South Vietnamese Soldiers

South Vietnamese soldiers always looked so perfectly dressed when I saw them, which was not often.  They had nice uniforms and were clean looking.  Those jungle pants you see in the snapshot have been tailored.  They were shortened and narrowed to remove the bulkiness.  Notice the colorful patches they wore?  We would never have those on our uniforms.  Too bright, too much of an eye-catcher.  You could get shot more easily by displaying flashy patches like they wore.

I always seemed to run into South Vietnamese soldiers on a large firebase.  Sometimes I would see them in Bien Hoa.  I never saw them on the small, temporary firebases that were built in the jungle.  I never saw them out in the jungle where we spent most of our time.  To be fair, they probably did fight for their country in the same places we fought.  I just didn't witness it..

If I sound resentful, you are right.  In my humble opinion, American soldiers did all of the heavy lifting in Vietnam.  When there was a tough job to do, we did it.  When there was heavy fighting going on, we were in the middle of it.  It seemed that our blood was being spilled more than theirs.  I always wondered why, with no clear answers.  Worse, I was never convinced that the South Vietnamese appreciated what we were doing for them.  I never felt it in my dealings with them.

In 1975 we left Vietnam.  Not long after the sound of the last helicopter faded away, the North Vietnamese Army swarmed into Saigon and it was over.  The South Vietnamese Army collapsed.  I saw a picture recently of what looked like hundreds of South Vietnamese Army boots scattered in the middle of a street.  They abandoned them so the North Vietnamese couldn't identify them as soldiers.  All that American money and blood and for what?  If you look at Afghanistan and Iraq today, the same thing happened.  We never seem to learn.