VIETNAM WAR!! (the soldiers)

Question

how well trained were the soldiers that fought in the vietnam war????

Answer 1

I was in Vietnam from January 1968 (TET Offensive) until July 1969

also enjoying the TET offensive of 1969

I'm alive today because of good training and a bunch of pure c**p luck

Life is like Poker, play the odds and pray for luck.

Answer 2

Very well trained. The reason we were having such a tough time was the terrain. The worst thing to fight a war in is a forest or jungle.

Answer 3

physically-excellent

mentally - excellent

Problem trained or fighting a war with one front line not multiple fronts.

many other problems with way the war was fought, not fault of soldiers.

Answer 4

The real question is not how well trained we were but whether we were allowed to use the training we had.

When you have units that were trained to perform certain types of missions a certain way and then they are prevented from doing them by interfering politicians, the results are not good.

Also, there were idiots in charge who thought that soldiers were interchangeable with no effect on the unit.

You can train all you want but just as in dancing or any other activity that requires precise coordination between individuals, there is no substitute for knowing exactly how the guy next to you is going to react.

We had units that practiced well choreographed actions who had a third of there men replaced before going into battle with new people who had never trained with the rest. The results were predictable.

We had officers in particular being rotated every six months so that just when they got to the point where they could work effectively with the rest of the unit, they were rotated out to do a different job in a different unit.

Yes, they got their tickets punched with a lot of different jobs that would look good on their records, but, that did not mean a lot to the men who died while they were coming up to speed in a new job in a new unit.

A lot of the training was a matter of going through the motions rather than training people for what they would actually see in-country.

An example is that I was sent to a two week pre-deployment orientation before shipping out to Vietnam. I had trained with the M14 rifle in basic training. At that time most units were being issued M16s in Vietnam. The wonderful training I got at Ft Dix before shipping out used the M1 thumb grabber!

We had replacement centers that everyone went through for more training and unit assignment when we got in-country. They, at least tried to give us information that was relevant.

Unfortunately, their job was to provide warm bodies to the units that lost people for whatever reason. They did not pay a whole lot of attention to what job that warm body had been trained to do. Many people  had been trained for extended periods to do particular jobs extremely well only to be sent to units that had no need for that MOS even though there were units in-country that needed them. I was one of the many people that this happened to. For the most part, my vitally needed skills were wasted.

I could go on but, I won't.

Answer 5

The war was nothing but a policing action. I served my time and came back home. No! There was no WELCOME HOME,or FLAG WAVING, but my parents did welcome me home with open arms, and at that time that's all that mattered to me. As the years went by ,I noticed  different situations where soldiers returned home from war (like Gulf War 1) and received a big welcome home with family, military and news media. I served in vietnam and also served in Saudi and will always wonder why we did not get a welcome home from Nam.  I am still proud to say that i served in both wars.

Answer 6

What .. Pardon, which is why attend on their already gives the privilege to kill, we need more forms.

amée we are united states of America, not the army of salvation