The beginning of the conflict:
South Vietnam
The US’s biggest mistake, was sending their men to war saying they were defending a democracy.
But the regime of South Vietnam was far from being a democracy. On the contrary, it was a corrupt, violent, bloody and very authoritarian dictatorship.
And as the people of US discovered from their newspapers the horror that they were defending with their own lives and deaths, they felt a deep sense of betrayal. As a matter of fact, even before putting their feet on the ground, they were divided and demoralized already.
Forty years after the Vietnam War, that betrayal is still an open wound and such a taboo that books and movies, even nowadays, barely dare to speak about.
Between '62 and '63 (before entering 'the war') the bloody premier Ngo Diem- the Americans' catholic ally - ended up in history books because of the violence he committed against the ethnic or religious minorities, and because of the ease with which he ordered his military aviation to raze to the ground whole villages full civilians (and using air planes made, furnished and sometimes even piloted by the U.S., by the way).
And what's worse is that inside those villages, many times, there were no Vietcong at all.
Some of these villages just belonged to ethnic rivals who were in no way guilty at all, and who were destroyed just to demoralize the political opposition or raise the fake Vietcong 'body count'.
Diem, just like many other Vietnamese, used to live for appearances, not the truth.
This is what historians call a 'terror regime' and, throughout history, it was used by many dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot as a means to keep their power.
Anyway, in the U.S., before the sending of the first foot soldiers to the field, most of the Americans knew nothing about this situation. Most of them did not even know where Vietnam was on the world map and yet, the US government was already spending millions of dollars on sending the South Vietnamese dictatorship military air planes, helicopters, fuel and weapons, and just to defend this dictatorship from the communist menace.
So, in a few years, the South Vietnamese army became one of most powerful and technologically advanced armies in the whole world.
In the meantime Diem continued pursuing his massacres, mostly to get his political enemies under control – by means of terror – and ignoring the fact that most of the survivors of those massacres joined the Vietcong ranks hoping to get their vengeance, one day, against Diem's regime.
What really mattered to Diem during this phase was nothing but staying in charge and keeping his power, not the Vietcong.
But there were also entirely useless cruelties, like those committed because of religious reasons.
Diem was a catholic and despite the fact that the Buddhist monks had every reason in the world to hate and fear the communists Diem, instead of keeping them close as the precious allies they could have been, he persecuted them and abused them in evry possible way and just because they weren't Catholics: he killed the Buddhists, incarcerated them and deported them for no reason at all
Diem's power was continuously at stake and, just like many other dictators before him, he chose to use terror against anyone he saw as 'different'.
In 1963 the U.S. were not at war in Vietnam and yet they had 16.000 'military advisors' on the ground already, and the famous photos of the Buddhist monks setting fire to themselves were going around the world to the great shock of the US people, because these demonstrative suicides were against the US policies as well as Diem's regime, since the US was backing and funding Diem.
In front of a large crowd of journalists, one day 'Madame Nhu' (Diem's wife) once said about those suicides:
“If they ever do another grill again, I will give them the lighter and gasoline myself”
For three years the Vietcong continued to enlarge their ranks because even a bloody communist dictatorship looked better than Diem's catholic dictatorship at the time.
But despite all of this, the US brass heads couldn't stand the idea of South Vietnam ending up as part of the Eastern bloc.
Anyway, the long-time friendship between Diem and the Americans finally ended in 1963, when they finally got fed up with such a violent regime and withdrew their sponsorship.
Having lost the US support (because they could no longer cover up the Diem family's madness), Diem's fall became just a matter of time and, as a matter of fact, as the US ambassador declared the new US position toward Diem's regime, riots started immediately in the largest South Vietnamese cities.
During a night of madness, blows and shoot-outs, Diem's followers ran away from him and a military coup d'etat started.
Diem was inside a police armoured vehicle and was barking his usual orders against the Buddhist monks (blaming them for the coup) when a bullet smashed his skull point blank.
As usually happened in Vietnam, Diem was killed by one of those people that had just sworn loyalty-to-the-death to him.
Then the South Vietnamese army created a new, shaky government, and it was that new government that would face the war against the communists during what was going to become the 'US Vietnam war'.
In 1963 Kennedy was killed too and, despite such a terrible situation, Lyndon Johnson decided to give it a try anyway, ending once and for all the 'advisors' phase and starting to send the US troops to fight in Vietnam,
Diem had finally been removed from the scene for good, but when the US finally asked its people to go to the battlefield, they were not aware of what had just happened a few months ago.
And there was also another problem.
There were several new problems by then.
The country that the US had just decided to defend at the cost of the lives of its soldiers - South Vietnam - had no intention at all of fighting against the communists, and when the US set foot on the ground, the South Vietnam troops finally put their weapons to rest for good.
Because in 1964 it looked completely impossible that some criminals – little more than farmers with weapons – could survive the US power and this, together with the mess the South Vietnamese army was in, created a paradox situation. The US went abroad to defend a country that had both inner enemies (the Vietcong) and foreign enemies (the North Vietnamese army) and yet, the armed forces of this country had no intention at all of joining the fight, but preferred to leave ALL of the fighting to the US troops.
And that's exactly what happened during the first half of the conflict, when the South Vietnamese army refused to fight against the communists.
In the beginning, the ARVN could barely call itself an army.
Corruption was rampant, incompetence widespread, unreliability everywhere and its ranks were filled with soldiers not willing to join the fight or worse, like moles.
The new regime, and so its army, were torn apart by bribery, by continuous inner struggles for power and the daily risk of a new coup.
So, all things considered, the US sent its soldiers to fight for a country in which the Vietcong was just one of many and even worse problems.
So the US soldiers, thanks to a long list of well-thought-out-lies, entered the field against about one million Vietcong having no idea what to do, or the real situation.
The civilians also hated the US soldiers and VERY much, because of what Diem (and thus the US) had done one year before.
So, all things considered, that was the mood the Vietnam War started in.
Then there were the tactical problems.
This was an entirely new kind of war the US forces had yet to discover because, after ten years of practice spent fighting against the French, the Vietcong guerrilla's warfare strategies were so formidable that they could make any US WWII or Korea war strategy... useless.
So, if the US wanted to win that war for real, they would have to do it on their own (with no help from the ARVN) and using a whole bunch of new tactics that they had yet to invent.
And that meant using thousands of men for years and with considerable losses, just to get an idea of how to win that conflict.
So, of course, after the first few months of the 'American war', the scene immediately unveiled itself as a terrible one.
During the first real full-frontal battle between the US and the communists (The Ia Drang battle) the US lost about two hundred marines in four days.
The US troops took comfort from thinking that they had caused the enemy much heavier losses, and in the end both the US and the communists declared victory.
Those kind of battles were doomed to be many more, and for many years.
But to tell the truth, those kind of losses were a kind of sacrifice no US administration could afford for real and, as a matter of fact, the Vietnam war cost Johnson his re-election.
However, the war had now started, and there was no turning back.
And when Trautman, in 1969, was sent back to Vietnam for the second time, he knew exactly what was waiting for him.
And he was ready.