More than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam war, dozens of ageing former American soldiers have gone back to the country to live. In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. Captain Larry may be much older and may have memories of Vietnam that she will never fully understand, but she loves him. In 1965, the United States intervened directly in Vietnam by sending troops to South Vietnam. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War. Even during the embargo some returned to visit places and people in Vietnam. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The Vietnam War lasted from 1964-1973—the longest war in American history until it was overtaken by the one in Afghanistan—and servicemen typically did one-year tours of duty. "During the war, I felt sorry for the people in Vietnam, but I couldn't trust them. Approximately 15 percent of the 3.3 million American soldiers who served in Vietnam were diagnosed with delayed stress syndrome, essentially extreme stress and even brain disorder caused by horrific memories of the past. The dissenters were part of what became known as the GI movement, soldiers publishing ‘underground’ newspapers, signing antiwar petitions, attending protest rallies and engaging in various forms of public speech to demand an end to the war. The Vietnam war dragged on for ten long years. And the more I read, the less I understood about why we were sent to Vietnam. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. Chas Lehman, a man in his 70s with a white beard and dark sunglasses, describes his return to Vietnam as the will of God. For this he had go back to the mountain that separated his platoon from the enemy and for the first time in his life he climbed all the way up. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, “You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. "After the war I had a lot of questions, but there was no-one who gave me answers," says Vetter. During a motor bike journey from north of the country to the south something else happened that he would never have expected in 1968 - he fell in love with a Vietnamese woman. Many of them live in and around Da Nang, the city where the US had its busiest military airfield during the war and where the first American troops arrived in 1965. That would give me a bigger chance to survive.". Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. After the embargo was lifted, some returned to Vietnam to live. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam. More than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam war, dozens of ageing former American soldiers have gone back to the country to live. Now I feel affection for them," he says. A tall, thin American wearing a straw hat wanders through the narrow streets of Ho Chi Minh City, clutching a photo album. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end. Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Most soldiers resented being sent to die in what they did not feel was their war. The 2 that left the group were court martialed for desertion and collaboration, one was given a 20 year sentence and the other 10. I know this is where I have to be. In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Is Facebook too powerful? The war is over, and I will die here. After more than a century of foreign domination and 21 years of war and division, Vietnam was finally a single, indepe… The only thing they wanted to do was grow rice and make babies.". Did any American soldiers stay in Asia after the Vietnam War and live their lives there? Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus ...read more, Lt. William L. Calley is found guilty of premeditated murder at My Lai by a U.S. Army court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia. Richard Nixon, the new U.S. president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. ", In his living room Larry Vetter shows me a picture on his laptop. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history. "So I went to study myself. "So I walked around with an M16 all day. And I put that thing in the face of every Vietnamese I encountered. What was chaos and destruction at the time, is now a hopeful place full of life.". In total, there were around 2.5 million Americans served in the Vietnam War. Even before the last American troops departed on March 29, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. For the United States, the war is officially over. Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. At the foot of one of Da Nang's Marble Mountains women with rice hats walk around selling souvenirs. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. At his side is a Vietnamese interpreter and fixer, Hung Phan, who has helped dozens of former American soldiers locate their long-lost children over the last 20 years. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced. His eyes light up when he explains how Vietnam has made him a happy man again. How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 U.S. Presidents. The veteran takes a deep breath. What's in Biden's $1.9tn Covid stimulus plan? Then, we scrubbed those records, Read: A US soldier searches for his Vietnamese son. It was partly a sense of guilt that led Vetter to stay in Vietnam after the three months were over. First of all, there was a draft. Above the sofa there is a wedding portrait - this summer, the 73-year-old married his Vietnamese girlfriend, Doan Ha. W hen the American soldiers returned home from World War II in 1945, they were greeted as heroes in the United States. In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the U.S. government. He has come to Vietnam to find his son. The only way I could escape from these memories was by getting drunk. Clark is one of about 100 American veterans, maybe more, who have established themselves in Vietnam. Tens of thousands have committed suicide. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks. A large proportion of the U.S. troops consisted of African American men from the inner cities, the sons … Consolidating Political Control Memories of destruction and death in Vietnam continuously haunted him. