Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 293 - Operation Lam Son 719

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Joe and Nate talk about the time South Vietnam attempted to invade Laos. It did not go well. SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys SOURCES: Sources: https://www.comanchero.org/LamSon719.html https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/invasion-02172021125804.html https://www.jstor.org/stable/27016309 Robert Sander. The Invasion of Laos, 1971 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3024288 https://www.history.com/news/laos-most-bombed-country-vietnam-war https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/mauled-in-laos/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-nightmare-mission-into-laos-operation-lam-son-719/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free.

Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me, crawled out of stasis, is Nate. What's up, buddy? How you been? Hey, what's up? I'm okay. I don't know if this is the first instance of a thing that all parents deal with where something along the lines happens and your child gets an illness and they don't really suffer particularly badly because their immune systems are nuclear grade, but you get it. My daughter's three months old. So I think... I mean, she has... My wife has taken her to some baby sensory classes and stuff. It's possible she has had a stuffy nose. It might also just mean that I'm an idiot and I haven't been resting enough with all the stuff I'm trying to manage lately. But I am unwell. However, I am making the command decision to record from my bedroom like I'm a Brooklyn DJ in 2007 or I'm me writing a paper in college in 2005 when it's due in two hours, hanging out in bed with my laptop and a couple of audio devices to be able to talk to you.

And we're going to record a podcast about the military, I believe. You texted me and said, I'd really like you to be on this one because it's got some dumb bullshit with airborne and so on. And I was like, hell yeah. You know what? I'll make time for this. So if I sound weird, it's because I'm on a different mic and because I am a little bit unwell. But you know what? I am ready to have my brain pulverized by the stories of people jumping out of airplanes and being complete idiots.

Now, Nate, speaking of being a college student again, I think we've both made it abundantly clear that we're not like weed people in comparison to everyone else on this podcast where we are the dads of the group who don't really partake yeah I mean I didn't I didn't smoke weed at all

the whole time I was in ROTC and then also when I was on active duty I'm glad one of us can say that. Yeah. Look, I mean, as an officer, the stakes are just too high. And I remember one time being offered weed when I was on mid-tour and I kind of wanted to, but I turned it down.

And I'm glad I did, that I turned it down because I literally got back to Afghanistan, got back to my unit, and I walked into S1 to sign back in. And they're like, oh, your name's on the list for today. And they made me go take a piss test immediately. So I would have gotten hemmed up for that shit. So anyway, yeah, I'm very glad I didn't.

But I got out of the army and definitely did. And I remember staying with a friend in DC. And he had to go run some errands or something. And his wife and I, we've all known each other since we were kids. And she was like, yeah, I was going to smoke a bowl if you want to have some. And I were like we've all known each other since we were kids and she was like yeah I was gonna smoke a bowl if you want to have some and I was like sure and then my friend came and he's like very sternly and like with a look of genuine concern he's like Nate

weed has changed in 10 years just be careful it's not like it used to be dude it's not like you remember and he was right that shit so so yeah the reason why I don't smoke weed very much is that like the joke about i just want to smoke a blunt without freaking out why can't i find some mids like it it's too strong

it's just too strong now and i can only imagine in the netherlands it's it's been too strong since the 70s so my my experience like i i fucked around with weed when i was a kid uh and then obviously i was in an army for a long time then i worked uh civil service and then i was a school teacher so i wasn't exactly smoking a ton of weed even though i lived in places where it was legal my only experience with legal weed before moving to the netherlands was when i was in michigan my mom doesn't like get around too well anymore and she uses weed as like a pain reliever so i went to the store to get some weed i was not prepared for the type of information dump i'm given on the 1 million different types of weed in the world anymore um yeah do you want to feel like you know

that what they call them bud tenders they'll tell it which is like great for people who have no idea about weed you know they'll tell you exactly what to expect all these other things i was completely uh unprepared for that i'm just, I just need weed for my mom. And it turned out he knew who my mom was. So he just gave me what she normally got. And then I come to the Netherlands and I decide, why not? Right. I don't even live in Amsterdam.

So like, you know, you don't get the normal like cloud of weed smoke British tourists that are wandering around every five feet here. But there's, you know, coffee shops, which are here but there's you know coffee shops which are weed shops if you want coffee you have to go to a cafe at a coffee shop but i went into a cafe and there's a menu right the menu has like four items like three of them are different edibles and then there is one it just says weed six euro um and i asked the guy, I was like, what kind of weed is it? He's like, it's weed. I was like, yeah, all right, I'll take a pre-roll. And then I left and he looked so unhappy, didn't want to speak to me. I smoked about half of the pre-roll, ordered entirely too much pizza

and then fell asleep for 13 hours. I'm not ready for it, man. I can't do it. I remember some friends of mine doing on the cheap backpacking in 2003, which is the year we graduated from high school. But airfare to Europe was shockingly cheap right around that. I don't know if it was... I don't know what in the fuck if it was oil prices because of stuff with the Iraq war. I really have no idea. Whatever it was, you could get really, really cheap deals from America to Europe. And I remember my friend coming back and being like, dude, it took me like three months to get my brain normal after being in Amsterdam. I didn't even smoke that. We bought like three grams or five grams of everything that

we wanted to try. And we're like, well, we have to smoke this before we leave the Netherlands. He's like, I think I gave myself brain damage and i what i realized is that because what we were used to getting in indiana was more like the what you just described it's like what what kind of weed what is it the the intersecting fucking variables of types it's like now it's just weed the weed man has weed flavored weed that's what you get sometimes it's good sometimes it's shit if it's twenty dollars a gram or twenty dollars actually no twenty dollars and eighth uh. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's shit. If it's $20 a gram or $20, actually no, $20 an eighth, then it's going to basically be dirt. And it's like the faint hint of being high off in the distance somewhere.

In the distance, you smell the eau de nut sack because someone had to crotch it when the cops went by. Yeah. And there's just mega seeds and stems in it. Versus one time, my friend, same guy who you know a decade decade two decades practically later it was like you know uh weed has changed his friend's brother knew a guy who knew a guy who had uh what they said was bc buds a bit like british columbia's like good canadian weed and so being idiots we got some of this stuff that was you know smelled good looked good

and decided hey let's uh let's each smoke an entire joint of it. Now, like I said, when you're used to Midwest schwag and mids in circa 2003, and you smoke an actual full joint of real strong wheat, the stuff comparable to what you can buy in legal places now... Possibly to not touch a single sock or ball sack on its way to you. Exactly. Exactly. Whoever grew it did, in fact like remove the stuff

to fertilize the seeds and give it some kind of like some kind of fertilizer besides just like miracle grow in a dorm room with tinfoil. Anyway,

imagine that's your first experience and you smoke it like an entire joint of it. I basically had like closed eye hallucination. Like it's such I was just like, you know what?

This is cool, but also I could see how this does in fact give you brain damage if you do it too much yeah that's why i don't really drink much anymore and i and i have learned that i am still not in fact a weed guy i'm not a weed guy either the brits are i mean i smell weed a lot around here the same way I did in New York. But I don't really. And the reason why is because weed is not legal here. You can get it medically now, but no one told the cops. So they'll still fucking confiscate it if you have it medically. It's not easy at all to get medically.

And buying it from drug dealers isn't a particularly fun experience because it's the same kind of thing as we described before. Like the weed man maybe has weed-flavored weed if he's got it, or maybe hash if he's got it. Because drug dealers don't want to carry weed because it's big and bulky. It doesn't sell much by the gram. It smells. It attracts the cops. And most Brits just want to ram cocaine up their nose 24-7. So that's what drug dealers are going to carry.

And so buying weed here, getting weed here is annoying. If you live in the country, it's different, but I don't. And so I just... I don't know. I'm almost 40 years old and I probably won't ever smoke weed again. Unless I'm visiting you in the Netherlands and it's like, haha, let's try this one time. You know what I mean? But also, now I have a kid. I'm like, I don't know if I can sleep, like you said, 13 hours after eating a whole pizza when I've got my daughter who potentially is going to be like, Dad, I saw an interesting bug or something like that. Yeah.

And you know what? Speaking... Actually, I have a joint and a half of free roll left and I have no idea what to do with it. But speaking of drugs, not really, we're going to talk about the Vietnam War today. For some reason, we don't talk about it very often. There's no good reason for that. We just don't. But we are this week.

And probably one of the lesser known final acts of the U.S. war in Vietnam before everything rapidly became, you know, just Vietnam. That is Operation Lam Sung 719, otherwise known as the Disastrous Republic of Vietnam, otherwise known as South Vietnam, invasion of the Kingdom of Laos. Oh, when you said last final act, I was like, do you remember, you mean when they forgot the Marine security detail at the embassy and had to fucking go back and get it? One day we're going to do a series on that because there's so many dumb things that happened during the fall of Saigon. I'm not going to interrupt Joe any further,

but just to show you understand this, the famous photo of the people being held out bay from the helicopter is leaving the US embassy in Saigon. After all that was done, they realized after they cleared everyone to aircraft carriers and shit into the south china sea that they'd left like 20 marines pulling security at the embassy and had to go back and get them yeah you can only imagine i'm like man this is fucking bullshit the war is over we're gonna be pows um yeah it's like it's 1975 like you were the you are officially being designated, being handed the fucking Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

ass golden ticket of you are going to be the last guy to die at this war. Thankfully, they bring a CH-53 to come get your ass and fly you somewhere else. Don't worry, homies. Rambo's going to eventually

come and get you. Yeah, exactly. They're going to make a movie about you in about 10 years. Yeah, so anyway, we'll go back to the invasion of laos uh however i just wanted to make the point that like when you say dumb lesser known things like there's so much to choose and there also is that time we uh you know left a whole bunch of people to be murdered by the khmer rouge on an island yeah we talked about that during a Khmer Rouge series. Now, in order

to get to this point, that is, you know, Lam Son 719, not any of the other shit we were just talking about, we have to kind of paint a picture of what the Vietnam War looked like in early 1971 under the Nixon administration. And before Nixon came into power, peace talks had begun between LBJ's

government and North Vietnam in 1968. And it is not a conspiracy theory to suggest that people that worked for the Nixon campaign actively tanked the process in order to make LBJ look worse for fear if he succeeded in his run for president, which, of course, we know he did not end up doing. It would help his reelection. LBJ would eventually drop out, but it's Nixon. He's nothing if not paranoid as all fucking hell. And just so people are aware,

and I'm not saying this isn't a conspiracy theory, H.R. Haldeman, not the sci-fi author Joel Haldeman, same last name, no relation, who was eventually Nixon's chief of staff, admitted to reaching out to his contacts in South Vietnam to encourage them to shoot down every peace proposal until after the elections. He admitted it. This is not a conspiracy theory.

