyn
B. Young, and H. Bruce Franklin, eds.
Vietnam and America. New York: GrovePress, 1995.
Webster, Mark. "Vietnam recollections relivethe war's surreal horror." The Tech
27 April 1990. 1 April 2006.
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