Rolling Thunder: The Vietnam War

In 1962 the Vietnam was out broke between US and Northern Vietnam. The campaign to bomb North Vietnam was named ‘Rolling Thunder’ which failed to discourage the North Vietnamese reaction to the USA knew it needed support, only the Cold War allies from South Pacific sent help. From the time of the arrival of the first members of the Team in 1962 almost 60,000 Australians, including ground troops and air force and navy recruits, served in Vietnam, 521 died as a result of the war and over 3,000 were wounded. By early 1965, when it had become clear that South Vietnam could not stave off the communist insurgents and their North Vietnamese comrades for more than a few months, the USA commenced a major escalation of the war. By the end of the year it had committed 200,000 troops to the war because the USA felt that they had

I know that the war was extremely tormenting for the soldiers, and when they came back, they weren’t greeted with praise for their efforts, that they were treated as criminal. The people of Australia didn’t know what the soldiers had gone through, the gore, seeing your friends die, the killing and any other dehumanizing acts they had done. It is because of this that the rate of PTSD and compared with other men of that generation, Vietnam Vets have higher rates of psychiatric disorders, heart disease, alcoholism and a higher suicide rate among their families. The war was so different from any others, because of style of it, Guerrilla warfare. The Australian troops had never fought this way before, they were used to on fronts where they could retreat when needed, but in Vietnam they had to be on full alert, even each step they had to be careful, for the Vietnamese had set traps. I understand that the Vietnam Soldiers were dehumanized because of this war and we should thank them for their efforts because my generation will be the last to ever see Vietnam