This is a political tool. And if you're wondering, Joe, isn't that treason? Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, Nixon and then it bears mention that Nixon and Kissinger knew that they needed to prolong the war so that they could say that they did everything they possibly could to end it without it ending so quickly that it looked

like a failure. And as a result, they just pulled some dumb bullshit. And that's why you invade Cambodia and Laos. That's why, like I said, they shoot down all the peace proposals. And quite frankly, when people say that Nixon and Kissinger are responsible for everyone who died in the war in Vietnam from 1969 onwards, really 1968 onwards, they're not being hyperbole. And this is the first episode recorded since Henry Kissinger died. So cue the hip hop air sirens. Rest in piss, you bitch. Yeah, listen. All I can say about it is, you know, when it comes to what should you do to solemnly reflect on the death of Henry Kissinger, you should say, rest in piss, bitch. That's right. You know.

Yeah. Do you know what I do when I roll up to the cemetery where they're burying Henry Kissinger? That's what I do. Shouts out to Henry Kissinger for opening yet another gender neutral bathroom in the open. Oh, geez. Yeah, so, wow. Anyway, by the time Nixon came into office, he was dedicated to the idea of American withdrawal from Vietnam. And as well as Henry Kissinger, they accepted that there was no way the U.S. had any possibility of a military victory. And like Nate just pointed out, they needed to find a way to end the war without making it look like a crushing defeat.

You know, spoiler alert, doesn't quite work out that way, but that's a topic for a future series. By 1969, American units had begun their withdrawal, while the U.S. mission switched to something Nate and I are probably intimately familiar with, Vietnamization. Vietnamization. Yeah, I was going to bring all of military responsibility and authority for not just tactical combat operations, but at the absolute strategic level to what they call the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which is South Vietnam. But it was so obvious from the beginning that this was going to fail. And I think I've told the story in this podcast before that my grandfather was just not a very nice person and not a particularly personable guy. He wasn't particularly interested in anything that any of his grandkids or kids did. But my grandfather was in Vietnam twice as an advisor in the early 60s and as a

battalion commander. Mine too, but it was called Indochina then. Yeah. I was going to say, yeah. I know there's a handshake meme there. So yeah, my grandfather was a Lieutenant Colonel and was, like I said, an infantry battalion commander in Vietnam. And like I said, he wasn't particularly interested in anything I ever did in my life, but I will say that he did actually express... The one time he expressed interest and wanted to talk to me was when I was deployed. And I explained to him over the phone some of the shit we were doing and what was happening in the sort of what you can say, op sec kind of way. And he was like, you're not going to like this, but you describing this makes me feel like we fought in the same war.

It's the exact same process. I was like, ah, shit. Fuck. And so when I read about this stuff, like I read Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie years later and it was kind of devastating. So I was like, Jesus Christ, this is literally the exact same thing that happened in Afghanistan. Yep. I think when I

was there, they called it like put an afghan face on the war yeah i wasn't sure if that was just something they told my unit or if that was what the policy was called oh man that's that must have been like in the fucking talking points of something but yeah like like like uh you know putting an afghan face on it afghan-led operations or or you know jiroa-led operations that kind of thing ansf-led operations or, you know, Jeroa-led operations, that kind of thing, ANSF-led operations, all this shit. And it's like, yeah, but anybody who was paying attention could see the state of overall readiness and military leadership and know that this was doomed to failure. Am I talking about Vietnamization or am I talking about the Afghan military from, let's say, 2002 onwards? You be the judge.

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's the exact same process, like what Nate just said. You make it look like the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVN, is now in charge. And another thing that might sound very familiar to not only American veterans, but people paying attention to the news around that time of the Afghan war was to create an environment where the Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam's army would be able to survive and continue the war and possibly not win. They're not going to march on Hanoi, but preserve the existence of this concept of South Vietnam once the US fully exited. Virtually all of these, including the main story we're going to talk about here, would blow up in just about everybody's face.

And the first of these real operations would be the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, but we're not going to go into that in huge detail here. That's an episode on its own at some point. Now, in short, the invasion of Cambodia targeted the North of Vietnamese assets in the country. That included the Viet Cong, but also their Khmer Rouge allies. The US supported the overthrow of Prince Nortam Senuoc, who was pro-North Vietnam and pro-Khmer Rouge, and supported a guy named Hoang Nol to take take over. Law Nol is a violent anti-communist who employed a full-time soothsayer as well as an astrologist. And if you listen to our Khmer Rouge series, there's a lot more in there about this era of Cambodian history. I encourage you to go

listen to it. But together with the US, Law Nol would attempt to evict Northern forces from Cambodia, but would also support US operations within his borders. And it went bad. You know, the US, North Vietnam, the Prince, China, Lon Nol, they all fucked up Cambodia irreparably and led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Again, go listen to that series. There's this other landlocked country in Southeast Asia called Laos.

Don't think, don't think for a minute that any country in the region escaped getting fucked with during this time. You know? Thailand kinda got a pass. Thailand had American bases in it. Thailand had tons of American bases in it. Thailand had of American bases in it Thailand had air bases at the bar that we're

looking at a fuckery in Southeast Asia yes I will admit I will admit that Burma and Thailand didn't get as the Burma was not involved as I understand it because they have been involved

with World War II with the British and the Japanese and all of the fucking problems and they're a military dictatorship and they were not there as I understand it there was

no real threat of America having to do its bullshit anti-communism crusade there because fuck it it's everyone there is in a uniform pointing a gun at you I'd also hope that Thailand was 100% cheerleaders for this whole thing yes absolutely yes Thailand there's two ways you could take here

you could full thoroughly support the American mission and escape bombing or you could not-throatedly support the american mission and escape bombing um or you could not and that led to well bombing on a scale of which humans generally have never seen before thailand's royal family were extremely in favor of the war and are extremely anti-communist were are and it's it's not a particularly liberal form of constitutional monarchy there. Nate's avoiding that like he's

worried that he might one day take a vacation to Thailand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the prince who's got like a huge tramp stamp tattoo and always travels and like fucking like basically bondage gear will like absolutely detain me and send me to a black. Look, I'm 100% if we're I'm 100% in favor.

If we're going to have a monarchy, if we have no choice, he should have to dress like he's going to a German sex club at all hours of the day. Look, I can't remember the name and I'm actually glad I don't because if I name him, then listeners to the show in Thailand might get their fucking heads kicked

in. But like there is a member of the Tyrell family. He might be the crown prince. I can't remember. He's the king now. He was constantly wearing, like I said, like Daisy Dukes

and fucking like a string top. Yeah, he's the king. He's the king now. And he's also like 70 years old. He's so badass in a terrible way. Anyway, like this is such a derail. I'm just trying to say that like, you know,

if you're living like, you know, the Montagnard tribes of uh of the rural areas of i believe north vietnam and cambodia laos particularly laos i believe but like regardless you know the only thing stopping you from getting fucked with is hitting that hard border uh with china which is not really a side you want to be on either because google you know uh eternal chinese vietnamese friendship to learn more about this it's just the show's banned in mainland china as we've discovered

yeah we had a listener reach out to us and say they suddenly had to start using a proxy to listen to it out of nowhere oh i want those guys who make awesome TikToks about making huge pots of soup to listen to our show. All right. Unfortunately, it's forced us into the opposite one-China policy here on the show. Oh, goddammit. Now, in short, this operation in Cambodia was a success as far as the U.S. military saw it. Northern logistical hubs were destroyed. Many parts of the supply network within the country were hampered, though northern military

units escaped any real damage by simply withdrawing rather than confronting the invasion force. Outside of the military aspect of it, however, it was a massive PR failure for the American government. The illegal invasion of yet another country in Southeast Asia sent an already large anti-war movement into overdrive. It also resulted in the Kent State shooting, which we also covered. Go listen to that episode. University of Oregon ROTC building getting burned to the ground was a consequence of this in, I believe, early 1970. And I believe college students were bayoneted in Memphis, if i remember correctly um yeah yeah it was it was a bad time it was a

fucking disaster um and it it led to uh a very i don't even want to make a glib joke about the consequences for cambodia were as joe has illustrated in his research for the series he did like apocalypse absolutely apocalyptic like they're it's 50 years later and they're still recovering and it will it will be another 50 plus years before they're anywhere close to like the starting point of where they were before this happened like and it was all basically because nixon and kissinger were fucking idiots who were unwilling to like just confront reality i mean mean, blaming the Khmer Rouge on Nixon and Kissinger isn't entirely correct. You got to give credit where credit's due when it comes to China and North Vietnam itself.

It was an ultimate team effort in the worst way possible. I'm going to blame them. The reason reason i'm gonna blame them for one is because of the fact that like i said i mean i think that it it was the catalyst and for another like don't get me wrong fuck the north vietnamese for supporting the khmer rouge but they did eventually go and kill them too like they're right and during all of that china was still supporting them and then china invaded vietnam oh no i'm not i'm not giving a fucking hand wave to china on this believe i mean, even China told the Khmer Rouge while supporting

them, like, maybe don't try to do communism this quickly. And Pol Pot went LOL and hit the killing fields button. Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, the degree to which I think the thing that I find also is that we think of Americans conceive

of our involvement in southeast asia and particularly in vietnam as ending in 1975 with you know like helicopters and then whoops we left some marines behind and then 10 years later we've got a bunch of movies about how we're going to find those guys um but like yeah it it didn't end and china invaded in like 1979 i think like china absolutely and they got their teeth kicked in. Yeah, they got their ass whooped because of these fucking hate the Chinese. Within like a generation, Vietnam kicked out the French, beat up the US, beat up South Vietnam,

beat up Cambodia, and beat up China. It's like that meme of that person walking up and down the line of people like, I thought I smelled bitch in here, but it's like every fucking world power. Yeah, basically it's like it's like there's it looks like the like hands across america inside the boxing ring sitting down with stars

going around your head saying damn vietnam got hands like i'm sorry they just and but the china part always makes me laugh because it's just like american in the sort of like john bircher conception of the world it's like oh you know the global hegemon of communist conspiracism. And it's like, they're all going to take over and work together. It's like, do you think the Vietnamese and the Chinese like each other? Yeah. Vietnam's a huge ally of the United States now. It's one of the funniest things ever was when I was living in Hawaii. There's this big... I'll tell the story, then we can move on because we're barely into this story at all but um i would there's they have this big uh naval exercise called rim pack um which you can make jokes based on that

name as much as you want it's fair i think the sailors probably do it more than us and also practice it but well done well done but uh i was at a gnc buying pre-workout and i was standing next to a guy in an all white dress uniform from the Vietnamese People's Navy and he was also buying pre-workout. I'm like, God damn, I wish I could show my grandfather this moment. I mean, I think the thing that to me,

two things. Number one, when they decided to combine infantry and armor into maneuver as a branch, they then decided that they would have one advanced non-commissioned officer, of course the army, basically for sergeants first class. So instead of there being infantry, what we called ANOC, NCO, it's just acronym upon acronym upon acronym. But instead of ANOC, infantry ANOC and armor ANOC, they would have maneuver ANOC or MANCOC. That was the course. The course was called MANCOC. Yes.

