The Viet Cong

During the Vietnam War the United States and her allies faced off primarily against two forces. The People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) which was the regular army of North Vietnam was one of these groups. The other was the National Liberation Front (NLF), also known as the Viet Cong. This was a mostly irregular force that carried out guerrilla campaigns against the United States and South Vietnamese military. That snappy “uniform” above belongs to one of those fighters.

The NLF was a political organization that formed in South Vietnam which had a communist bent. It also had its own army, the People’s Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF). Most of the fighters were from either South Vietnam or Cambodia, which made things very confusing because the South Vietnamese were supposed to on our side.

The PLAF (commonly referred to as the Viet Cong) served both as guerrilla fighters, as mentioned) and served alongside the regular PAVN forces. It was also their job to organize resistance in the South and often they would prepare entire villages for mobilization.  Numerous and hard to eradicate they managed to get their own nickname from the Americans, Victor Charlie or V-C based on the letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Effectiveness?

Where as the PAVN had a hard time in stand up fights against the US, the Viet Cong were able to operate in almost an untouchable fashion. Their greatest operation came in 1968 during what has come to be called the Tet Offensive. In a single stroke the VC carried out coordinated attacks across the South, over 100 including against the US Embassy in Saigon.  Eventually defeated the VC were never really able to gather any serious strength again and returned to the guerrilla war. Major offenses after this would be carried out by the regular army. Even in defeat though the found a modicum of victory. The US will to fight in Southeast Asia was dealt a devastating blow. The war would go on, but the focus became not so much winning, but getting out alive. (Open to interpretation, but yeah.)

In 1976 the war officially ended with the North soundly defeating the South. Once the two countries were united the PLAF was officially disbanded. This is just a brief look at the Viet Cong, there is a lot to tell about them, more than can fit here. In total it is estimated that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong war dead totaled close to half a million. Each one of them fighting for a cause they believed in. One theme you should always find in this blog and these articles is to realize that even the people we think of as enemies are fighting for something.  Sometimes it never hurts to remember that.