Finally somebody put the myths & facts in one
format--long but a "several trip read"
Vietnam War
Facts...
Facts, Statistics, Fake Warrior Numbers, and Myths
Dispelled
*9,087,000
military personnel served on active duty during the official
Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7,
1975.
*2,709,918
Americans served in uniform in Vietnam
*Veterans
represented 9.7% of their generation.
*240 men were
awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War
*The first man to
die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1958. He was with the
509th Radio Research Station. Davis Station in Saigon was named for him.
*58,148 were
killed in Vietnam
*75,000 were
severely disabled
*23,214 were 100%
disabled
*5,283 lost limbs
*1,081 sustained
multiple amputations
*Of those killed,
61% were younger than 21
*11,465 of those
killed were younger than 20 years old
*Of those killed,
17,539 were married
*Average age of
men killed: 23.1 years
*Five men killed
in Vietnam were only 16 years old.
*The oldest man
killed was 62 years old.
*As of
January
15, 2004,
there are 1,875 Americans still unaccounted for from the
Vietnam War
*97% of Vietnam
Veterans were honorably discharged
*91% of Vietnam
Veterans say they are glad they served
*74% say they
would serve again, even knowing the outcome
*Vietnam veterans have a
lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age
groups.
*Vietnam veterans' personal
income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by
more than 18 percent.
*87% of Americans
hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem.
*There is
no difference in drug usage between Vietnam
Veterans and non-Vietnam Veterans of the same age group (Source:
Veterans Administration Study)
*Vietnam Veterans
are less likely to be in prison - only one-half of
one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes.
*85% of Vietnam
Veterans made successful transitions to civilian
life.
Interesting Census Stats and "Been There"
Wannabees:
*1,713,823 of
those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (census
figures).
~ During that
same Census count, the number of Americans falsely
claiming to have served in-country was:
9,492,958.
~ As of the
current Census taken during August, 2000, the surviving U.S. Vietnam
Veteran population estimate is: 1,002,511. This is hard to believe,
losing nearly 711,000 between '95 and '00. That's 390 per day.
*During this
Census count, the number of Americans falsely
claiming to have served in-country is:
13,853,027. By this census, FOUR OUT OF
FIVE WHO CLAIM TO BEVietnam vets are not.
*The Department
of Defense Vietnam War Service Index officially provided by The War
Library originally reported with errors that 2,709,918
U.S. military personnel as having served
in-country. Corrections and confirmations to this erred index
resulted in the addition of 358 U.S. military personnel confirmed
to have served in Vietnam but not originally listed by the Department of
Defense. (All names are currently on file and accessible 24/7/365).
*Isolated
atrocities committed by American Soldiers produced torrents of
outrage from anti-war critics and the news media while Communist
atrocities were so common that they received hardly any
media mention at all.
*The
United
States sought to minimize and prevent attacks on civilians while
North
Vietnam made attacks on civilians a centerpiece of its strategy. Americans
who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while
Communists who did so received commendations.
*From 1957 to
1973, the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 Vietnamese
and abducted another 58,499. The death squads focused on leaders at
the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the
peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and school
teachers. - Nixon Presidential Papers
Common
Myths Dispelled:
*Myth: Common Belief is that most
Vietnam veterans were drafted.
Fact:2/3 of the
men who served in Vietnamwere
volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in
World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of
those killed in Vietnamwere volunteers.
*Myth: The media have reported that
suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 - 6 to
11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.
Fact: Mortality studies show that
9,000 is a better estimate. "The CDC Vietnam Experience Study
Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after
discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among
Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that
initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from
suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year
post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the
Vietnam veterans' group.
*Myth: Common belief is that a
disproportionate number of blacks were killed in
the Vietnam War.
Fact:86% of the
men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians,
12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races.
Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their
recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the
claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during
Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is
untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans
killed in Southeast Asia - a figure
proportional to the number of blacks in the
U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than
the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."