Everybody loved this. i hope everybody had a t-shirt from it me me too i hope it still exists i i imagine they probably changed it because they realized because you know too many got too far up the chain of fucking command and they were like evangelical christians involved and they got mad but like i hope they kept it secondly uh if you go to walmart or sam's club, I don't know, fucking AutoZone, anywhere that's selling shitty coffee, shitty coffee with American flags all over it. All man cock.

Just Patriot Blend. Yeah, just Patriot Blend, America Coffee, whatever. The kind of shit you're going to get at Aldi or Little in Lawrence County, Indiana. The kind of stuff you're going to get it like compare foods you know i'm saying not not being classist not being a shithead i'm just saying go to a fucking cheap grocery store and find a bag of coffee with american flag shit all over it and every single grain of that coffee comes from beans grown in vietnam if you get cheap coffee in america the kind of coffee that's gonna

fuel the dude who basically like i don't know who who's using up a third of his county's electricity posting q anon shit that's all from from that coffee from from vietnam that means uncle ho has truly won yes the vietnamese like we are their friends because they hate china and also they i don't know what it is. I know that coffee growing was an important thing there by the French, but they grow a specific kind of coffee that gets used. And invariably,

when it's like Black Rifle slash Patriot slash Sniper Killer fucking whatever, all that shit, it's always Vietnamese coffee beans. I just want a meme of Uncle Ho smiling down on the most racist fucking American truck driver imaginable. Like, yes, go forth.

It's like Uncle Ho is smiling at a table of dudes at a truck stop drinking this dog shit coffee and downing yellow jackets that they managed to get somehow, even though they're illegal. And he's like, you know what? That shit tastes bad. I don't know what the fuck y'all drink coffee in the first place, but I'll take your money. Ho has won. Dude, I mean, I'm sorry. Like I said, it's just so much of America's sort of like boo-boo lip cultural memory about Vietnam

is just based on, I wish I could sustain my fantasy of what I thought it meant in the first place. It has no bearing on reality. and we're a little further removed from that now because we've got new you know teary-eyed fantasies to dwell on but like you and i grew up in an era where people were still really fucking fixated like oh our loss of innocence abroad and it's like man shut the fuck up i'm sorry like i don't want to hear about it sometimes being the grandchild of a french foreign legionnaire veteran just helps you out in that aspect when anybody talked about the Vietnam War my grandpa just stayed silent yeah I suppose being the child of two army officers

who were the children themselves an army officer and an air force senior NCO and it's just like my parents were two my dad my dad got drafted but he also got into West Point so he's like fuck it I'm just going to West Point and yeah my you know all that shit was Point and yeah my you know

all that shit was real and I don't know there wasn't I don't recall them ever caring about any of the cultural products around the Vietnam War but like my grandfather I don't know I can't imagine he was particularly left wing at all but he definitely was like kind of pissed off later in life because he's like I guess literally every intellectual

and military thinker knew this was stupid and then still at the time said, go do this. It'll be a great idea. Speaking of doing things that are stupid, when all of these protests happened and everything, the invasion of Cambodia, Congress immediately banned any further U.S. ground operations outside of South Vietnam specifically. So going forward, this Vietnamization program meant that any further operations outside of South Vietnam would have to use soldiers from Arvin, the military that kind of shares a name with that funny uncle that isn't allowed around kids anymore. You know, let's say Arvin sounds like counterfeit chipmunks cartoons. It's South Vietnam cartoons in 1970 yeah yeah

bootleg cartoons they bought from hong kong to sell in saigon and they're like they're not actually real alvin and the chipmunks it's arvin and the chipmunks yes arvin and the ferrets i mean chipmunk is kind of a weird concept to explain to people outside of north america because like imagine a fucked up squirrel, but smaller. I mean, some places don't even have squirrels. So you're even more fucked up on your explanation. Yeah, I was gonna say Australians and New Zealanders. What on earth are you talking about?

Sorry, I can't hear you over these goddamn fucking weird wombat looking at little possums. What they call possums that we would call, I don't know, horrible just flying everywhere i'm sorry my ears are plugged with snakes oh my god dude yeah yeah but yeah chipmunks i was like how do you explain a chipmunk to someone who's never seen one before like it's like a baby squirrel got his tail cut off and it stays that way and it's dumb as hell it's a as hell. It's a real conundrum, man. What if a squirrel went to my high school? Everybody quickly learned that this congressional rule and the leaving out of Arvin forces was a gigantic loophole.

rule and the leaving out of Arvin forces was a gigantic loophole. Now, the main target for any of these operations is the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail and not the one we just invented using American truckers. Now, the real Ho Chi Minh Trail was infamously a logistical trail that seemed to be bulletproof of anything and been vaulted into legendary status. And for a lot of that reason, it is kind of deserved. The trail had been carpet bombed for years. And just to put people, just so people understand the level of carpet bombing that hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail, it was hit with more explosives during the Vietnam War than Japan during World War II, nukes included, and it kept ticking. Over 3 million tons of bombs had been dropped on the Laotian portion of the trail alone. Just for comparison's sake, 7.5 million tons of bombs were dropped during the entire Vietnam War, including Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

3 million tons of that was on the Laotian portion alone. The saturation bombing of Laos is horrific, and it is a topic for a future episode, but it is the most bombed country in the world per capita in all of human history. So really quickly, I wanted to react to that, but also say just because it's funny, I was thinking about the kind of reference points about the Vietnam War that we grew up with hearing used so often they almost didn't need explanation. And just in case you're listening to this and you are not priming Wikipedia on your phone and or laptop. The Ho Chi Minh Trail is basically the resupply from North Vietnam to guerrilla forces fighting in South Vietnam, and then later,

uniformed military units fighting in South Vietnam. That instead of going through from the Vietnamese highlands as the country really narrows on the coast in the center of the country. It went around outside of Vietnam, basically, because it was much easier to get supplies to their guerrilla fighters in the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh. I'm probably using that wrong because I think the Viet Minh was the French era, but basically- Viet Minh was the French era, yeah. The Viet Cong fighting against the South Vietnamese government and the U.S. military occupation were resupplied via a route

that went outside of Vietnam, the former, you know, North and South Vietnam's borders via what was basically at the time or had previously been all of French Indochina, which is now, yeah, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

And the Ho Chi Minh Trail was just like, it's such a brow-beating cultural reference point thing people talked about because they were mad that we, even though we dropped defoliant and like Joe said, more bombs than the entire Pacific theater of World War II on much smaller areas, it wasn't working. And nothing would have taken it down and like despite they had bicycles with wooden tires that could fucking go uphill in the mud dude like once again once again bicycles overall baby um i was gonna say

they had they had they had field medical facilities with dudes on bicycles just pedaling all night like fucking like militarized vietnam vietnamese palaton to fucking give like to run electrical generators to give them light to do everything from like medical treatment to yeah like bro like i'm just saying that they are not they are not people you want to fuck with and they don't give up and the u.s was just like i'm sure we can make these people give up like it's just it's unbelievable like they they thought by carpet bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they would at least slow it down. And they never really did, because as soon as it got bombed, including two nuclear weapons, it had grown larger than it had ever been before. And since 1966, over a half million NVA soldiers, because one thing that people seem to deeply misunderstand about the Vietnam War is that the U.S US lost the war to the Viet Cong.

The NVA, the regular forces of North Vietnam, were heavily involved in South Vietnam from day one. And well over a half million of them crossed through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 100,000 tons of food, 400,000 weapons, and 50,000 tons of ammunition had traveled south through this route. And after the takeover of La Nola in Cambodia, the Laotian portion of the network only grew in size. There was no keeping this fucking thing down. And it's important to remember that the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments both saw the Cambodian operation as a massive success. And ever since, they watched the North move their displaced logistical hubs into Laos. They were like, hmm, this gives us an

idea. Furthermore, they knew any large-scale Northern operations into the South would be launched at the end of the Laotian dry season, which is from October to March, and this gave them months to stockpile resources from the trail towards the South. According to March, and this gave them months to stockpile resources from the trail towards the South. According to intelligence, a full 90% of supplies being brought down the trail into the South for combat operations were being stashed in three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, which is an obvious sign of a coming large-scale offensive. So people begin to think that they would need to launch an attack before the North did to

disrupt these lines, right? And in December of 1970, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the Military Assistance Command of Vietnam, or MACV, to hold a secret meeting in Saigon to talk about a possible invasion into southeastern Laos using Arvin forces as a loophole in congressional orders. This meeting was held with zero consultation with the southern government or any Arvin commanders. Commander of MACV Creighton Abrams wasn't sold on the idea as much as anybody else, including Nixon, because Abrams wasn't sure if Arvin soldiers could actually carry out an operation like this on their own without any American advisors.

This, it turned out, was a pretty important concern to have because of a systemic and institutional failure on the American part and this Vietnamization process, but also through the entire existence of the Arvin. Because the Arvin was, in short, terrible. They were, of course, awash in american military equipment but that was about it yeah and and that's a reflection of the south vietnamese government too in the sense 100 yeah we we we we killed node and dm because we were like he's just too weird and strange and fucking he's just being too much of a dickhead you know killing buddhists because quite frankly he was an unrepresentative guy in the sense that he was specifically from

the Catholic elite of the center of I believe the center of Vietnam, the Hue City area. And most Vietnamese people are not Catholic and they're certainly not interested in this guy who's like a mega-Francophile fucking Catholic dude who's persecuting

Buddhists. But once they got rid of him, he at least had some degree of populist support from people who were of the same affiliations as him. Even the military. You'll never have a well-functioning military when a state doesn't function because

the security apparatus, civil service, everything, civil society in general is a reflection of how the government functions. There were a lot of Roman Catholics in the senior echelons of the Arvin. Oh, yeah, there was. There's their state security apparatus, too. And Matt, I know from hearing my grandfather's experience, reading about it, et cetera. Like, so after the M was built.

