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TERRIBLE DISHONEST PORTRAYAL Ask any grunt who was there!

posted 8 years ago by hywellda
3 replies | jump to latest

I did a review which I'd rather not repeat here.
This is the most dishonest attempt to portray combat in Viet Nam that ever was.
All or majority black field units in Viet Nam?
Not when I was there! ('66-'67).
And if some idiot thinks THAT is a racist thing to say,
too bad. Peddle your moronic lies somewhere else.
In particular, African Americans in the woods screaming nonsense at each other?
IT DIDN"T HAPPEN.

This director should commit suicide for the disservice he's done all our dead and wounded.

[–] Smerdyakoff 8 years ago

I think the big "racist conspiracy" aka as crackpot lie, was that something like 18% of the casualties were blacks but only 16% of the total troop strength was black. Well more blacks were in infantry because that is where the Army usually stuck all the people who scored low on the aptitude test. They needed the smarter people to do the more technical stuff, like artillery, communications, staff stuff, which usually were also safer posts.

[–] hywellda 8 years ago

Smerdyakoff,
You're assuming something that just wasn't true.
"...that is where the Army usually stuck all the people who scored low on the aptitude test."
During the VietNam War, Infantry units were notoriously UNDERMANNED.

No platoon in my battalion had it's full complement.
The largest at any one time had 26, short of the 30-40 it should have had.

The army's first staffing priority was manning line units
It didn't matter who or what the draftee's aptitude was,
the needs of the army came first.

We had a blind-without coke-bottle glasses, bookkeeper 11B
in the same platoon
as an Irishman drafted while on VISA/Machine Gunner
and a Platoon Sergeant ready for retirement who was totally deaf in one ear.

Warm bodies, cannon fodder and aptitude or race didn't matter.
Black members in our battalion? I estimate somewhere near 12%.
1966-67

[–] Smerdyakoff 8 years ago

Well in a pinch they would toss even the cooks into the line. But if you scored high on the ASVABS, go to radio school then you get posted to divisional communications, you are a lot safer then some guy who who scored low and got stuck as a cook