American forces dropped an insane amount of ordnance on Vietnam. Pictured here is the largest example ever discovered: a 1900 pound naval gun shell fired from offshore on Quang Tri province. Even with a very small percentage of these explosives failing to detonate on impact, with

Unexploded ordnance was hardly the only thing dropped on the ground in Vietnam that could cause problems. American forces generated an enormous amount of garbage, of which most was burned, buried, or occasionally carelessly tossed aside. Quite apart from the environmental

Hello, friends. I've been posting Vietnam history for months, but if you're only seeing something of mine for the first time: I produce a podcast called "Edge of History" dealing with underrated and underappreciated stories from the past. I do my best to tell these stories in a

Bases in the Vietnam War such as Con Thien (pictured here) often displayed the "no win" nature of limited war. North Vietnam freely infiltrated tens of thousands of troops over its southern border into South Vietnam. For political reasons (including fear of provoking a wider war

ADAMS: He's a competitor in this life... the best with a knife and a gun. FARMER: If he's the best with a knife AND a gun, with whom does he compete? ADAMS(deadpan): Himself. 🥶 🥶 🥶

"The Crossover Point" The United States strategy in Vietnam depended upon the point at which American forces were killing Communist troops faster than they could be replaced. In the absence of any other viable political or military goal, this "crossover point" was the only hope

I remember watching this (along with a lot of other clips) while preparing my Vietnam memoir unit for my English class several years ago. It really stuck with me because it gets right at the heart of a few things unique to the terrible experience of those men, and it's straight

The story of incompetence and dishonesty at the highest levels of American command in Vietnam is so full of examples that the very positive and successful stories often get buried. Such is the case with General Fred Weyand pictured here. As a former successful intelligence

One of the Vietnam War's iconic machines was the U.S. Navy's Patrol Boat: River or "PBR," used for searching and stopping the flow of smuggled supplies along the innumerable rivers and streams of South Vietnam’s lowlands. The Navy took a major (and often improvised-on-the-spot)

One of the greatest ironies of the Vietnam War was the successful play the Communists made for world opinion on such issues as War crimes and human rights, while themselves paying no heed whatsoever to the Geneva Conventions or any other established guidelines on those issues.

While the Americans who fought and won World War Two rightly earned the moniker "The Greatest Generation" for their achievements in terrifying combat with equally equipped enemies, it's also true that the average infantryman of the overlooked Vietnam generation saw far more time

Ticket punchers." As the Vietnam War dragged on, combat leadership was more and more dominated by men looking to build their own professional records for promotion in the US military than it was by men interested in winning the war or preserving their troops. Many pointless

Take heart.

The One Year Tour, part 1: In most of its previous conflicts, America put troops in the field and they served until the war was finished. In Vietnam, however, the decision was made to limit a tour of duty to one year, in order to keep morale higher and spread the burden of the

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I don't know if anyone will really see this, but I've got a genuine question for the Culture-verse: How do you judge a historical war film? I was thinking about the various Vietnam War movies and what ones were better, and for what reasons, and it got me thinking about what

Rob Lee It's so interesting how the world powers never learn this lesson: that you can't just give gangsters and peasants advanced equipment. They need the whole logistical apparatus and the willingness to maintain it, followed by the expense of constant training and necessary

As a die hard and long-suffering Giants fan, I revel in remembering the good times and would absolutely buy this. 🫡

A group of city leaders organized and saved Leningrad when it was sieged by the Germans for 800 days. They rationed food & medicine, set up a submachinegun factory (which made better SMGs than the Red Army’s), kept morale high. They were true national heroes. After the war,