A disproportionate amount, yeah. And it's a small community, quite frankly, relative to the size of the country. After Diem was killed, they never really had a leader that was... The best way I could describe it is it's sort of...

Based on America's involvement in the war and the timeline, it's like you killed Hamid Karzai in 2005. Yeah, pretty much. It's just like, yep, all right, we killed Karzai. No more problems with corruption anymore. And then fucking... And let, like,

I don't know, the... I don't know, like Mullah Rakati or fucking like Gulbanin Hekmatyar. Like, I don't know any one of those guys,

like the... Let Abdul Rashi Dostum become president. Dostum, yeah. Dostum becomes president. Yeah, I mean, just like so many of these... Actually, if Dostum was president, Dostum becomes president yeah I mean just just like so many of these actually Dostum was president it probably

would have been better than what happened in South Vietnam because Dostum would have unleashed a purge that would have made like the People's Democratic Republic of Afghanistan look like tame in comparison because Dostum's fucking insane like all I can say is

that like Dostum would at least have been like, you know what? I feel as though I can engineer the situation to my advantage in a way where if the Americans leave, I might still be able to stay in this country. Which is not what Ashraf Ghani did in Afghanistan. That's certainly not what any of the myriad leaders of South Vietnam did. South Vietnam had what we call a Congo line of coups.

Yeah, exactly. And the point that I'm making in bringing this up is just that everyone knew that the Arvin and the Republic of Vietnam in general were not up to the task because anybody who was being honest with themselves and the task because anybody who was being honest with themselves and the facts on the ground was aware that the only thing propping this up was American money and the ability to make money off Americans. And as soon as that was gone, it was done. So like I said, Afghanistan is... It's a situation that happens in Afghanistan. It happens in South Vietnam. And it happens in other places where the US were absolutely not involved. It happens in places where you have a low trust society with an incredibly unstable government,

where you just have a succession of people who don't want to rule. They just want to sit in the chair and have their turn to steal things. But also, the important thing to bring up as regards to the Vietnam War is that the enemy that this motley crew of idiots is facing are basically what if the Bin Laden mountain hideout fucking infographic was real like that's the level of organization and determination that they're facing and so it's like who do you think is gonna win like like put on your big fucking your big boy thinking hats and tell me who do you think is gonna win in this situation like like guy who's basically is like i i i declare that south vietnam is going to be a cow die only country and we're only going to have this syncretic religion where we worship you know

uh i don't know fucking voltaire napoleon on top of catholic saints uh and everyone else whoa whoa how dare you but only the joaquin phoenix version of napoleon exactly every other person is gonna have to fucking get expelled they're gonna be put in exile who's gonna win him or like entire battalions of guys to ride like like ruggedized wooded bicycles up muddy mountain hills in order to like run electrical generators like to run greenhouses to fucking i don't know grow plants to make your own goddamn gunpowder with. I know I'm exaggerating, but it's just such a mismatch. Everybody knows you need shit and blood to make gunpowder. Well, you know, I was going to say,

I'm sure that neither of those were in short supply. The problem when it came with planning all of this was the problems with the Arvin. Now, like I said said the arvin was terrible they were they were well armed by the american government but the army was completely politicized nobody was promoted based on ability but rather political connections bribery and personal loyalties many of their ncos and officers lacked any kind of formal training owing to their connections within

the government that simply forged paperwork saying that they had. At the time, the president was a guy named Nguyen Van Thieu, who was an incompetent tyrant. And I mean incompetent tyrant in that he was a tyrant, but he was bad at it. He couldn't even unify the various anti-communist factions in the South's social and military life, creating an intense factionalism at every single level of the military and political apparatus. Their rank and file soldiers were generally not conscripts, so the South did have conscription. Most were voluntary enlistees owing to the purported benefits and stature military service brought with it. However, once they were within the ranks,

they were treated terribly. Their officers routinely beat them and stole their paychecks, brutal hazing, abuse, mismanagement, institutional levels of theft, and even murder were commonplace. And as you can imagine, this does not lend itself

to a functional fighting force with anything resembling morale amongst the soldiers. Even though everybody- Enough about the Afghan National Army. But even though everybody knew they were legitimately in a fight for the survival of the society that they knew. They're like, nah, this fucking

sucks anyway. I'm making the fucking true detective staring face right now. Just everything... Just think about what I experienced in Afghanistan, what you experienced in Afghanistan too, and everything you're saying is just word for word, could describe it. Yeah. That's not the point, but like, yeah, it's just wild.

And I know this, I knew this already. I mean, I've read a ton about this stuff, but yeah, like. It gets worse. It gets so much worse. It always gets worse. There was also a small problem when it came to using the Arvin for such a large operation. a large operation. Literally nobody in any command level within Arvin had ever commanded anything more than small-scale operations consisting of a few hundred men at a time, and even those were under the watching eye and overall command of American advisors. Now, this plan, Lam Sun,

would call for 20,000 Arvin soldiers commanded entirely by their own men something that has never happened before and none of this seemed to matter to anybody the idea was approved in January 7th 1971 and MACV General James Sutherland was ordered to begin planning the operation with the requirement that he have to submit the first draft and then final approval

within nine days I also was going to say that my read on the arvin is that the minute that the warning order hits arvin units like every detail of it plus some like derived through psychokinetic ability fucking insider information is going to go straight to everyone in the north vietnamese you know political and military apparatus who doesn't know this already. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to get there. Yeah. Okay. Now, of course, Sutherland planned the operation as if all of this is going to be carried out by

American soldiers because virtually all of logistic and support work within South Vietnam would be carried out by them. This sounds familiar. For starters, US engineers would rebuild this road known as Route 9, which was the only road going in that area towards the Laotian border. While other U.S. soldiers would move into the previously abandoned Khe Sanh combat base, which would act as an airhead for the entire operation, as well as the movement point for logistics. Because, by the way, the helicopters involved, most of them are flown by Americans.

Somehow that doesn't count as an invasion of another country, but whatever. And Khe Sanh would also be used as a base for American artillery that they would use to support the operation. Can't you just do a fucking airlift into North Vietnam and reestablish NBN Phu? Just make it more poignant. Make the comparison more direct. All right? I want no subtlety whatsoever. Look, it didn't work for my grandpa, but we're built different. Like born in the USA referencing Khe San isn't enough for me. I need less subtlety here. As for the Arvin, their side of the plan would be so complicated,

multifaceted, and with so many moving parts, it's arguable if the U.S. would even be able to pull it off. For starters, a mechanized infantry attack would storm across the border into Laos down Route 9, pushing towards a central town that was supposed to hypothetically act as the NVA logistical headquarters there named Tichpone. However, the town wasn't considered the crown jewel of the operation. It was just the furthest point that the operation would go. The main goal was to wreck the Ho Chi Minh Trail and, of course, try to drag in large bodies of NVA soldiers where they could fight and kill them. The southern convoy would be protected on its flanks by a leapfrogging helicopter assault by Arvin paratroopers who would then land and rapidly build firebases along the entire length of Route 9. Then, of course, when all of this worked flawlessly, Arvin units would withdraw back down Route 9 and back across the border on land.

So you can already see a ton of problems with this, but I assure you it gets dumber because American commanders did not know the capabilities of ARVN, what they would actually be able to do. But the one thing they did know was they couldn't tell them anything. And that is because at best, Arvin officers, even at the staff level, were known for openly talking about secret plans in Saigon bars, a place that was rife with Northern spies, as well as many of them being double agents. say too just because i decided to pull up a map here that um route nine as you pointed out is basically the only route uh i mean there are there are others but it's the only improved route from the central highlands to the laotian border and then onwards to or towards uh touch chet pone like you said and it's like all i can think of is well there was this movie called a bridge too far about a bridge that was just too far. Is that what that movie's about?

Yeah, it's about a bridge being really far and fucking one vehicle gets stuck in the road. And there's like, I guess our mechanized column, our whole armored column can't move because one goddamn thing is just stuck in the road blocking traffic. And that to me, when you say a mechanized column from the Arvin, I'm like, hmm, famously good at doing maintenance and not just like siphoning off shit and selling it you know what i mean like i guarantee you that like that's gonna be your first roadblock is is like oh whoops uh we all got jammed up leaving the motor pool and now no one can leave pretty much uh we'll get there though at a certain point if you you're around this stuff in

real life even if it's not like these cataclysmic global events, you just develop the sixth sense of how to predict soldier fuckery. Yeah. And it's just like, I bet you that's what's going to happen. And there's all these points of failure in the operation, right? Like there's the convoy going wrong, the road. There's the literal constant paratrooper leapfrogging base building. It sounds like they're in fucking Fortnite or something. Like there's so many places that this mission could go wrong.

And if one part goes wrong, the whole mission dies. I promise you, Nate, we will get to all of those things going wrong. I'm really, really upset because I would have loved to have heard the song that resulted of the Arvin paratroopers capturing Tomato Town, but it just didn't happen.

Burger Town has fallen. Now, the U.S US talked to, at most, a half dozen of their ARVN counterparts, mostly in their intelligence department and the operational staff of one general, Huang Zhong Lam, who would be the ARVN commander of this operation. Now, Lam was two things, a sycophant and a monster. He had risen through the ranks due to his personal relationship with the president, not because he was good at his job. And previously, in 1967, during the Battle of Quezon, he was put in charge of evacuating civilians from the area. So he simply refused to evacuate ethnic minorities, leaving them to die, saying literally, and I quote, There is no place for minority refugees sigh yeah uh and

americans fucking hated him including general william westmoreland the overall american commander he hated him having previously complained when refusing to follow orders unable to control his men and have them follow orders, like carry out the most basic battle plans, and where anybody else would have been fired, Lam simply kept getting promoted due to his friendship with the president and specifically put in this position and the operation because of that. And for example, even in the institutional fuckery of the Arvin, people were outraged by this. Marine General Li Nguyen-Kuang outranked him, as did ARVN Paratrooper Commander General Du Khoc Dong. Both of these forces were

given important roles within this operation, but neither of them had a close connection with the president, so they were given subordinate roles to Lam. So they simply refused to take part, staying in Saigon and giving their field commands a subordinates rather than take commands from a guy they hated. So we're off to a good start. I was going to say, so it's basically, it's already sounding like the Israeli war in Lebanon in 2006. Famously, a thing that went well. Yeah. I can't think of anything bad that ever came of that. The reason I bring that up is because I recently read a summary of that war, not related to this conflict too much, but basically the fact finding determined that basically no brigade commanders of the infantry brigades

sent across the border actually went across the border with their troops. Y'all just go ahead, boys. Go do your thing. Just go over there. Yeah. Kick some ass. You know what? But I'll be here making sure that they got the chow hot for you when you're done.