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections … https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-withdraws-from-vietnam. An American Dream : The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China, by Clarence Adams. The Second Indochina War—also known as the American War—had begun; it would not end until the United States withdrew and South Vietnam fell to the communist-run Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1975. Did any of them stay in the north or south, did any continue to fight the communists under the American trained ARVN, did any stay after the war was over, or did they all pack up and leave? All Rights Reserved. "As long as you don't return, you will remember Vietnam as the country of the war.". "I used to think the Vietnamese were the dirtiest, lowest scumbags in the world. For Parker the only way to put his demons to rest was to return to Vietnam. Then the unthinkable happened. What Happened After America’s Soldiers Returned from the Vietnam War? A lift takes tourists to the top, where on one side they look out over the countryside of central Vietnam, on the other the South China Sea. During the 90 day cooling off period all 23 US soldiers were held on neutral territory. General Robert E. Lee’s outnumbered Rebels were soon forced to evacuate the city and begin a ...read more, Prime Minister Hjalmar Hammarskjöld of Sweden, father of the famous future United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, resigns on this day in 1917 after his policy of strict neutrality in World War I—including continued trading with Germany, in violation of the Allied ...read more, Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army captures Frankfurt, as “Old Blood and Guts” continues his march east. "I was a vagabond who worked in restaurants and who went from town to town. There were no more bombs, there was no more fighting, there were no more jet fighters flying over. For many years Parker suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a disease that today affects 11% of Vietnam veterans. Only the Americans have been defeated.” The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost 58,000 American lives. Martin was a “hard core” veteran of seven years in the Continental Line, the regular army troops of the American Revolution. But when I left Vietnam, I loved the people there," he says. In March of 1958, Dr. Charles David Keeling begins regularly measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai'i. READ MORE: How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 U.S. Presidents. Thank You James It's estimated that tens of thousands of veterans have returned to Vietnam since the 1990s, mostly for short visits to the places where they once served. ...read more. "Here I found, more or less, peace with myself. It took a while to get the line to Hoover’s desk working correctly and the president complained to aides when his son was unable to get through on the Oval Office ...read more, On March 29, 1951, a homemade device explodes at Grand Central Station in New York City, startling commuters but injuring no one. Anyone doing so would be a sitting duck for the Vietcong camped nearby. "When I was sent to Vietnam, the mission seemed simple: I had to prevent the free South Vietnam from becoming a slave of the Communist North. I saw people when they weren't there. There were no American military in Vietnam after the war. Four years after the first withdrawal of a U.S. battalion, the last U.S. combat troops eventually left South Vietnam on March 29, 1973. The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. "I was so heavily brainwashed that before I went to war I wanted to kill Communists. It was conversion to Christianity, he says, that saved him from falling into a black hole of depression, disillusion and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Korean War, by Max Hastings. The remaining 21 were dishonorably discharged and journeyed in China. There he is, a young twenty-something man in a helicopter, at the end of the 1960s. "Not just for me, but for everyone.". Sometimes I go to a place where we used to fight. Because of the intense conditions that soldiers in Vietnam faced, memories of the war were not easily forgotten. "We even had the rule that you would never leave the camp without a gun," says Clark. But many others were poor or working-class teenagers who enlisted or were drafted into the military right out of high school. © 2021 BBC. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. A US army veteran has allegedly been found living in a remote Vietnam village – 44 years after he was presumed dead when his helicopter was shot down. "Back in the US everything felt meaningless. His voice breaks. There were lots of American soldiers in both Europe and Japan after the war, as part of the occupation force, which turned into NATO. "He has a good heart," she says. Together with other volunteers Lehman distributes food, drinks, clothing and blankets to needy minority groups in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Some of these men were career military officers. Another veteran, Larry Vetter works for Child of War Vietnam, a website that aims to tell people about the legacy of the Vietnam War. That goes for Richard Parker, also 66, who says he "lost the plot" after Vietnam, and for 20 years led a life of alcohol, drugs and sex. Lady Gaga's dogs found safe after armed robbery1, Tiger Woods 'in good spirits' after hospital move2, Mary Robinson 'made mistake' over Dubai princess3, Biden's $1.9tn Covid relief plan passes House vote4, Chinese TV apology for 'disrespectful' Gomez image5, A man who tried to help Syria - and was crushed by disinfo6, 7 things we learned from Prince Harry interview7, Saudi prince 'approved Khashoggi killing' - US8, Radio host sorry for comparing BTS to Covid9, Hunt for Nigeria girls as second kidnap group freed10. “These are the stories of forty-eight Vietnam veterans who returned home from the ‘lost war’ to enrich a … Read about our approach to external linking. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed. Authorities realized that this new ...read more, In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. I had the naive hope, in the years after Vietnam, that when I died, as a really old guy. But the homecoming was very different for most Vietnam veterans. Cities and towns across the country held parades to honor the returning veterans and recognize the sacrifices they had made. On Dec. 1, 1967, the last day of the International War Crimes Tribunal’s second session, antiwar activists from around the world gathered in Roskilde, Denmark.
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