The Vietnam War is a major cultural touchstone. Despite that, our knowledge of this conflict is mostly limited to
textbooks and the occasional movie.
What about what the teachers and filmmakers refuse to show us? Thanks to the subreddit,
Today I Learned here are some Vietnam War facts that you may have never known.
1
During the Vietnam war, soldiers built "gun trucks" on their own to defend supply convoys. These 5-ton behemoths were heavily armored, DEADLY (.50 cal machine guns and mini guns!) and even had names like Brutus, Eve of Destruction, King Kong, Ace of Spades, and The Untouchable. -u/AtmanRising
2
During Vietnam soldiers often graffitied their helmets as a form of individual expression or protest. "Born to Kill" "War is Hell" and many other phrases were often overlooked by officers even though they were against the military code of conduct and dress code. -u/TheMadhopper
3
Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III contracted cancer and died at 42, after getting exposed to Agent Orange while deployed in Vietnam. It was his father, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt who ordered the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. -u/neo_tree
4
The famous Saigon evacuation helicopter photo at the end of the Vietnam War was not from the US embassy but from the roof of an apartment building that housed senior CIA personnel. -u/l11ll11ll1111
5
The Coconut Monk was a pacifist mystic who founded the Coconut Religion in Vietnam. He lived on an island, meditated in a palm tree for hours every day, had a cat and mouse as his companions, made shards of bombs into a gong, and went to prison for his opposition to the Vietnam War. -u/SunlitMeadows
6
In 1965, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang refused to take part in an anti-Vietnam war rally in Oakland, CA and actually wrote to President Johnson offering to serve there as a "crack group of trained guerillas." -u/gaslightindustries
7
In World War II and the Vietnam War, the US military issued “Life Barter Kits” to its pilots and paratroopers. -u/kubala43
8
In 1965, Norman Morrison, a Quaker Pacifist doused himself in kerosene and committed self-immolation in front of the Pentagon to protest the US involvement in the Vietnam War. -u/hashtagfreeisrael
9
Today I learned about Project 100k, where LBJ and Sec of Def Robert MacNamara decided to lower the mental and medical standards to recruit more soldiers to fight in Vietnam. These soldiers died at ~3x the normal rate. -u/_Tactleneck
10
During the Vietnam War, there were 7 discharges, 17 AWOL cases, 2 disciplinary charges, 12 complaints to congress, and 18 non-judicial punishments in every 100 groups of soldiers, whilst one-third reported some form of consistent drug abuse. -u/ThatBadgerMan
11
American writer-producer Joe Bodolai (SNL and Kids In The Hall) moved to Canada in the 1970s to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War. -u/DragonTonguePunch
12
The United States observes National Vietnam War Veterans Day on March 29 because on that date in 1973, the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam. -u/OttoPike
13
LCPL Thomas E. Creek, A US Marine was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic action during the Vietnam war on February 13, 1969. While fighting, He was shot in the neck, Fell into a gully where others were taking cover, and rolled onto a grenade saving the lives of 5 of his fellow Marines. -deleted user
14
In 1972, the death of Harry Truman forced the closure of all federal offices as part of a national day of mourning. Vietnam draftees scheduled to be inducted on this date had their induction delayed until 1973. In 1973, the draft was not restarted, preventing this group from ever being inducted. -u/Fifth_Down
15
LCPL Emilio A. De La Garza, Jr. A US Marine, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic action that occurred on April 11, 1970, in Vietnam. He saved the lives of 2 of his fellow Marines by Blocking them from the blast of an enemy soldier's hidden grenade. -deleted user
16
In 1960, the US government formed a clandestine group of elite scientists called JASON. "The Jasons" meet in secret every summer and includes 11 Nobel Prize winners. Their report on the futility of tactical nuclear weapons may have saved a lot of lives during the Vietnam War. -u/Night_Runner
17
In 1970, two young merchant seamen led the only mutiny on a US ship in the last century. The SS Columbia Eagle was delivering napalm bombs to Vietnam. -u/aluminumdisc
18
61% of U.S troops killed in Vietnam were younger than 21 years old. Many had been drafted -u/Vista_Seagrape
19
The U.S. military has used superstition and pretended to be vampires and ghosts to scare enemies away. They dispersed scary horoscopes in Germany, staged vampire attacks in the Philippines, and in Vietnam blasted ghost tapes which consisted of spooky music and eerie voices. Only vampires worked. -u/WhileFalseRepeat
20
The CIA disguised seismometers as tiger poop to track Vietnamese troop movements during the Vietnam War. -u/I_Bang_Grannies
21
Operation Popeye was a military cloud-seeding project during the Vietnam War carried out by the U.S. Air Force . Lead iodide and silver iodide was used in an attempt to extend the monsoon season in the region. -u/shygaymer
22
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won a Grammy in 1971 for Best Spoken Word Recording for “Why I Oppose The War In Vietnam.” -u/RichyCarter
23
Today I learned of the Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War, a CIA, US special forces, and South Vietnamese campaign designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong via infiltration, torture, capture, interrogation, and assassination. Phoenix "neutralized" 81,740 people suspected of VC membership. -u/Tularemia
24
In 1969, the US held a televised draft lottery for the Vietnam War, in which blue capsules were pulled from a container at random containing birthdates that would determine who the first round of eligible men to go off to war would be. -u/mynameisarrgh
25
During the Vietnam War, the American Navy laid thousands of sea mines in the waters off North Vietnam. In August of 1972, a solar storm caused 4,000 of them to spontaneously explode in just a few weeks. -u/_Abe_Froman_SKOC