Perfect. Yeah. And so when I think about this stuff about like, oh, it's going to go great when the commander's like, fuck that guy, I'm not going. Literally a thousand miles away. Yeah. Whoops. Sure, it'll be fine. And so, yeah, sounding great. The American fear of the South officer simply telling everyone about their plan

meant that everyone outside of that small group of operational commanders had to be left in the dark. The tens of thousands of soldiers that be taking part in this operation didn't even learn it was going to happen until a week before it was set to begin. And Lam himself, the commander of the entire thing, was only told a few days beforehand because nobody could find him. Uh, yeah. If you wanted to find him, you would have had to have known which masseuse was on his schedule for that week yeah and i'm not even being a dickhead these guys just fucking like i'm any any reporting any historical record you read about these guys it's just like if you were a senior figure in the arvin you're like

they're both for personal connections and anti-communist credentials and apparently also just like being really good at not dying from venereal disease while getting all of them yeah i mean it's it's quite literally the only thing missing them is like them sitting in a lounge chair being fed grapes while naked like just just to fully encapsulize like pure hedonism yeah it's like the way they act would they acted would now make them the villains in a in in a Rambo film, like in the sense of like the venal Eastern hordes that have to be destroyed by heroic John Rambo. But like, actually these were our,

these were our allies. These are the people that we were dumping money to prop up. I don't know why, but Rambo sounds significantly less intimidating when you call him John, John Rambo. Yeah. I mean, I,

you know, look, it's a complicated story and we've already done a ton of derails, but I do think that it is such a representation of the American mindset and the sort of American epistemic closure that you take the first Rambo movie, which is all about hating cops and the army and killing them, and how cops are your enemy,

and also the National Guard is just an extension of the cops. It could have been something. The book is great. That's why he dies at the end of it. And then you turn it around and make it into this thing about, actually, we secretly won Vietnam. We were just too morally pure. They didn't let us fight hard enough.

Yeah. Good thing we don't hear that anymore. Oh, yeah. We've never heard of it. And there are no conflicts that have taken place in the last 20-odd years that would be new reference points for that. We our rambo base stabbed in the back theories you know now i i yeah but but you know what we got to get through this and there's just so much more fuckery and i know i'm the person who's constantly messing your plans up but i want to hear more

about uh the order of battle when we do the live show, I'm going to have to buy a paintball gun and every time you have to shoot... I mean, Kill James Bond has a spray bottle that they use, but it's not for derailments and stepping on each other. It's for when someone gets too horny. I mean, to be fair, our show also needs that. Yeah, yeah. We need...

I think we need a spray bottle for people getting too horny and a super soaker for shut the fuck up and let me get through the script. Now, all of this brought with it a ton of problems. We already talked about how the generals in the Arvin had no idea how to command a large body of soldiers, and it actually went further than that. Subordinate commanders of different brigades and battalions had never once taken part in a combined arms operation with one another under their own command. This included the best forces within the Arvin, namely the paratroopers, the marines, and the rangers. In short, nobody

knew how to do anything, and insistence of secrecy meant that nobody could do any training to try to bridge this gap before they ordered to conduct the goddamn invasion. And somehow, things would immediately get worse. So little time was given to do any of this, nobody bothered to scout ahead. Specifically in Khe Sanh, where helicodvers were supposed to land, and Route 9, the road where the entire operation would be the backbone of it. When soldiers arrived at Khe Sanh, they discovered that they would have to completely rebuild the helipads and airstrips, because the old ones had been torn up and reclaimed by the jungle. Then, as engineers worked to rebuild Route 9 on the southern side,

nobody thought ahead to think, I wonder what this road looks like in Laos, because they could only build it up, obviously, to the border. The US should have known, because they had been bombing it for years at this point. There really was no road. It was just a single, mostly bombed-out dirt trail with unbroken forest and jungle on either side. In short, it was a death trap for a vehicle-borne infantry assault. The U.S. didn't so much as conduct a single reconnaissance flight over the road to check its condition. Of course, all of these half-assed attempts at secrecy flew out the window with this burst-of-last-second activity. It didn't take long for the NVA to take notice, and since Route 9 was the only route of attack in that region and everybody knew

it, they could fill in the gaps of what was coming. And in an attempt to draw attention away from this, the US launched what was known as Operation Dewey Canyon 2, which sounds like a weird Mountain Dew off-brand or something. I was going to say, once again, yet another counterfeit Alvin and the Chipmunks. Like real-to-real celluloid fucking that you could buy in Saigon from a guy who bought it counterfeit in Hong Kong. This is my personal favorite Arvin and the Ferrets album. Operation Dewey Canyon 2 is a sequel, of course, to the breakout hit Operation Dewey Canyon 1.

Arvid and the Ferrets, basically what they do is they pitch up and sing all the songs that are on the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack. So it's just like, yeah, all those pivotal scenes where it's playing fucking Nancy Sinatra, you know, these boots were made for walking. But it's pitched up to like 78 RPM. And it's edited like a Kidz Bop version would do it i'm sick right now so if i sang it would sound so fucked up that it would either be it would be it would hurt a lot so i'm not gonna do it but just use your brain to imagine the chipmunks version if if all of the the the the the song sinks in full metal jacket we're done in chipm's voice. This was an offensive into the Aisha Valley, and it didn't really work.

The North didn't buy it. So then things just simply kept going worse. Joe, can I interrupt you? I'm really sorry. Yeah, go ahead. I have an idea. Tell me if you think this is crazy. You're on the phone.

I got to ask you now, and Tom will hear this editing. What if we got a TA-312 field phone and we set it up at the live show so you turned the crank and it delivered an electrical shock if someone derailed it? That's what we did in Prop Blast.

We're fucking like hazing to be paratroopers. I know how to do it. How bad does that hurt? It's two nine volt battery or two two D cell batteries. It doesn't hurt that bad.

It's just it it's not like a shock like fucking sticking a fork in a sock. It's just it just feels kind of like getting like like a like a rubber band snapping. Okay. It's uncomfortable's uncomfortable it's uncomfortable i'm down with

that we can try it out if and if it's if it's not uh if it if it uh if it doesn't if it's too painful then we don't have to do it but i think it's like 100 pounds to buy a used one if you can find what i'm 100 there's so many of them yeah yeah i know i know how to use it because the the crank is just to it's how you send us send an electrical signal to ring the other line of the phone. So by all the phone handsets, if they're working, have the crank on them because that's how you call the other line. So... Wires are just to be connected to you and Tom. That's the point. That's the point. I'd probably just rig something up to... And honestly,

if I rigged something up to split it, the signal wouldn't be as strong as it wouldn't hurt as much. But it would just be very funny that you would have the phone and you could turn the crank and shock us if we were interrupting you. Outstanding. I love this idea. As the host, I love this idea. All right. So I'm sorry I interrupted. Please continue. So then things simply kept getting worse. This plan called for two days of airstrikes to hit NVA anti-aircraft positions within Laos to clear out the way for helicopters. But this had to be pushed back due to bad weather before they could be carried out, and then when they were carried out, it was kind of half-assed.

Then, on February 8th, 1971, the offensive began as the armored convoy crossed the Laotian border. On either side of the convoy, South of Vietnamese Rangers, paratroopers, and Marines were choppered in to begin setting up the first outposts, while elements of paratroopers and marines were choppered in to begin setting up the first outposts while elements of paratroopers and regular army did the same thing on the other side so far everything was going to plan and arvin advanced into position completely unopposed though they did learn that the laocean portion of route 9 was so bad they wouldn't be able to use it as a logistical route to resupply the armored convoy. So on the fly, the air assets already on station, mostly helicopters, would now have to also be the only way the entire operation is resupplied. This is made even worse by the fact that much of the NVA anti-aircraft positions survive the bombing runs,

so they soon begin opening fire on American and Arvin helicopters. I do feel as though this is a constant refrain when talking about these operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that they just assume that the North Vietnamese military, that all of their civilian irregulars and the Viet Cong and everyone involved is just like, oh, American planes are coming. Let's stand up like the fucking, I don't know, like an American Civil War formation and just get bombed because that's good sporting. They have learned over decades how to hide and how to protect things. And also the fact that, quite frankly, the US is going to do aerial reconnaissance and then bomb based on that. They're not stupid. These guys are constantly like, oh,

let's send the soft target battalion made up of the softest targets into the most densely covered anti-aircraft and air defense area because I know for a fact that we dropped a bunch of bombs from B-52s and we're sure they killed everyone because they always do

because Northrop Grumman promises that they do. And it's like, what do you think is going to happen? Don't you know taking cover makes you a bad sport? It's almost 1972. This isn't a fucking surprise anymore. This has been happening since like 1959, man. Like they, I don't know. It's just, it's mind blowing to me.

Like literally since like the eisenhower was president and they were playing like chubby checker was number one on the fucking charts like we're at the point where the doors are already done they're past being a thing we've gone that far and you are still just be like i'm gonna walk right in we'll definitely not face any threats here it's like once again these guys did the bin Laden infographic, but real. Just to be safe, we have to drop Morrison on the NVA. Yes. Jim Morrison can win the war for us because he will absorb all of the North's critical foodstuffs in order to turn it into alcohol for him to drink while in the bathtub. His body would impact and it would explode into a cloud

of one of those drug bombs they really wanted to make. And then all of the NBA would just be so preoccupied writing the worst fucking poetry on earth that the US would win the war. They're willing to surrender just so long as we find

a better songwriter and musician. I think that's one of those things where I feel as though if you actually genuinely like the Doors... Please, please, can you take away Jim Morrison and give us, I don't know, David Foster Wallace? Anybody? Can we have David Crosby, please? I don't care how weird his solo stuff gets. Just please, God, not... Dude, I'm sorry. But like I said before, it's just a matter of fundamental difference of worldview. If you think The Do doors are good, we can't be friends.

