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In Vietnam the US army was confronted with an opponent, who tried to compensate for its material and technological inferiority by using tactics of guerilla warfare. There were no front lines. Reality tended to melt into layers of unknownability. The same person could be a friend and an enemy.
\"We knew the enemy was all aroiind. But he was invisible.\"
\"A running Vietnamese was a fair target. This left us bewildered and uneasy. No one was eager to shoot civilians. lf he\'s dead and Vietnamese, he\'s VC.\"
The war had not only become unpopular within the USA:
American GIs in Vietnam had become increasingly alienated from their "mission" in Vietnam. The use of drugs was only one symptom of this alienation. In 1971 about 40 percent of the veterans thought the war was a mistake.
"The things you learnt of survival were bitter things. They were things of tuning off all emotions that you had. They were things of surviving just for yourself. Killing - I feel that it was may government\'s responsibility."
"Before the war ended all my buddies and all the Vietnamese people were still alive in my head. They weren\'t dead yet. And when that war ended I knew that they were finally dead. And that they were dead for nothing. And that got on me.
They never knew, who the snipers were, which frustrated them and hurt their morale. Even a child could be a VC there. Another threat were the traps like e.g. the punji-stick trap or the trip wires, which made the affected soldiers at least amputees.
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