Soldiering On The Ten Thousand Day War : Season 1 Episode 17

The Seventeenth volume of The Ten Thousand Day War examines 1969 the period of peak military involvement in Vietnam. The troops have a breakdown in discipline and moral. Drug abuse becomes rampant. With occasional outbursts of rebellion against authority. the GI's slogan becomes, "Don't be the last GI killed in the war" The average age of an American Soldier in WWII was 26, In Vietnam it was 19. It was a war with no clear objective, no clear mission. For the troops, it was a situation of survival, don't do anything to get yourself killed, you have a year to serve and just survive until your chance to go home. Hamburger Hill, Marines fought for days to take a hill suffering heavy casualties, only to abandon it the next day. One Marine Corps report stated that troop morale was so low that troops in those units that were not on the border of open rebellion were in risk of complete collapse. During this period, 4,000 troops would be admitted to hospitals for combat injuries and 26,000 would be admitted for drug abuse. American withdrawal continues, by late '71 only 45,000 American troops remain in Vietnam. The only heroes of Vietnam are the troops that never left, those that died innocently in belief of a dream that was never real in the first place.