If there's one thing we can agree with, is that Napalm really did light that fire. Oh, no. I'm not proud of that. I don't like Napalm. Too many bad cadences we had to sing in the army about. Oh, yeah. Those survived. I'm glad to hear that you had to

suffer them, too. We were in the army at the same time. It's not a matter of surviving. When did you commission? 07. I only had a hear that you had to suffer them too. I mean, we were in the army at the same time. It's not a matter of surviving. When did you commission? 07. I only had like a year on you. That's right. Yeah, I was in 07 to 14, man. We were in the same time.

It's just you were in tanker land and I was in jump out of airplanes land. Both lands equally stupid. And both lands get deployed to Laos and get their shit rocked. Now, in case you're wondering what the NVA and their Laotian communist allies, the Pathet Lao, were doing as the Arvin advanced, preparing. They knew the convoy

couldn't leave Route 9 if they wanted to, and it would take them directly into the Saipan Valley, an area that surrounded the road on three sides by a mountainous high ground. And from the second day of the operation, everything went to shit. As the convoy rolled into the valley, they were bombarded on all sides by rifle, machine gun fire, artillery, and mortar fire that had been pre-registered over every inch of

the road. Then the remote fire bases that were supposed to guard the every inch of the road. Then the remote fire bases that were supposed to guard the flanks of the road assault were surrounded and assaulted and by nature were isolated and easily attacked. It's almost like they learned what happened at Yen Bien Phu.

Yeah, like, guys, we've seen this one before. Maybe we should do this. Like, hey, this worked pretty well for us. Putting them in a situation where they can't break out unless they get massively resupplied and all their most casually producing weapons, mechanisms, vehicles, etc. are bogged down and fucked and encircled. Like, seemed to work pretty well for us before. You guys want to do that again?

And also, most importantly, we'll get to the NBA learned quickly that this is the Arvin that they were fighting. So they fought differently. learned quickly that this is the Arvin that they were fighting. So they fought differently. As American helicopter pilots swooped in to give ground support and resupply, dozens of them were shot down by NVA anti-aircraft fire with the helicopter pilots, we're told, had been taken out. Yes, because once again, fucking BAE system said these bombs 1000% kill everyone they're targeting. Don't worry about anti-aircraft fire. Don't worry about air defense. The convoy managed to struggle on for 12 miles, taking the village of Dandong. And then orders simply stopped coming from Lamb, who had only bothered to set up his command post

a full day and a half after the operation had begun. Oh no, they took the field telephones and stripped the copper wire out of it to sell it for scrap. Shit. They were supposed to wait till the end of operations. It took two American generals to fly over to his command post to figure out what the fuck was going on and trying to get Lamb to do his job. Literally, I imagine they walk in and this dude is getting two massages at once. Yeah, two massages at once, surrounded by discarded copper wire. Nobody's sure why.

Yeah, exactly. He's listening to his favorite Arvin and the Ferrets records. Someone's shucking all the spare parts from TA-312 field telephones out the back like they're oyster shells. Like, you know, like they've... We have to get their succulent wire on the inside. They've rigged up a bunch of diesel generators with purloined diesel that's supposed to be going to the front to run ice machines. So he has a constant supply of Vietnamese ice coffee, which I would also do. Like we all have a petty tyrant in us.

Yes. And Lam decided that the convoy needed more protection and suddenly decided that we need to fly in more soldiers to set up more previously unprepared outposts and paused all future movements for a week. So far... You know what the NBA really, really loved doing when there's lulls in the fighting? Chilling. Not preparing.

Not strengthening their position. Not possibly trucking in thousands of reinforcements. They're just... We used to make a joke on on trash future that like the liberal worldview is that the person who's the best at doing their homework is supposed to be the dictator of all of humanity and it's like i don't i don't agree i think that's funny but it's not also like i don't want that but like i will say in the concept of like being just a homework doing ass kind of person like the nba do their fucking homework a lot. They love doing their homework.

They're really good at it. And you give them a week to do extra homework. They're going to just rock your shit. Once again, all of this seems to operate on the principle that, well, it doesn't matter because even if this fails, eventually they'll call Endex. Everybody just go back home. In military training in the u.s army basically when you're in a simulated training thing like at a certain point when like they've

done they've achieved the task of like oh we blew you out of your fire base and we're throwing arty sims non-stop and you've got mega moscow and you've got to call every helicopter in the entire fucking brigade or division air support so that you can get matt you know like like like emergency kazevac all your people are fucked. Oh my god. Finally, at some point, they're like, alright. Endex. End exercise. Situation is over. Now we can stop role-playing and talk about what happened. Now, obviously, that

doesn't happen in real life, but I swear to God, when you hear these stories, it's like they're just waiting for Ho Chi Minh or William Wismoreland to call Endex. Throw up the times out hand signal. Yeah, do a quick AR

and then everybody can go back to the fucking, you know, the Rube Goldberg fucking funnel of iced coffee with masseuses left and right.

Like, just, it's crazy. So far, the northern response is pretty much nothing outside of regional already prepared defense. The soldiers fighting

in Laos had already been there and weren't given any special orders or reinforcement. This is because nothing outside of regional already prepared defense. The soldiers fighting in Laos had already been there and weren't given any special orders or reinforcement. This is because while the North knew the American war effort was coming to an end, they were worried that the U.S. might try one last major offensive, one last killing blow to change its outcome, namely a full-on invasion of the North. So they were holding a lot of their resources in reserve to prepare for that. However, when they saw this major commitment, you know, steam into Laos, they're like, all right, well, that's not going to happen anymore.

So with the Lamb effectively hitting the pause button in the operation for a week, the North could flood the area with soldiers. And within days, they moved in 36,000 men. And the Arvin, at best, had 17,000. Yeah, something I'd point out too is that by removing Cambodia from the picture when it comes to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that obviously significantly affects

the North's ability to get people into the furthest reaches of the South Vietnam and towards the M the mekong delta it does not affect laos on the other hand is what's bordering most of what's northern what was then north vietnam so like north vietnam having territorial integrity controlling its borders controlling those roads like if you're mustering like a salient into laos like if there's a group of people who can rustle up forces and get them fucking

to you fast, it's going to be the North. Laos is way more of their backyard in that regard than the South. If you look at the borders, there's not that much. There is a South Vietnamese border with Laos,

but there's not much of it. Yep. And with all of these things completely open and available to them, they were able to send in heavy weaponry, like long-range artillery, and fucking tanks. Now, whereas during the invasion of Cambodia,

NVA soldiers, knowing they were fighting Americans and Arvin, withdrew from major combat, the NVA saw the invasion of Laos as an opportunity. They knew as well as everybody else that this was only an Arvin operation, and now was their chance to kick them in the dick harder than they ever have been before. Furthermore, they knew that Arvin soldiers sucked ass, and this is their opportunity to really stack bodies and destabilize the southern

government. So instead of withdrawing, they saw it as a chance to deal a major defeat to the southern enemies as the US began the withdrawal from the war zone. And as soon as this new influx of men and weapons made it into the combat zone, the balance of power shifted completely to the north. They surrounded the Arvin bases with artillery and began bombarding them, blowing the fire bases apart. And the Arvin guns were so outranged, they couldn't even return fire. One base called Ranger North was shelled four days before a armor-supported infantry attack. The kind of shit people don't think of when they think of the Vietnam War overran the base. The few Arvin soldiers that were able to escape alive had to run through the jungle

and fight a fighting retreat for miles just to make it to another base, Ranger South, which soon had the same thing happen to them. This literally sounds like you're having a bad night in Ranger School. They blow you out of your patrol base, so you run to either your black or gold azimuth and then regroup. And they blow you out of that, too. It's just nonstop. Except it's real life and they're not using arty sims. It's just like real artillery.

And they're getting killed. This just kept happening. And there they were trapped, alone and unsupported for days, when General Lamb finally gave them an order. Run through the jungle for three miles to the next base, FSB 30. More and more of these isolated bases were surrounded and began to be strangled. Air defenses were moved up and completely closed off the bases from any air support or resupply. Almost like the NVA has fucking done this before. And when it became clear that Lam was not up to the job, political connections

or not, President Thieu ordered that another general, Do Khao Tri, to come over, fly to his command post, and replace him. However, the helicopter carrying him crashed and killed him en route, so Lam remained in charge by default. Brrm brrm brrm.

Look, man. It's just... The enemy gets a a vote and sometimes the enemy is gravity the the enemy of every helicopter as we've established on this podcast look like i know that it's not an original or novel observation on my part to say that that the helicopter is just kind of a cursed object in the sense that like it defies all of nature's laws. But like, you know, it can't glide. If it fails, it falls. You know, it is an affront to God.

But it is pretty useful as, you know, vertical takeoff and landing kind of thing. So I would just say, you know what? Just tread lightly and understand that God and gravity are opposed to you when you're in one of those cursed objects that weirdly is the only space that I can fall asleep in. The helicopter, David? The helicopter taketh away. It sure does. I can't fall asleep on planes. I don't know why.

But for some reason, helicopters lull me to sleep like a baby. It's because the helicopter, shaking and tearing itself apart at its rivets, rocks you to sleep gently. It does rock. It absolutely rocks you to sleep. And typically, when you're in a military helicopter, you have to have all your kit on your knees. So you have a rucksack to put your head against like a pillow, and it just rocks you to sleep like you're a baby. That's right. It's being swaddled by the military industrial complex.

Yes. And then it smells like abgas and gravity wants you to die and is waiting for its opportunity. So sometimes it kills the person who's supposed to take out, replace the incompetent military commander of um what sounds like like if you've ever seen the apocalypse now redux scenes that got removed like in the original theatrical from the psycho firebase yeah and the psycho firebase and like just the weird non-narrative stuff with like the french colonial family like all this stuff was taken out because it just seems shoehorned out of nowhere makes no sense to the overall plot like to me if i was an arvin soldier being sent to this i would feel as though like there's there's a certain kind of overlap there of like this doesn't make any

fucking sense but someone's like hey go do some fire bases in the house all right troops dig yeah sure all right all right fine like i'm not gonna be the middle ground where you're an idiot i'm not gonna be i'm plugging in new fucking hi-fi speakers to Arvin and the Ferrets. Meanwhile, General Lamb is like, wait, my replacement got killed and I'm still in charge? Hot damn, get me six more masseuses. That's what he was taking all of the copper from the TA-312 field telephones for. He got a badass stereo system with the bi-pole, what is it, the double wiring. And he needed more copper stereo wire so that Arvin and the Ferris could sound as good as possible.