*Myth: Common belief is that the
war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Fact: Servicemen who went to
Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a
slightly elevated risk of dying because they were
more likely to be pilots or infantry officers.
Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our
nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high
school education or better.
Here are statistics from the Combat Area Casualty
File
(CACF) as of
November 1993.
*The CACF is the
basis for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall): Average age of
58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years. (Although 58,169 names are in
the Nov. 93 database, only 58,148 have both event date and birth
date. Event date is used instead of declared dead date for some of
those who were listed as missing in action)
Deaths - Average
Age Total:
58,148 23.11 years Enlisted:
50,274 22. 37 years
Officers: 6,598 28. 43 years Warrants:
1,276 24.73 years
E1:
525 20.34 years 11B MOS:
18,465 22.55 years
*Myth: The common belief is the
average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19.
Fact: Assuming KIAs accurately
represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an
infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19
years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the
enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. The average man
who fought in World War II was 26 years of age.
*Myth: The Common belief is that
the domino theory was proved false.
Fact: The domino theory was
accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism
because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the
Soviets out in 1966 because of America's commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment,
Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that
is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free
world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the
war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the
American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for
Communism.
*Myth: The common belief is that
the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.
Fact: 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. One out of every 10
Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,148 were killed and 304,000
wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Although the percent
that died is similar to other wars, amputations or
crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War
II ...75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. MEDEVAC
helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000
patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The
average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than
one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all
Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The
helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter
it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800
mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva
Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the
border).
*Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine
year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near
Trang Bang on 8 June 1972.....shown a million times on American
television....was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.
Fact:No American had
involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned
Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing Near the village
were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by
Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on
the ground. The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is
currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer,
Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. The incident in the
photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the
North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the
Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the
village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander
ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc are
incorrect. There were no Americans involved in any
capacity. "We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF,"
according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the
Commanding General of TRAC at that time. Also, it has been
incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phuc's brothers were killed in
this incident. They were Kim's cousins not her brothers.
*Myth: The United
States lost the war in Vietnam.
Fact: The
American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did
not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it
was almost an unprecedented performance. General Westmoreland
quoting Douglas Pike, a professor at the University of California,
Berkley a renowned expert on the Vietnam War). This included Tet 68,
which was a major military defeat for the VC and NVA.
THE UNITED STATES
DID NOT LOSE THE WAR IN VIETNAM, THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE DID.
Read on........
*The fall of
Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years
AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops
departed in their entirety 29 March 1973.
*How could we
lose a war we had already stopped fighting? We fought to an agreed
stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January
1973. It
called for release of all U.S. prisoners, withdrawal of U.S. forces, limitation of both
sides' forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful
reunification.
*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.
There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast
Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of
Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years
the U.S. was involved in Vietnam.
*Thanks for the perceived loss and the
countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese,
Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their
undying support-by-misrepresentation of the anti-War movement in the
United
States.
*As with much of
the Vietnam War, the news media misreported and misinterpreted the
1968 Tet Offensive. It was reported as an overwhelming success for
the Communist forces and a decided defeat for the
U.S. forces.
*Nothing could be further from the truth.
Despite initial victories by the Communists forces, the Tet
Offensive resulted in a major defeat of those forces. General Vo
Nguyen Giap, the designer of the Tet Offensive, is considered by
some as ranking with Wellington, Grant, Lee and MacArthur as a great
commander. Still, militarily, the Tet Offensive was a total
defeat of the Communist forces on all
fronts.
*It
resulted in the death of some 45,000 NVA troops and the complete, if
not total destruction of the Viet Cong elements in
South
Vietnam.
The Organization of the Viet Cong Units in the South never
recovered.
*The
Tet Offensive succeeded on only one front and that was the
News front and the political arena. This was
another example in the Vietnam War of an inaccuracy becoming the
perceived truth.
*However inaccurately reported, the News Media
made the Tet Offensive famous.