re: Louisiana fatal casualties of the Vietnam War

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Thank G-d the US Army was able to rescue the Marines...again.

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I call Bravo Sierra (thats BS) on the freaking army coming to the rescue of the marines.

I do remember a few Army gunships flying around an shooting rockets into the side of hill 1015. A big freaking show! Most of the NVA had already hauled arse.

I would like to give thanks to the USAF B-52 squadron that pounded the hills around us. I can't imagine being an NVA soldier near a B-52 strike. O yeah, thank you PUFF. That would be Puff the Magic Dragon!

What a lot of people don't know mainly cause they're not in the military is...the USMC changed the way they deployed mortars in Vietnam. In WWII and every war in between and after Vietnam the gunner on the mortar was the senior man in the gun team. In Vietnam, usually the most junior man in the gun team was the gunner. And they went to one man gunning on it because the NVA snipers were that good. And with one man gunning it allowed you to have more cover mostly. Nowadays we usually do two man gunning with an ammo bearer to well...bear the ammo.

Jim Rockford's post

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ETA: And the Marine inaction during and after the fall of the Lang Vei Special Forces camp was shameful.

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I know you're trolling Jim. I'll bite.

Yup, I've had doggies throw this at me. "Why didn't you marines come to the rescue at Lang Vei?"

I REMEMBER the night they got hit. Foggy as hell and we were all on 100 per cent (everybody on the line prepared for an attack). I was on hill outpost waiting for them to hit our hill AGAIN. The marines down at Khe Sanh were also stretched to the limit. It was a 10 mile hike down Hwy 9 to Lang Vei camp. Don't you think the NVA would have that route covered with an ambush?

From the History Reader

[quote]While the Marines’ decision not to send a ground relief force to the camp was undoubtedly wise, the decision did nothing to improve USSF/Marine relations. As an aside, in January a Marine company had practiced a relief effort moving crosscountry to Lang Vei rather than on QL9 to avoid ambushes. The operation had required 19 hours in the dense vegetation and rough terrain. A night helicopter relief would probably have been disastrous. - See more at: LINK ]

I've read somewhere that the NVA did indeed expect a relief column from Khe Sanh and where prepared with an ambush.

Yeah, that fact is wrong. I've seen it that actual combat for the average world war 2 soldier was 45 days of battle year and for many, it would be a lot higher, especially in the pacific when you got dropped off on an island and your unit didn't leave till you took it. The Civil War soldier averaged 5-10 days a year in battle. If you talk strictly battlefield deaths, WW2 was the deadliest conflict. Then the civil war and world war 1 are kinda tied. Obviously the civil war had more battlefield deaths, but those are spread out over 4 years. World war 1s deaths were over 1 year. For that reason, the Korean war comes after that. 33 thousand combat deaths over 3 years was deadlier than 47 thousand over 10 years.