But he bought the speakers from that guy who tries to sell you speakers in the Best Buy parking lot. I mean, look, I don't think it's fair to disparage the entirety of the South Vietnamese economy. Took you a while. of the South Vietnamese economy. Took you a while. All right. I'm not going to interrupt anymore, because I know you need to get through the script.

I'm sorry. It's fun, though. It's been a long time since we've recorded, so it's just a lot of fun. But I don't want this to take up all of your day. And when one paratrooper commander ordered his forces from the convoy to break off and try to relieve one of these bases and maybe try to stage a breakout

and save the people in it lamb told him to stop and when asked why he was not given a response uh then an american jet on a bad military bearing to not die in place yeah retreating is for pussies sit there that shitty fire base made

out of like a half of a doug ranger grave and uh like a hole to shit in. When they put you in a base called Ranger North, you just know you're going to die. They didn't even bother to name it. I was going to say the name, like the name alone. You're like, oh, this is always what comes up when I'm reading some like Medal of Honor citation where everyone got killed, but one dude jumped on a grenade. Or anytime you're on a hill that just has a number. You know you're fucked.

Yeah, exactly. Or your commander is three weeks away from retirement and then when you hear the doors start playing in the background you're like oh god it's happening you don't know if it's the movie ending that's gonna get you killed or if they're sending jim morrison to kill you personally jim morrison's gonna beat you to death with one of his poetry books so then while all this is going on. An American jet on a bombing run was shot down. And now nearby, there was a forward air control aircraft or a FAC. Now, this plane's job was to obviously coordinate and direct airstrikes in the area.

So kind of important. And normally they fly very, very high. They can't be seen by enemy air defenses defenses at least not the enemy's air defenses they had available to them however when the jet went down the fac went in to try to locate the crew so maybe if they're alive they could coordinate a rescue operation though when they did that it meant they couldn't call for airstrikes anymore so northern forces use that as an opening to overrun another base fsB 31, which somehow is the best case scenario to be

associated with the letters FS and B. I was going to say exactly that. It's like none of the perhaps worse than Ranger North. Yeah. Though not all these bases went down so easily. FSB 30 was on a steep hill, meaning the North couldn't simply launch

an armored assault at them, so instead they pulled up their artillery and bombed them mercilessly, out of range of all the base's guns, and they were slowly, one by one, taken out. The convoy tried to save the base, sending in their armored vehicles, leading to the first major armored battle of the Vietnam War. Southern crewed American Walker Bulldog light tanks ran into Northern crewed Soviet T-54 tanks and PT-72 light tanks. On that day, the

Southern tanks came out on top, though they quickly found themselves getting torn to shreds by anti-tank weapons and were forced to pull back. Now with the Southern tanks gone, the NVA sent their tanks in once again, and that's when everybody realized, like like oh fuck we forgot to give the arvin any anti-tank weapons see that this is one of those things where yeah

like winning the battle losing the war kind of thing like winning the engagement losing the war in the sense that like what you've just described is this the arvin actually having technical superiority but total just hit yourself with a brick lack of foresight as to actually doing combined arms operations. And so the North Vietnamese, once again, are not just going to be like, well, I guess we have to just fight to the last tank

and kill every single one of our tankers. They're just like, no, pull back. We have 10,000 artillery pieces that we stole from the DMZ somehow. We're just going to pulverize these guys and then move in with the tanks later. And then the Arvin guy is realizing, oh, goddammit, they didn't even give us any anti-tank weapons. Fuck. Somewhere in American resupply quartermaster back at K-Sound just slapping his forehead.

Fuck, I knew I forgot something. Yeah, I was going to say, everybody is just smoking weed out of the m72 law tubes they've just taken the actual law out just throwing it in the ground ground it up for fucking i don't know trying to reverse engineer the gunpowder into into some blood and shit for other use but they've got the long tubes and like we can absolutely get high with this some arvin guy guy opens a crate labeled like anti-tank weapons. He crates it open like a crowbar and just record after record of Arvin and the ferrets. Listen, man, I'm just saying, I think that a lot of those classic 60s, the tracks that always get used to evoke the Vietnam War, if you sped them up and you changed the lyrics

to be about how actually Cao Dai is the true religion and we should worship Voltaire, it would be very, very funny. It might be sacrilegious and coming from me, both as a dickhead podcaster and also the grandson of the American infantry battalion commander in the Vietnam War, maybe a little bit indiscreet,

but I still think the bit is worth committing to. It's a funny joke. That's right. And while all this is going on, the main convoy was still stuck back at Bandong. So Lam and President Thieu pulled another idea out of their ass. We'll conduct a separate helicopter assault directly towards our main objective, Tichpone, which the ground forces were still absolutely nowhere close to. So they did the largest helicopter-borne assault of the entire war. 200 helicopters flew in, flanked by gunships and jets, and then they found the entire town completely abandoned outside of a small rest area for tired and wounded NVA soldiers.

So in terms of the actual tactical accomplishments of taking this, they effectively did the right of the Valkyries from Apocalypse Now, but sped it up and had it be sung by Alvin and the Ferrets. That's right. Yeah. All the bombast of Wagner, but it's being sung on kazoos, basically. The North had long since moved all of their supplies out of the area into the surrounding jungle they're always doing this they're always reacting to the fucking

changing situation who could have seen this coming making tactical decisions to preserve both their men and material it's weird how this happens making the entire helicopter landing pointless and causing the loss of 11 helicopters from crashes and the occasional anti-aircraft gun damage. Um, so I see that the Arvin has the U S and Grenada approach to fucking rotary wing aircraft. Look, we don't have our long range artillery,

but we can crash our helicopters directly into them. Arvin forces spent the next week trying to find anything of worth in the area, mostly just stumbling into one ambush or another. However, American and South Vietnamese media quickly point out that since this bombed out empty town was the main objective for the mission, which remember it was not, the invasion had been a total incomplete success. The town wasn't the objective, it was the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but they were spinning it rapidly so they could get something out of this. In reality, the Americans knew this entire thing had been a complete clusterfuck since day one, and they knew they had to spin this as a victory somehow to not only save face politically in the U.S.,

but make the Arvin forces look competent enough to make all of their other efforts not look pointless, not only in the U.S., but also in South Vietnam. all of their other efforts not look pointless, not only in the US, but also in South Vietnam. Furthermore, Thieu would have a political excuse for declaring victory and withdrawing his forces to South Vietnam, as well as gaining political capital in the upcoming fall elections, which he would almost certainly steal. We wanted that rest area so bad. We wanted that R&R site. The North Vietnamese would absolutely take over the fucking American R&R site at Bondi Beach in Sydney if they were allowed to, if they simply had the assets. They don't.

We had the assets to crash 11 of 200 helicopters and taking their R&R spot in this random city in Laos, and we did it. We won the war. That's right. What if the U.S. invaded a Ho Chi Minh truck stop and declared victory? the US invaded a Ho Chi Minh truck stop and declared victory? What if Al-Qaeda in Iraq took over the big pool in Qatar or Bahrain or wherever the fuck it's at that they were sending

people on four-day passes to in the GY? What if that happened? They'd be like, you know what? We found this site of decadence and destroyed it. We've won. Man, when I was in Afghanistan, they were so lazy. They sent us to R&R in a different part of Afghanistan. Yeah, we didn't get R&R. I'm not trying to be like, oh, it was so much harder, but we just didn't get it. I don't know of anyone getting sent on four days, like the R&R in a different part of Afghanistan. Yeah, we didn't get R&R. I mean, I'm not trying to be like, oh, it was so much harder,

but we just didn't get it. I don't know of anyone getting sent on four days the R&R in theater. You got your mid-tour leave, and that was scheduled in advance, and that was all you got. People in Iraq was different. Everything's different.

I think we had three days or something. I don't remember. But the idea of when you hear these stories about, oh, there's an R&R site with a big fucking pool in Qatar or Bahrain or Kuwait. You or you can drink yeah you could drink like no that just i mean like not in 2009 2010 in afghanistan where i was that just did not happen like we just we just did we didn't have the golden ticket we needed we literally did not have bodies to fucking be running checkpoints and doing all the shit they had as like this just

wasn't gonna happen so sorry sorry big derail when i swore not to. But R&R points are very, very funny. And yes, the US did have one in Australia at Bondi Beach because my buddy's dad was the commander of one. And they also had a ton of them in Thailand as well. Oh, I was going to point that out earlier. Not only the air bases, but also the R&R stuff. And that shit stayed. A lot of those businesses that were catering to GIs and some that were run by GIs, they stayed. Now they just cater to Western sex tourists. Now they just cater to

British guys on business. Most importantly, if you was able to pull off this withdrawal, it would save the Arvin from a very clear battlefield defeat, as they were currently getting their teeth kicked in. A withdrawing would save the Arvin's best forces, like the paratroopers, the marines, and the rangers, from being bled dry for no reason. So, the southern government ordered a withdrawal to begin on March 16th without any

prior planning or consulting with the American military commanders that worked directly with them. For people unaware, a proper organized withdrawal takes manpower, resources, and planning, none of which the Arvin had or bothered to put in place. Lamb and President Thieu just hit the big withdraw button and then walked away. I assume to get more iced coffee.

I was going to say, they just released a new batch of ice out of the machine. Guys, I have this foot thing scheduled for like 30 minutes. can we wrap this up they caught all these fucking like little goldfish and they're gonna eat the dead skin cells off my feet all right my feet are nasty as hell don't prolong this process any longer let me get my i've actually had this done in real life in korea like that's the thing they do there too yeah

that's serious the fish eat the dead skin cells Nate sitting on a throne surrounded by stolen copper wire getting his feet eaten by fish sitting sitting sitting in a spa in Seoul South Korea with fluorescent lights so bright you'd think you were in like a fucking biological weapons research facility and getting an NFT festival exactly exactly well no those those those the UV

lights that kill you they also they also just disinfect your eyes I yeah so I've done it in real life. Guys, you're so dirty. I need to stare directly into UV lighting. Yeah, exactly. Because I read your tweets. Now, the NVA and the Path at Lao forces immediately picked up on this withdrawal. They staged an all-out attack on the fire base as it still remained and set up a miles-long ambush down the length of Route 9.

