Today In Wyoming's History: March 29: 1973 The United States completes it's withdrawal from Vietnam.
U.S. Army General Frederick C. Weyand, for the U.S. forces, stated: "Our mission has been accomplished,"
General Cao Văn Viên, for South Vietnam, stated to the departing U.S. troops: "We are going to do everything we can to see that your great sacrifices were not in vain."
The sentiments were no doubt sincere, but the mission had not really been accomplished and the sacrifices would have to be qualified. We took a look at the war in that fashion here:
General Cao would go into exile in 1975 with the fall of South Vietnam, and died in 2008 at age 86 in the United States. Gen. Weyland died in 2010 at age 93.
The war effectively destroyed the combat capabilities through moral decay of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. The Marines and the Air Force came through it much less impaired. The lessons learned caused the post Vietnam War military to abandon conscription, something it had relied upon since 1940, and a wholesale return to the pre World War Two volunteer/National Guard based force, something that has been a success. It would take several years for the Army and Navy to return to combat effective, but it happened much quicker, with the volunteer force, than might have been guessed. By the early 1980s, the service had been effectively restored and the damaging impacts of the Vietnam War largely put behind it.
The war would have a lingering effect on the military in other ways, of course, perhaps one of the most visual being the adoption of the M16 to such an extent that it has obtained record longevity, in spite of being a widely hated weapon by troops of the era.
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On the same day:
Today In Wyoming's History: March 29 By odd coincidence, this is also the day that Lt. William Calley was sentenced in 1971 in a courts-martial for his role in the My Lai Massacre, although his prison sentence ended up not being a long one.
Also on that day, the second to last group of US POWs left Vietnam. The last POW to board the aircraft out of North Vietnam was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Alfred H. Agnew.
Somehow oddly emphasizing the spirit of defeat at the time, the well regarded television drama Pueblo, about the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo, aired on television. Only tangentially related to the war, it was impossible not to notice that North Korea of that era felt that the US was so impaired that it could get away with this, which it did.
It would not, now.
And making the day all the worse, President Nixon set a maximum for prices that could be charged for beef, pork and lamb. This was in reaction to a consumer revolt in which consumers, mostly housewives charged with home economics, to boycott the same in reaction to rising prices.
Oddly, of course, this is the day that rationing had commenced on the same items in 1943.
You'd think that I'd remember some of this, but I don't on a personal level.
