It usually takes quite a while to finish a job when you are prohibited from using your tools

Thanks,white 17.

Indeed . Another one of those rarely taught facts of "history."

I was asking in case he has personal experience in that point in time ....it was a different twist I had not heard of before.

So are you saying the VC or the NVA regulars did not smoke? That door swings both ways and based on my observations I find it hard to believe that smoking was a contributing factor to the length or the outcome. Wonder why it did not have an impact in WW11 then. Maybe the tobacco industry changed the cancer sticks so the odor was different.

Bryce

It wasn't that they didn't smoke, it was that they were more intune to their surroundings.

Just like an earlier commenter, they could smell the smoke across the valley because they were hunting and were keen to their surroundings. Remember ....these were rural hill people that would makebtee most redneck of us seem metropolitan.


Disclosure: I wasn't there, just passing on stories from others.

Baloney !

If they were in tune with their surroundings so were we. We slept on the ground in the jungle or a small clearing every night for months. No bathing for months. No hot water except what you could heat in your helmet.

Consider what a lot of Vietnamese eat. Fish, rice, some sort of meat paste that's unidentifiable to the naked eye smeared with nuoc mam.....a fermented fish sauce. You think you couldn't smell that in the humid darkness ?

As far as the NVA being "rural hill people" nothing could be further from the truth. They were mainly from urban and agricultural areas of North Vietnam. The VC were mostly from ag villages in S Vietnam. The only "hill people" were the Montagnards and they were on OUR side. Completely different from the S Vietnamese. A different ethnic group with a different culture and appearance. They were loyal, tough, and kept themselves as clean as conditions would allow. Cleaner than most of us for sure.

Thank you, Sir, for clearing that up.

Nothing smells like fermented fish....

I have lots more in observational thoughts to go with this....but the ones who were there are the only ones qualified to share. I am so appreciative in the asking, and learning....thank you.....

Thanks White 17 you beat me to a response, no need to add to that, other than the idea that we were fighting NVA that were a bunch of uneducated,untrained and poor disciplined hillbillies maybe is another reason many felt we were just that dumb. After all if you were not smart enough to avoid the draft maybe you deserved to get spit on when you came home.

Bryce

I thought the NVA were well disciplined and well trained troops. A tough adversary.

I managed to avoid the draft by joining first

Thanks for sharing, I don't have any personal experience. I just wanted to hear some other people's point of view.

None of them ever deserved that treatment...... my father was always so livid over this...and he was very qualified to speak.

Yes, Run, we learn so much from men who take the time to share with us all.

I very whelk could've got my "facts" wrong. Many of these stories came from the Hmong and I could've easily confused the story forVC.

White17, did you ever hear what happened to the Montagnards after the war. I was wondering if they were persecuted or just left alone?

As a reformed smoker I can detect cigarette smoke from a long way off. Nasty addiction, wish that I had never smoked. Thank God my kids don't. That VAPE stuff is a bunch of crap.

All I know for sure is that we hung them out to dry like we have done other times in the past, We had an agreement with those who fought on our side. They were promised transport to the US after the war. As far as i know we never completely followed through on our part of the deal. WE used /trained about 40,000 of them. Eventually there were only about 2000 brought to North Carolina...probably because of Fort Bragg being there.

I can't imagine they were treated well by the NVA after the war ended. Or for that matter by the south Vietnamese . They hated them too. Some fled to Cambodia & Laos after the north's take over

The doctor my wife works for,her husband is a pulmonary cardiologist. He said that Vape crap is not good as your lungs recognize it as a foreign substance and is not a safe alternative.

Had Afib in March, colon cancer surgery in June, and a malignant kidney removed last Monday. Never smoked but you can bet I will be avoiding it now.

I was not there, but I have read the Montagnards were a primitive, loyal, and tough as nails people. Troops that worked with them often grew attached to them, I guess.

In my former life ( before I retired ), I worked underground in the mines. I recall onetime traveling out the intake aircourse on my man trip and smelling cigarette smoke. When I got outside, my maintenance foreman was working on a piece of equipment , smoking a cigarette, near the pitmouth.

I was about 3000 feet from the surface when I first smelled smoke.

Several Montagnard squads or groups worked out of our Camp Holloway at Pleiku and and other bases in the highlands. I did not work with them closely on the ground as our company transported them and the special forces and air cav units that worked with them. They worked well with the US military and while I was in Pleiku not at all with the South Vietnamese army.

Also as to smoking and odor. I know several of the grunt units that were stationed at our Camp and did were on patrols etc. were ordered not to smoke when in those forward positions for a whole host of reasons.

Bryce