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To: U S Army EOD

My only critique for the South Vietmanese is why didn't their Army fight as hard and fanatically as the North Vietmanese soldier. If they had fought hard and not constantly relying on the Americans to do all the heavy lifting, they would not be slaves today. Corruption also killed the South Vietmanese Army. They operated very similiar to many non modernized Asian military of its era. Generals and senior colonels were preselected from elite families (patronage system), and payroll was allocated to division commanders based on the number of soldiers in the unit. Commanders skimmed the money and what was left over went to the soldiers. There was less incentive to commit troops to battle, because casualties would reduce the number of men (thus payroll amount and amount that can be skimmed). Many South Vietmanese commanders hesitated to go into combat unless it was absolutely necessary. The good news is the US military learned from Vietnam and we emphasized on building cohesive battalion size units first and not massive divisions when we assist foreign allies in later Low Intensive wars.


6 posted on 04/28/2005 8:53:13 PM PDT by Fee (Great powers never let minor allies dictate who, where and when they must fight.)
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To: Fee
A lot of the Vietnamese units did fight quite well. In my opinion, the major mistake we made was the US fighting a separate war from the South Vietnamese. During the Korean War, we made an emphasis to integrate individual ROK soldiers into American units with the KATUSA program. While not perfect, it did help for a better cohesion between the ROKs and American units.

Most of my friends who were advisers felt like the local RFPF units fought very well. I am sure that the South Vietnamese were put off by what was going on at the college campus in the US also.

We never tried to tell the public, our side of the war like we did in WWII. Basically the North Vietnamese didn't win the war, we lost it.
10 posted on 04/28/2005 9:59:53 PM PDT by U S Army EOD (My US Army daughter out shot everybody in her basic training company.)
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