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number of enemy casualties versus the number of friendly casualties—it was not a war that could be measured by how much terrain we controlled—we often took an objective—left that objective only to have to return later and ‘retake’ that objective. In other words we could not quantify our success! This was the first war in our history that was fought as a ‘politically correct’ war! We simply repeated the same patrol routes, operations and sweeps—taking fire from the VC who knew we were coming and returning fire when possible —occasionally killing, wounding and/or capturing a few VC here and there. Our Marines did the best they could under impossible circumstances—this became obvious to us as the months passed by and the overall ‘strategies’ didn’t change. Looking back— of course hindsight is 20/20—it appeared that our top commanders didn’t know how to fight this War. It was unlike anything we had faced before—the same tried and true methods that had worked in other Wars simply didn’t fit in this war. Supposedly, we had all the advantages—the latest weapons, air support, Naval support and the best equipped—best trained military in the World. Our tanks were useless in most of the terrain—helicopters couldn’t provide support in the cloudy, wet and misty jungles at certain times due to those conditions—the artillery couldn’t provide support for the close in, smaller unit battles which occurred in the jungle undergrowth which the VC preferred. Our troops were weighed down by the gear they had to carry on extended patrols—we had to carry our food, our water, our ammo., our weapons though steep, heavy undergrowth in 100 degree temperatures while our enemy traveled much lighter with their food , water and ammo hidden nearby in the villages, hamlets and
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