Some Vietnam statistics I can never seem to get a handle on...

[MORTARDUDE]

I have pondered for some time how many "unique individuals" from the US military actually set foot in Cambodia, Laos, and South and North Vietnam from 1959 - 1975...
I have seen numbers all the way from 2.2 million to 5+ million...
I have also tried to determine how many "unique individuals" actually set foot on these 3 countries in that time period and were only in the 11B and 11C MOS...It is a hell of a lot harder than you might imagine...If you take the average strength of an infantry division...well it can vary from as low as 40% to 85% at any given period of time...people were rotating in and out from all over and changing MOS....Bottom line is that no one seems to know...is there a list somewhere that breaks all the folks on the Wall down by branch of service and within each by MOS ? I have never understood why the stats on the Wall never seem to include the Infantry Division involved down to the Company level for the dead. Seems like that would have been one of the first things recorded....Just one of life's little conundrums..I suppose.

Larry

[Gunner]

Mortardude;

The details of statisitics you asked for just doesn't exist in any published form that I know of. However, my database breaks down for branch of service as follows:

1. USMC - 14,828
2. US NANY - 2,546
3. US AIR FORCE - 2,581
4. US ARMY - 38,151

This totals out to be 58,106. Some are missing due to either branch uncoded, mis-coded or unknown at the time this database was built.

Hope this helps.

[Andy]

Was just talking about that with LT. in mechanize infantry there was supposed to be a two man crew on an APC with an 11 man squad. We never had more than 6 men per line vehicle. The company usually had a little over 120 men in the field (not 260), during Feb. of '68 we started one fight with 78 men.

Larry it would be nice to know. But not only 11B &C's were in combat, as you know. It would be more interesting to know the number of men in the field. You know, forget the MOS, some 11B's never stepped outside the wire of a base camp, some engineers, mechanics, signal, certainly tanks and arty, most never stepped Inside the wire. Of course those sort of numbers are probably impossible to get.

I always think of the guy I went to high school with who was an MP. That could be quite dangerous (convoys, the 716th MPS in Saigon and Tan Son Nuht during Tet, etc.). This guy's been disabled since they flew him home in '68. He was assigned to work as a life guard at Cam Ran and broke his shoulder diving into the pool .

I'd bet 50% of Lightening were house cats. But for the most part they did their job. Besides, can you imagine being assigned to graves registration? I'd rather be on point going on a night ambush.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[SuperScout]

No, not Moses, as in parting the waters fame, but another brother in the fray needs to added and recognized: the 11D, better known as Scouts. From what I have gathered in my memory banks, these were the nastiest, hardest-drinking, most-accurate firing, and fastest driving warriors ever to grace a battlefield, and it was my honor to lead such a force for 5 1/2 months!

I had ten ACAV's, each equipped with .50 cal. MG, 2 M-60's all with heavy metal gun shields. One of my tracks also had a 106mm recoiless rifle mounted, although getting ammo for it was a bitch, if not impossible, and to complement the other firepower, I had executed a lateral transfer of a 60 mm mortar, which I fired off the top of my track, holding the barrel with some asbestos gloves while one of my gunners proferred rounds down the tube.

[SEATJERKER]

...when, and if you head West, I'll intoduce you to B.A., stated he was the NCOIC, of graves reg. for the 25th, not sure what year, VA just took a lung from him 2years ago, you'd think his bill would be paid by now...

..."C"

[MORTARDUDE]

All interesting points...Thanks much for the info..The reason I am concentrating on 11B and 11C, is because if that is ever nailed down, ( I doubt it will ever be...for a lot of reasons..way too many variables... and very sloppy records kept by the Army in particular...) .all the other info will easily follow...( I quite understand there were a whole bunch of MOSs in direct combat..no prob... but, there is conventional wisdom that the tooth-to-tail ratio was on the order of 1 -7 or 1 - 8... )...Put this in your pipe and smoke it... I was watching the last 15 minutes of an hour show somewhere..on Discovery I think...or History Channel.. with Oliver North and it was about fighter aces, mostly in Vietnam, but some in Korea...real good show... and North made the statement that over 10,000,000 veterans served in South East Asia during the Vietnam War..my wife heard it too...a strange number..he should know better...

Let me collect my thoughts and I will have some more info...

I have always been a part-time-math ( Calculus was my Waterloo... made 3 Ds in college in I II and III back-to-back... had a Chinese professor that no one could understand and a Pakistani Hindu who was not much better... )
and a statistics-junkie...not very good at it though...From what I have seen the WW2 stats for all USA branches of service from 1940 -1946 are fairly accurate..

enough for now... as I am getting severe heartburn ( brrrp ) ahhhh

oh those darn habeneros...

Larry

DEO VINDICE

[MORTARDUDE]

more thoughts on all of this ..

I believe it is important to pursue this, so that we can understand the impact of fighting a war, any kind of war, with under-strength combat units and way too much over-head in the rear ( this is causing a lot of heart-burn right now with Rumsfeld and Co. thinking about putting "administrative-overhead-personnel" on the combat-front-line ...we are also not far from having a draft again.. )...it has a direct impact on morale, whether the war is "won" or not.. and a plethora of other factors...How many different 11 series MOSs were there when we over there ?


SuperScout : Our scout units in Cambodia ( we usually operated in 2 to 3 Company strength ( A, B, and C ...was there a D also ?) with The Battalion HQ folks ( and those giant tracks ) tagging along as well.. ) did a hell of a job and lost a lot of fine folks..for the first 3 weeks it was a confusing-free-for-all unlike anything we had ever seen ? I remember that one of the Recon Lts had a very small armored car sort of a thing ( about half the size of an M113 ... I want to say it was yellow or orange colored (?) ) that ran over a 155mm-or 175mm-artillery-booby-trapped-round and was vaporized.. Our track went by there about 10 mins later...very bad ju-ju...

IMHO

Larry

DEO VINDICE

[splummer]

I just got back from the traveling wall. I looked up two of my freinds who must have been way too much over head in the rear. Where was the rear?? Hue 68

[DMZ-LT]

Splummer , Welcome home , bro. For several years I have been telling your history about being glad you were in Way in 68 cause Hue was getting hit bad. Thank you for your service and thanks for the smiles all these years

[splummer]

Thank You, I'm just having a little trouble dealing with things tonight. I know the Inf was always short handed, but we also would be from 186 to sometimes 80 guys. Most of the time we were our own security in the convoys and at night reactionary forse, etc. Guess I didn't think over head in the rear described my buddies too well. I'll be ok tommorrow . [Dumb thing is I thought the war was over in Jan 1969 when I came home.] Right nothing happened after that ha