In January 1966, Australian troops uncovered a tunnel complex which had been used by COSVN. [43] The U.S. would have 200,000 soldiers in South Vietnam by the end of the year.[44]. [34] About 40,000 communist soldiers infiltrated the South in 1961–63. The NVA were more likely to take prisoners but the VC were often too far south to march the prisoners to the camps in Cambodia, Laos or North Vietnam. I couldn't care less if I lived or died.". The hand was completely unusable for six months.". Huddled with his tiny brother in an attic in the Black Forest region, the young Dengler looked out of the window to see an Allied fighter plane flying just a few hundred feet away. But there were a wide variety of targets, including clinics and medical personnel. I realised that was how I would look in six months. There were two minutes and twenty seconds in the day when I could strike.". But the others were nowhere to be seen - they had fled. During the war, communist insurgents and anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. [33] For Chinese leader Mao Zedong, aid to North Vietnam was a way to enhance his "anti-imperialist" credentials for both domestic and international audiences. The next major battle, at Buôn Ma Thuột in March, was a communist walkover. "Charlie" referred to communist forces in general, both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. [15], An assassination campaign, referred to as "extermination of traitors" [21] or "armed propaganda" in communist literature, began in April 1957. Dropping a cable down to the frantic figure, they winched him on board. ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. [84] They claimed that the Viet Cong was composed of several parties—the People's Revolutionary Party, the Democratic Party and the Radical Socialist Party[2]—and that NLF Chairman Nguyễn Hữu Thọ was not a communist. ", He said: "Many times, people have asked me if I was afraid. [72] The group's manifesto called for an independent, non-aligned South Vietnam and stated that "national reunification cannot be achieved overnight. On the morning of February 1, 1966 - just after becoming engaged to his sweetheart, Marina - Dengler launched from the U.S.S Ranger. As food began to run out, tension between the men grew: they were given just a single handful of rice to share while the guards would stalk deer, pulling the grass out of the animal's stomach for the prisoners to eat while they shared the meat. Dengler had been missing, presumed dead, for six months, and subjected to barbaric torture at the hands of his captors. For the communist independence movement before the Geneva Accords, see, "Vietcong" redirects here. Five dead guards lay at his feet, two others ran zig - zagging into the jungle. [45] Six thousand documents were captured, revealing the inner workings of the Viet Cong. "There was a large explosion on my right side," he remembered when interviewed shortly before his death in 2001. The Parrot's Beak, an area in Cambodia only 30 miles from Saigon, was prepared as a base of operations. Dengler raised a machine gun for the first time in his life. A divided Vietnam angered Vietnamese nationalists, but it made the country less of a threat to China. This article was originally published on Cracked.com, March 27, 2015. One had no teeth - plagued by awful infections, he had begged the others to knock them out with a rock and a rusty nail in order to release pus from his gums. [65] Earle G. Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that Tet resulted in 40,000 communist dead[66] (compared to about 10,600 U.S. and South Vietnamese dead). While fighting the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, a platoon of US soldiers spotted what looked to be 6 foot monsters circling them in the jungle. The LASV had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled.

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