Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior firepower to destroy him. Every major engagement between U. The body count policy fell into disfavor and was not employed in future American wars; in Vietnam it led officers to inflate enemy casualties.
The VC and NVA dragged off as many of their dead and wounded as possible, sometimes impressing villagers into performing this task during battles, so determining their casualties was guesswork based on such things as the number of blood trails. On the other side, the same thing was occurring, with even more inflated numbers—vastly more. Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that often were pure fantasy.
Marines—near Van Truong, from the VC point of view. On February 7, , the U. Air Force began bombing selected sites in North Vietnam. This grew into the operation known as Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, , and continued to November 2, Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities. An air war was the most that could be done north of the 17th parallel, because the use of ground troops had been ruled out.
On July 9, , China had announced it would step in if the U. North Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of the north, but the U. By the end of , there were , American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up , young men in the coming year, an increase of 72, over But the war news was hopeful.
The South Vietnamese Army was showing improvement, winning 37 of their last 45 major engagements. American troops had won every major battle they fought, and General Nguyen Van Thieu had come to power in South Vietnam in September; he would remain in office until , bringing a new measure of stability to the government, though he could not end its endemic corruption.
Antiwar protests continued across America and in many other countries, but on April 28, , Gen. Westmoreland became the first battlefield commander ever to address a joint session of Congress in wartime, and Time magazine named him Man of the Year.
In an interview he was asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel, and he responded that the U. They struck at least 30 provincial capitals and the major cities of Saigon and Hue.
American intelligence knew an attack was coming, though the Army had downplayed a New York Times report of large communist troop movements heading south. The VC was effectively finished; it would not field more than 25,—40, troops at any time for the remainder of the war. The NVA had to take over. It was one of the most resounding defeats in all of military history—until it became a victory. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue.
The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Initially, however, homefront support for the war effort grew, but by March Americans, perceiving no change in strategy that would bring the war to a conclusion, became increasingly disillusioned. In a February 27, , broadcast he summed up what he had found during his return trip to the war zone. He closed by saying:. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.
To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.
But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.
Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. Heavy bombing by B aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.
Even as the enemy body count at times exaggerated by U. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses. By November , the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching ,, and U. The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use , post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD , mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.
Between July and December , more than , U. Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October , some 35, demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.
On January 31, , some 70, DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive named for the lunar new year , a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than cities and towns in South Vietnam.
Taken by surprise, U. Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam though bombings continued in the south and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.
Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization : withdrawing U.
In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.
The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U. After the My Lai Massacre , anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on. In and , there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country. On November 15, , the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D. The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly.
For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent. For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous. The peasants wanted communism and supported the Vietminh and the NLF. After this, there was no strong capitalist government in control of the South. This incident gave the USA the excuse it needed to escalate the war. The first major contingent of US Marines arrived in For the next ten years the USA's involvement increased.
The elections were never held and the country remained divided: North Vietnam was a communist republic led by Ho Chi Minh. However, Dao had one more trick up his sleeve, and he called in his personal helicopter behind his headquarters.
Joe Galloway. At the moment I hit the button I did not recognize the GI who was dashing across the clearing to load the body of a comrade aboard the waiting Huey helicopter. Later I realized that I had shot a photo, in the heat of battle, of my childhood friend from the little town of Refugio, Texas. Vince Cantu and I went through school together right to graduation with the Refugio High School Class of — a total of 55 of us. The next time I saw Vince was on that terrible bloody ground in the la Drang.
Each of us was terribly afraid that the other was going to be killed in the next minutes. His bosses read the papers and discovered they had a real hero pushing one of their buses. So they made Vince a Supervisor and all he did from then to retirement was stand in the door with a clipboard checking buses in and out.
Larry Burrows. The fraction of a second captured in most photographs is just that: a snapshot of a moment in time. Sometimes, even in war, that moment can tell a whole story with clarity, but it can be ambiguous too.
Purdie was being restrained from turning back to aid his CO. The scene is as wretched as the other. Purdie, wounded for the third time in the war, was about to be flown to a hospital ship off the Vietnamese coast and leave that country for his last time. The composition of the photograph has been compared to the work of the old masters, but some see it more cinematically: as if you could run a film backwards and forwards to view more of the story.
Exhibiting museums have found in it Christian iconography. And at least one psychiatrist treating war veterans has used it in his practice. Unknowable then was also the life Purdie would live after his 20 years in the Marine Corps, or how important to him faith would become. David Hume Kennerly. Long-forgotten photographs sometimes leap out at me and I am stunned by certain moments that I documented that were so routine when I made them, but are now infused with new emotion and meaning.
This picture of a haunted-looking young American GI taking refuge under a poncho from monsoon rains in the jungles outside of Da Nang while on patrol in is one of them. Many had that intense blaze of realization when a comrade was suddenly, violently, unexpectedly gone, and marveled at still being left intact. What was his next act, and what happened after he returned from Vietnam? Paul Schutzer. Paul got carried away with all the emotions that happen in war, and he was right in there with the soldiers in battles.
There was one photo of prisoners being guarded by an American soldier about 18 years old. The captives were young children and old women and one woman is nursing her baby. Unfortunately the young soldier was later killed but this image conveyed the senselessness and horror of how the human condition was playing out.
The soldiers were very sympathetic to the civilians and one medic befriended them. It was the first time that Americans saw and learned that we were using napalm. David Burnett. David Burnett—Contact Press Images. In Vietnam in the early s, the only real limitation was finding a ride.
But nearly until the end of the U. It was by choice. That said, it was often a world of anonymous photographers spending time with anonymous soldiers. So while we would talk with the troops about what was happening that day, there were many moments where in the course of making photographs, I would just keep moving along. I usually knew the unit but looking back now, so much I wish I had noted was simply never written down.
It was forever a search for a picture, and you never knew, sometimes for weeks, whether you had that picture or not. My film had to make it all the way to New York before it could be processed and edited. One morning near the end of the unsuccessful Laos invasion of early an attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail , I wandered into a group of young soldiers who were tasked with fixing tanks and track vehicles which were regularly being rocketed by North Vietnamese troops just down the road.
This soldier and I exchanged pleasantries the way you would in the dusty heat. He went back to work after reading a letter from home, and I moved on to another unit. Catherine Leroy. Catherine Leroy—Dotation Catherine Leroy. There is something both surreal and strikingly sad in this photograph by Catherine Leroy. An empty helmet — is its owner still alive?
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