As the convoy tried to retreat so quickly, they abandoned the infantry behind them to start running like the end of Black Hawk Down. This created a series of unsupported, unsupplied Alamos all throughout the Laotian jungle. Bases and groups of men totally cut off from any help and forgotten about to the point Lam didn't even know or care that they were there. Meanwhile, due to the total breakdown of Arvin logistics, the convoy began to run out of fuel, all while being ambushed, leading to the infantry and the vehicle crew riding

them to try to get out and run through the jungles and down the road together while thousands of people tried to murder them. This is like when you have auto respawning allies in Age of Empires 4, you just don't care about them. You're just like whatever fucking day whatever like they'll deal with their shit maybe they'll hold them off for

like 30 seconds like except it's your own guys in its real life lamb sitting at a like a staff office like i've heard of this uh this tactic i've i've learned on my computer it's called a zerg rush rush yeah now one part of the convoy decided they would fuck this we'll find a shortcut they pulled off the route and away from the ambush which is you know a good idea however they had no idea they are actually only four miles away from the border when they decide to do this they pulled off the road and immediately got lost in the dense jungle i was just saying they basically did like doing land ab at fort brack fucking experience they created an 11 mile long detour that ended with them banding their vehicles and swimming

across the Sao Paulo River. And that was just them. So many soldiers got lost or stuck fighting for their lives that nobody has any idea how many there actually were at any given point. A week after the formal end of the operation, which was March 25th, random ARVN soldiers and shot-down American pilots simply emerged from the Laotian jungle running across the border into South Vietnam. While Nixon and Thieu pointed to the operation as a complete success of the military

transfer of combat responsibility to the ARVN, it only underlined to American military commanders how incompetent not only the Southern military was, but also its entire government. They knew the only thing that saved this complete clusterfuck from turning into an unmitigated disaster was unrelenting American firepower. As soon as the invasion was over, there was more traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail than there ever had been before, and while northern losses were steep, they could easily be replaced while the elite soldiers of the Arvin, of which they lost thousands, could not be. And one of the major consequences of this entire operation was, in short, this fall of South Vietnam. Emboldened by their crushing

victory over the South and the withdrawal of American ground forces, the North launched a conventional invasion of the South the next year. Now, the 1972 Easter offensive was a failure, and it did not end with the fall of Saigon, but it was clear the tables had turned, and there was absolutely no way South Vietnam was going to survive. Podcast, the end. And we will eventually do a series on the fall of Saigon and that whole thing that occurred at some point in the future. But that is definitely one of the small domino to big domino effects. They spun this to be like a PR victory, but it was very clear to the North that these guys are fucked. that like, these guys are fucked. Yeah. I mean, I think that the thing about doing a podcast about the Vietnam War is that it would have to be an entire podcast in and of itself and that we could probably do it as long

as you've been doing this show. Oh, easily. Yeah. And still have plenty to do. But I think taken in miniature, this is just that there's a lot of illustrative examples here of how... This wasn't an outlier case. This was how business was done. This is how the US related to the Arvin. This is how the Arvin performed. This is how the NBA and the Viet Cong outmatched the Arvin and the US. And so much of this stuff was just an exercise in intentional, I guess, self-denial, self-fucking uh what's the right word here like self-delusion self-deception somebody had read the promise and we're just trying to manifest positive thoughts yeah exactly like i do i think i don't know if how to win friends and influence people had come

out yet but like it was in chrysalis it was just like how they were going about this shit and it's like look i this isn't meant as like none of the things we say here are in defense of the US-born Vietnam. It's more that if you look at it from a very... Even outside of politics, just looking at how military operations played out, you just build a soundboard of lines that you're going to drop, like drops that you're going to put in a podcast episode of things that happen because it's just over and over again that. And then there's always this crossover point where reality doesn't exist. And they're like, actually, we're winning hearts and minds and we're... Vietnamization is winning and strategic hamlets are winning and all blah, blah, blah, all this shit forever. It's crazy. and this is just like this is like I said before like

we've gone from the doo-wop era to like the doors are no longer a thing and they are still being surprised that the NBA knows how to fight like the US may have won this war if we manage to drag it into the disco age but we're not sure we're not sure bro we did 1975 disco was a thing by

then it wasn't quite as big, but it was a thing. Some great tracks came out in 1975. We were still in Vietnam. Okay, okay. Let me rephrase that. The grunge era. We need to drag this into the 90s. I mean, hey, you know what?

Alice in Chains wrote the song Rooster. They kind of did. That's true. That's true. But I will just say this. Just deploy weak and sickly glaine staley to the front line to soothe their feelings i think it was jerry cantrell's dad is who that song is about yeah probably yeah yeah because he was a he was in vietnam a bunch of times

good song but very complicated in terms of how america gets teary-eyed about vietnam and such when it's like guys there's a pretty pretty easy read of this story it sucked and it was wrong and it was stupid and also like we kind of knew that from the beginning Joe I don't want to prolong this any longer because I'm having a great time but I know that like every time you set up to record with me and set a timeline I blow the timeline

but I would say this is great and I hope we get to explore some of these details these stories in more detail these particular anecdotes because like this is just stay tuned to Lions Led by Donkeys in 2024 we'll probably tackle some of this shit

I don't have the year quite planned out yet but there's definitely some wiggle room for a possible fall of Saigon series I'm excited I mean I'm you know coming back into it starting in January I'm no longer hiding in the shadows of parenthood. I'll be both back full time and we'll be doing more series together.

I've come out of the experience not quite as shell-shocked as a guy who looks at his deployment orders and says you have to go to a firebase called Ranger North. But I have seen some things, mostly related to being pooped on nate we do a thing on the show called questions from the legion if you'd like to ask us a question from the legion you can support the show you can ask us on patreon you could write us uh on our community discord you can attach it to a helicopter and crash it into a foreign battlefield and we will read it on air uh this is wait this is my lawyer contacting me. Please don't crash a helicopter. Listen, your name is not John Landis and you are not in the Arvin. So you know what? You do not have the right to do this. Yeah. You can't get away with it. Yeah.

Now today's question is, is there any food you'd give anything to untaste? And I'm going to limit this to actual food products. Let me think. So off the top of my head, I would say it's not a genre of food or some kind of weird food in a different culture so much as I once had bad craft beer and bad pizza at a restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana that gave me horrible indigestion. And for days after, I had a stomachache and kept having what I would describe as bad pizza and bad beer burps. And I kept retasting the bad pizza. And I fucking hate IPAs. I've always fucking hated IPAs. But in this situation, it was like my friend and I went to this place. I was like, well, the beer they have on is like an IPA, so I'll have an IPA.

Awful. Hate it. So I can still remember that. And the other one is, there is this... So Baizhou is this Chinese, very, very strong Chinese fermented alcohol. And it has a pretty gross... I think it's made from barley or sorghum. And it's got a very gross... It's gross to us because it's just an unusual flavor. A friend of mine brought me a traditional Taiwanese version of this that's even stronger and weirder. And I'd had some, but I'd had some after coming back from a weekend out with friends

where we had gone to this fish market in Seoul and gotten... You select a fish and they butcher it for you and they serve it to you. And something was not up to code on sanitation where we got the fish. And every one of us got food poisoning. So I had food poisoning while also tasting, having the burping, vomiting, awful, gross indigestion taste of this Taiwanese baijiu. I mean, if I ever smell it again, I will probably vomit on the spot. It's so bad. So bad craft beer, bad pizza, and that. Yeah. I have a similar story, minus the fish um i was in georgia and their traditional moonshine i guess you could call it for a lack of a better term is called

cha-cha and hilariously the traditional moonshine in laos is called lao lao so people just love repeating the same single syllable once you know twice and you can have really good stuff you can have really bad stuff i had some really bad stuff and i was drinking with a group and you don't when you're drinking with a circle of caucasian men you don't turn down when they hand you a shot you just drink it and you deal with the aftermath later and i had a hangover that could i should have died like it like you know like hangovers are telling you that like alcohol is poison maybe you shouldn't be drinking it that your body is now expelling that poison um this made me feel like i was actually going to die uh it was the worst hangover of my life um and i normally don't even like even now when i don't drink much if i go and have a couple

with like a friend that's visiting wherever i'm i'm not hung over the next day that it transformed me to a different dimension of of what I previously thought was a hangover. And now, uh, if like, uh, cause I go back to Georgia occasionally. Um, I,

I think of any excuse possible to not touch the shit because just the smell is enough to make me want to retch. That's really funny because you go back on a regular basis. Like I don't, I, I've other than the Taipei airport for a connection, like I have never been to Taiwan. So I'll never hopefully have to deal with this stuff. And then God knows if I can avoid it,

I'll never go back to fucking Bloomington, Indiana. I will say it's really funny, just bringing this up, is that there was a guy in my unit when I was getting ready to leave Alaska who showed up to be a squad leader that immediately got a DUI and was getting chaptered out of the army. It felt really bad for him because he'd been in the Army a long time and deployed a bunch, done a bunch of shit. But he had his previous duty assignment was to be part of the Casualty Recovery Unit at the 25th ID or at...

What's it called? PACOM. And so his job was basically accompanying archaeologists all around the Pacific to find historical battlefields, try to recover remains of MIA American service members. So he had been to basically so many fascinating places in the World War II, Vietnam, Korean War theater, to include Laos. And I am not joking, he had with him in his apartment that he had

brought back. This is a cue to what happened later in his military career. Like a water... Well, not a water buffalo. What do they call... do we call those the 25-gallon jugs or whatever, the water cans, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about,

but I also can't remember the name of them. He had one of those filled, he literally brought it full of lau lau that he paid like $5 for and brought it back on like the,

I don't know, C-17 that flew them back to Hickam Airfield or whatever. Mother of God. He had in Alaska because he kept it with him. He'd managed to PCS with a water can

full of fucking Laulau. We were drinking Laulau mixed with Kool-Aid in his apartment. God damn, does that give you a hangover? I'm just saying. Yeah. And then he got a DUI. I'm like, surprise. You know, some stories write their own endings there. Yeah. Nate, thank you

so much for joining me here again on the yeah. Nate, thank you so much for joining me here again on the show. Everybody, thank you so much for listening. Nate. Thank you for your patience. You have countless podcasts. Plug your shows.

What a Hell of a Way to Die, Trash Future, This Show Lines Led by Donkeys, and Kill James Bond. Listen to other episodes of this show to hear an in-depth description because I have fucking

talked a lot. So thank you for your patience, Joe, audience members, Tom, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Everybody, thank you so much again for supporting the show. You make everything we do here possible. If you don't support the show and want to, you can find us on Patreon. Just $1 gets you years worth of bonus content. $5 gets you everything to include bonus episodes, Discord access, stickers, first dibs on live show tickets and merch. And also check the show notes.

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