Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
So know for someone who was not there you quote a awful lot of individuals who were also not there....

BTW...the Embassy personnel and Marine personnel were those on the last copter....my former unit commander I worked with here in Berlin was on the last flight.

BTW...you forgot that in the 1972 Easter offensive the US air together with SVN army and marine units did in fact inflict heavy loses on the NVA and drove them back into Cambodia and Laos....fact not fiction....

The numbers that Giap talked about were not inflated as he was not trying to impress anyone in the West with his statements...

Check the number of all the actual NVA units who fought in SVN and then take an accurate listing of their manning strength and you might be surprised on how accurately they matched.....and if you take the average of in 1970 line crossers who deserted NVA units of 25,000 then your provided figures start to look a tad unreal...

We captured the complete logistics listing for all member of the Ho's on personal honorific Regt....we listed them has having only 900...actual logistics listing with complete names and each individuals equipment 1200....

Up and until 1975 NVA was able to mobilize and send south any number of needed troops....as the entire country was mobilized for complete and total war....

So now go back to the books and start all over...

Secondly, in one specific local village we knew we have exactly 7 VC members by name...we captured two and went to the village and stated surrender or we will kill the remaining 5 in ambushes....FIVE came in....

So while it is great to hear people calculate...they never took in the ground reality....

So now get back to the thread at hand...

As usual you get too close to your subjects to see clearly. This is reflected in your desire to argue with the person who probably agrees with you most on Vietnam here at SWJ/SWC.


You can't admit that you simply don't know. Unfortunately, your estimate of 4.4 million dead NVA/NLF is simply fanciful, and exaggerations like that only harden the hearts and minds of those who believe the popular narrative of the war, which seem to include Cooper and Jones, to name two.


The VVAW members were in Vietnam, weren't they? So perhaps we should give them the final word. What say you to that?


I suppose all those scholars still going over World Wars I and II, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars and the Thirty Years Wars should simply give up. Perhaps we should take the word of an elderly Russian with several dozen watches over Glantz?