Ain't no one a Fortunate Son in Vietnam

The miseries of the Vietnam War are well documented for all involved. Even before the turning point at Tet, American soldiers endured a miserable lifestyle. The elusive nature of the NLF insurgency and horrid conditions of jungle warfare, not to mention booby traps and visible lack of progress, wore down on American spirits all around.  Following Tet, American morale hit rock bottom. Drug abuse was rampant, with over 20% of all American personnel using heroin (and everyone already smoked weed). By 1970, both the US Marines and the US Army had degenerated into semi-mutinous states. Officers trying to pull rank were often ignored, and in some cases fragged by their own troops.  The same was true for the other side. Primitive conditions and lower-tech arms made guerrilla warfare miserable for the Viet Cong (and NVA regulars). Disease ravaged Communist forces, malaria the worst amongst them. Supply shortages caused hunger, exhaustion, and much of the wounded dying before treatment. Many VC and NVA would have to spend years away from home on their “tours”. Perhaps the worst part was how the Hanoi Politburo and COSVN treated their soldiers. Against the judgement of realists like Ho Chi Minh and Giap, Le Duan (the real Communist leader) frequently gambled and wasted his troops in massive battles doomed to fail against American and ARVN firepower. This happened in the 1968 Tet which decimated the Viet Cong (50,000 dead), and the 1972 Easter Offensive (100,000 NVA casualties).

Viet Cong guerrillas would often have just a few rice balls in their pockets during marches. To compensate, they would hunt deer or elephant for meat. In one case:  >“Lofty” Thinh one day shot a big orangutan, and summoned his squad to drag it triumphantly back to their hut. “But, oh God, when it was skinned, the animal looked like a fat woman with ulcerous skin, the eyes, half-white half-gray, still rolling. The entire squad was horrified and ran away screaming, leaving all their kit behind.” Instead of eating the beast, they eventually buried it beneath a headstone.  \- The account of some NVA on the Ho Chi Minh Trail Edit: it seems it was a gibbon, not an orangutan

And the fuck up thing? Malaria isnt the worst part the NVA/VC had to deal with in the triple canopy jungle Heres an excerpt from Dr Lê Cao Đàis memoir about a special type of bug that ravaged his men >Côn trùng ở Tây Nguyên có nhiều loại thật đáng sợ mà chúng tôi chưa từng gặp bao giờ ở miền Bắc trong kháng chiến chống Pháp. Trong Hội nghị Quân y vừa qua Đội điều trị 3 báo cáo một loại côn trùng, trông giống như con bọ hung, toàn thân màu đen, cánh cứng, nhưng chỉ nhỏ như hạt đỗ xanh. Chúng xuất hiện ban đêm hàng triệu con, như một đám mây, tràn ngập vào hầm thương binh, lăn sả vào các vết thương. Cách chống đỡ duy nhất là nhanh chóng khiêng thương binh sang hầm khác chưa bị chúng tấn công và đốt những bó đuốc thật to để đốt chúng. >*Insects in the Central Highlands are truly terrifying, unlike anything we had encountered in the North during the resistance against the French. At the recent Military Medical Conference, Treatment Team 3 reported a type of insect that looks like a dung beetle, with a completely black body and hard wings, but only as small as a mung bean.* ***They appear at night in millions, like a cloud, flooding into the injured soldiers bunkers, swarming into the wounds***\*.\* ***The only way to defend against them is to quickly move the wounded soldiers to another bunker that has not yet been attacked by them and to light large torches to burn them.*** Imagine a bug so terrifying, the literal response to it is: Burn everything.

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