Fighting a war in a place so dense with people, water, and foliage
People and machines everywhere
It did not take me long to feel the denseness. In fact as I left the foyer of the Tan Son Nhat airport in Saigon, I was besieged by a wave of humans. It is breathtaking to walk into so many people as a guy from the relatively spread out world of Midwestern America. A hoard of people loom around the airport to greet loved ones who constantly arrive from various parts of the world. The Vietnamese dispersed to a certain extent after the war. A couple million or so ended up in America only just to begin with. They are elsewhere as well. Now that Vietnam has opened up more these days to the outside world, those ex patriots want to come home to visit.
Vietnam has over 84 million people. Saigon has six to eight million depending on who is doing the counting. Vietnam is about the same area as New Mexico. However, it is long and narrow. It stretches some 1,650 kilometers (1,023 miles) from bottom to top. In one place it is only 50 kilometers across. It has almost 3,500 kilometers (2,170 miles) of coastline. It is a monstrosity of a geography with just about every land and people dynamic academia can conjure up.
Then I caught a taxi to my hotel. The streets are prolific with scooters, cyclo taxis, trucks, and vans - millions. And rarely is there a stop and go light. So immediately I was overwhelmed by people. Then after a few days I traveled to the country side.
The fields and hills are dense with green trees and jungle growth. Often streams and canals come out of no where. Jungle roads go on for what seems like forever, narrow, then abruptly end. Out side the cities few roads are paved; or, are there any street signs - at least none useful to a Westerner. Fields and roads often fill with water during tides or for what reasons I know not.
I understand of course that it is now thirty years after the American war. I remember the technology of the 1960s and '70s. The era was before laptops, cell phones, and satellite dishes. They as well as we fought the war in that context. And of course the population of Vietnam was smaller. But I am thinking the current hive dynamic of this busy culture has continued on from where it left off before and during the war. I understand things became static for some time after the war. But with reforms that started in the 1980s there seems to be the timbre in the air that has revived the seeds of a prolific economic culture that has began to build again.
A network of people
The people are extraordinary networkers. My little hotel got me connections 500 miles north and all points in between. Relatives, friends, and business associates were contacted to assist me in my travels north. One has to assume that style of networking did not just pop up. Surely during the war and before we and others were up against that same cultural tendency to connect.
The point being that I would not want to fight a people that can muster such a collective consciousness to accomplish something. Now days they just collectively seem to want to extract a dollar here and a dollar there from me on my visits. None-the-less there seems to be an understanding that if someone rips me off too profoundly I will not come back to be picked clean again next year. It is a small hint as to why I would not want to fight a people so subtle but yet so collectively clever.
I remember soldiers returning from the war saying, "We just never knew who was on which side, we couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys, they all seemed to know things we didn't about things going on around us." Today, if you travel the back streets and alleys and visit the markets you may see a hint of that same dynamic that seemed to drive the American soldiers crazy now so long ago. Now days that Vietnamese dynamic seems to be dedicated to daily survival in a burgeoning and raw economy.
The consummate question -
Did anybody study the people and geography before we decided to have a war there?
The consummate question that should be pondered in retrospect is: Why did we think we could fight a war there? At least why did we think we could fight it quickly or expeditiously. Especially after the French languished for ten years in a war there before America attempted one there. I hate to be a Monday morning quarter back but being an old Army Engineer, I think I speak with some credibility that a war there even by today's military technology still seems a massive, behemoth task of an undertaking. If you're not fighting the prolific communication of the collective Vietnamese psyche, you are up against the geography and climate. It gets very hot and humid with all the jungles, mountains, and water.
Don't forget the urban war
Before we started renting motor bikes to drive, Heide and I decided to walk the streets of Vung Tau because it seemed like a small quiet place. Many hours later, sunburned, and dehydrated we emerged a few miles down the coast from the main city - completely backwards. The whole time while maneuvering from one narrow street to the next I could only think - I wouldn't what to be walking this urban setting in combat gear during a war. From my military background I can see all the streets look the same. The walker is always at the mercy of the people in the buildings. We tend to forget that Vietnam was also an urban war. Much war news footage and movie scenes are of jungle. It is hard to understand that complex dynamic of fighting in a place like Vietnam until you stand "in-country." A text book just does not capture the connection one can feel when feet are on the ground in the country in question.
What were they thinking?
It makes one wonder just how many leaders actually put their feet on the ground in Vietnam before they sent so many Americans there to fight what they thought would be an easy war. I understand that Vietnam had a few million less people in the 1960s and '70s, but the human networking, geographic challanges, climate extremes, and urban dynamics have not changed. I can truly understand how fighting a war there became a quagmire.
