No matter how one looks at the Vietnam war in number of casualties, whether it be fifty-five thousand, fifty-eight thousand, or sixty thousand, it was the longest war ever fought by the United States, and it ended in a total waste of lives on both sides with nothing gained for the tragic toll of wasted human lives.

President Eisenhower was the first U.S. President to express the doctrine that if Vietnam fell to the communists, all of Southeast Asia would follow suite, and attempted to bring American resolve in to the region to prevent his "domino theory" from coming in to being. He sent a few "advisors" in to assist after the French pulled out, and President Kennedy followed along the same path too, but it wasn't until President Johnson cited the "Gulf Of Tonkin" issue as being the catalyst for American troop support that really got things flowing for the U.S. military with the U.S. Marines landing in 1965, and the build up just went on from there with each year after that seeing more and more troops coming in to Vietnam. In fact, in 1968, General W. Westmoreland requested another 200,000 plus troops with already nearly 300,000 men in Vietnam to "help him decisively defeat the insurgent communist and regular NVA troops in the field". But, as we all know, it never happened.

Did the U.S. really beat the Viet Cong and NVA armies militarily? I'd have to venture that it did not. Did it help to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia? Again, no. I believe that the governments of Southeast Asia saw what happened with Pol Pot in power in Cambodia, as well as what the communist north did to South Vietnam, and determined their own countries wanted no part of that, and they on their own did what they could to prevent it. At least at the public level. What happens behind closed doors who knows.

In 1975, while serving in the U.S. Air Force our unit assisted in those mass evacuations of American embassy personnel etc as well as nationalist Vietnamese, many who had worked for the American government in Vietnam. Approximately 28,000 Vietnamese went through our own channels of operation. From infants to grandparents. It didn't seem like a "victory" to me, but then, I have always thought that the only victor in any war is the Grim Reaper.

Be good to each other.

Bill