The beginning of the conflict:
The US Army
The US army that, in 1961, was daily drawing more and more 'military advisors' into Vietnam, was an army divided by an internal war for careers and the obsession to fight an actual war.
In order to have a war to fight and a real one – they were ready to do anything and use any means. And they did.
They did everything they could to have 'their' Vietnam war.
After the victory during World War Two and the stalemate in Korea, the US military had accumulated a twenty-year-long victory-lust.
Although Trautman had fought for years – to be precise from '62 to '65 – against the 'defenders' of the Vietnam war, all of his efforts had been in vain: they wanted a war, any war provided that it was their war, not their father's or son's: they wanted it for themselves, and at any cost.
They were a whole generation of soldiers who had grown up in the shadow of WWII, the great victory of good over evil, and they lived outside reality, like kids who had never really grown up, who wished to play at Cowboys against Indians on real battle-fields, and at the cost of actual lives.
They wanted to show the combat badge off and everyone wanted to, from the privates to the generals, and at any cost.
And when Kennedy asked them for a no-bullshit evaluation about the Vietnam situation, they simply lied.
To that kind of soldier, being in the army with no war to fight was like being virgins waiting for their first fuck ever... And the idea of getting old and still being virgins terrified them.
They dreamt about feeling the feelings their fathers had experienced after the WWII victory. A feeling that could fill their chests, straighten their backs and wipe away any personal failure in their private lives: a failed marriage, an unemployed son, a relationship that had not worked out... A victory on the battlefield looked like could be the solution to any problem.
Lying about Vietnam could jeopardize the whole final outcome of the war itself, yet they did not care. Winning was a secondary problem, which they would think about, yes, but later.
The priority at the time was convincing Kennedy that he couldn't just go on with the military advisors, and that the US had to send its own troops to the front line.
Trautman – on the other hand – had an entirely different opinion.
Dreaming of a war to fight was one thing, but dreaming that war was... Sick.
From his point of view, it was obvious that that war was going to be a disaster.
You only had to take a look at what was happening.
The South Vietnamese army was practically non-existent while guerrillas, on the other hand, sharpened by years of fighting against the French, were day by day becoming better organized, more widespread and effective.
And then of course, not even Trautman thought that the US could actually lose that war, but he was fully aware that that war was going to be long, bloody and expensive far beyond the worst expectations, and he had some serious doubts that the US people would accept sacrificing such a high number of human lives to save such a far away – and unknown - country.
As time passed by the difference between Trautman's point of view and those of the war-hawks became even worse.
The colonel started feeling like a stranger amongst his own colleagues, and he started asking himself often how there could ever be so many idiots inside an army that all things considered he admired.
The situation seemed like some kind of collective-craziness, and it was like a disease.
During the military advisor phase ('62-'65) and before the US soldiers’ arrival on the battlefield, the 'disease' was widespread amongst the military personnel belonging to Trautman's generation, even those who were in Vietnam already, and so already had the situation in front of their eyes.
The truth was that the 'war-wish' was overwhelming everything including common sense.
The war hawks had no idea about what the actual cost of any war victory was, even the easier ones.
On the contrary, Trautman had had his first encounter with the reality of war in Korea, and he came to the conclusion that some victories... Some victories just did not make up for the blood spilled and that the Vietnam war was doomed to give them that kind of victory in ANY case.
But the worst thing – in Trautman's opinion – was that the generals of his generation were no idiots.
As a matter of fact, those generals had a very clear idea about the reality of the situation 'hidden' in Vietnam, yet they wanted to keep it hidden from their own eyes too, in order to avoid the risk of changing their minds about it.
But in Trautman's mind 'madness is the loss of contact with reality', and those soldiers that could 'avoid seeing what they did not want to see', were nothing more than mentally ill.
They were absolutely terrified of the idea of not wanting to fight the Vietnam war any more, because to many of them, the Vietnam war was the last chance in their lives to fight in any war.
So, 'the Vietnam obsession' became a genuine reason for living for many of them, like some sort of drug, whose addiction mostly hit those who had never set foot on an actual battlefield before, who had never sent their own friends to their deaths, who had never seen them shattered into pieces or smelled the corpses of their friends the day after. Those who had never gone through any of these things were an easier victim of this kind of mental-illness that was spreading amongst the army in those days.
Very smart and important people were also more or less consciously falling into this kind of trap too, like John Fitzgerald Kennedy himself.
J. F. Kennedy was far more an adult person than that bunch of idiots, but the problem was that when he needed to know about the Vietnams situation, he asked them, because that’s the way the presidential staff is supposed to work.
And in the end, the continuous censorship of the real situation reports succeeded in its intended purpose: making the president lose contact with reality. And that's the final reason why, between '60 and '62, the overall expense in military help to South Vietnam bloated so much: because the best generals in the whole world (some of whom were the same who had defeated Hitler twenty years before) were still thinking that that the Vietnam war was going to be 'no serious issue,' and faced with the obvious difficulties that the guerrilla warfare was creating for the South Vietnamese army, they used to reply that 'just before victory, the battle gets harder... This is just the final rush'
And they dared to say this kind of crap before the Vietnam War even got started.
On the contrary, in 1963 Trautman had already understood that the US was at risk of throwing itself blindfolded into a very difficult war, which could potentially turn out to be a disaster of biblical proportions.
But most of the soldiers had no interest in that.
Because it was up to people like Trautman to get the job done – not them – or get their fingers burnt when necessary, while trying to achieve it.
So, the US military forces became so torn apart so fast that their feud became not so different from the one the South Vietnamese ally was in too.
The war between the rebels (or the 'pessimists') and the hawks became a real domestic battle that was fought using lies, phony accusations, deliberate transfers and reprisals against each other’s careers.
And this is exactly what happened to Trautman in 1965, when he was sent back to the US because he ‘ was too much of a bloody nuisance'.
Nevertheless, Kennedy was not naïve, and in the end he caught on: there was something amiss. Someone had fooled around with him, and he was ready to take a step back.
And that was when an era of suspicion was born, and the search for the traitor, and what was once nothing but differences of opinion became duels to the death, with failing careers and immediate dismissal for disciplinary reasons.
The war 'hawks' partially calmed themselves down after Kennedy's death only when Johnson finally approved the military 'escalation' in 1964, thus finally giving them the war they had lied so much for.
And then, the Vietnam War had a memorable beginning that most have forgotten nowadays, because thinking how things ended up in the end, it's too painful to remember with retrospect.
The marines landed armed to their teeth on the coast of one of the worst Vietcong territories at the time, basically a remake of 'D-Day part II', but using firepower technology that was twenty years ahead of the one used during WWII.
On those beaches, the very same forces that had defeated the French army were waiting for them, and the marines were ready to unleash a kind firepower hell that the world had never seen before...
But they did not find a single enemy on those coasts, and that day not a single bullet flew.
On the contrary, they found a parade of civilians waiting for them with necklaces made of flowers in their hands.
The Vietcong had been well aware of the marines' landing since more than one week before, and they hadn't just stayed there, waiting for them, like the Americans thought they would.
'We are their enemies... They must fight us' – was the Americans’ thoughts, but that did not happen. And what's worse, while the marines were landing armed to their teeth on the coasts, the Vietcong were attacking other villages using violence and terror and completely undisturbed, and precisely because they knew exactly where the Americans were that day.
That's how the Vietnam war began and, six years later, after fifty thousand American deaths, it would end in a very similar way.