It did not take me long to feel the denseness. In fact as I left the foyer of the Tan Son Nhat airport in Saigon, I was besieged by a wave of humans. It is breathtaking to walk into so many people as a guy from the relatively spread out world of Midwestern America. A hoard of people loom around the airport to greet loved ones who constantly arrive from various parts of the world. The Vietnamese dispersed to a certain extent after the war. A couple million or so ended up in America only just to begin with. They are elsewhere as well. Now that Vietnam has opened up more these days to the outside world, those ex patriots want to come home to visit.
Vietnam has over 84 million people. Saigon has six to eight million depending on who is doing the counting. Vietnam is about the same area as New Mexico. However, it is long and narrow. It stretches some 1,650 kilometers (1,023 miles) from bottom to top. In one place it is only 50 kilometers across. It has almost 3,500 kilometers (2,170 miles) of coastline. It is a monstrosity of a geography with just about every land and people dynamic academia can conjure up.
Then I caught a taxi to my hotel. The streets are prolific with scooters, cyclo taxis, trucks, and vans - millions. And rarely is there a stop and go light. So immediately I was overwhelmed by people. Then after a few days I traveled to the country side.
The fields and hills are dense with green trees and jungle growth. Often streams and canals come out of no where. Jungle roads go on for what seems like forever, narrow, then abruptly end. Out side the cities few roads are paved; or, are there any street signs - at least none useful to a Westerner. Fields and roads often fill with water during tides or for what reasons I know not.
I understand of course that it is now thirty years after the American war. I remember the technology of the 1960s and '70s. The era was before laptops, cell phones, and satellite dishes. They as well as we fought the war in that context. And of course the population of Vietnam was smaller. But I am thinking the current hive dynamic of this busy culture has continued on from where it left off before and during the war. I understand things became static for some time after the war. But with reforms that started in the 1980s there seems to be the timbre in the air that has revived the seeds of a prolific economic culture that has began to build again.
A network of people
The people are extraordinary networkers. My little hotel got me connections 500 miles north and all points in between. Relatives, friends, and business associates were contacted to assist me in my travels north. One has to assume that style of networking did not just pop up. Surely during the war and before we and others were up against that same cultural tendency to connect.
The point being that I would not want to fight a people that can muster such a collective consciousness to accomplish something. Now days they just collectively seem to want to extract a dollar here and a dollar there from me on my visits. None-the-less there seems to be an understanding that if someone rips me off too profoundly I will not come back to be picked clean again next year. It is a small hint as to why I would not want to fight a people so subtle but yet so collectively clever.
I remember soldiers returning from the war saying, "We just never knew who was on which side, we couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys, they all seemed to know things we didn't about things going on around us." Today, if you travel the back streets and alleys and visit the markets you may see a hint of that same dynamic that seemed to drive the American soldiers crazy now so long ago. Now days that Vietnamese dynamic seems to be dedicated to daily survival in a burgeoning and raw economy.
The consummate question -
Did anybody study the people and geography before we decided to have a war there?
The consummate question that should be pondered in retrospect is: Why did we think we could fight a war there? At least why did we think we could fight it quickly or expeditiously. Especially after the French languished for ten years in a war there before America attempted one there. I hate to be a Monday morning quarter back but being an old Army Engineer, I think I speak with some credibility that a war there even by today's military technology still seems a massive, behemoth task of an undertaking. If you're not fighting the prolific communication of the collective Vietnamese psyche, you are up against the geography and climate. It gets very hot and humid with all the jungles, mountains, and water.
Don't forget the urban war
Before we started renting motor bikes to drive, Heide and I decided to walk the streets of Vung Tau because it seemed like a small quiet place. Many hours later, sunburned, and dehydrated we emerged a few miles down the coast from the main city - completely backwards. The whole time while maneuvering from one narrow street to the next I could only think - I wouldn't what to be walking this urban setting in combat gear during a war. From my military background I can see all the streets look the same. The walker is always at the mercy of the people in the buildings. We tend to forget that Vietnam was also an urban war. Much war news footage and movie scenes are of jungle. It is hard to understand that complex dynamic of fighting in a place like Vietnam until you stand "in-country." A text book just does not capture the connection one can feel when feet are on the ground in the country in question.
What were they thinking?
It makes one wonder just how many leaders actually put their feet on the ground in Vietnam before they sent so many Americans there to fight what they thought would be an easy war. I understand that Vietnam had a few million less people in the 1960s and '70s, but the human networking, geographic challanges, climate extremes, and urban dynamics have not changed. I can truly understand how fighting a war there became a quagmire.
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