Men Against Fire: How Many Soldiers Actually Fired Their Weapons at the Enemy During the Vietnam War

 | Vietnam  | 3 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Only nine of the 1st Cavalry Division veterans reported that they never personally fired on the enemy, a far different result from what Marshall had written was the case in the Pacific and Europe. But some might suspect that a man would hesitate to admit his own shortcomings under fire. The veterans were therefore also asked to reflect on the performance of their comrades in arms. When asked what portion of their fellow soldiers fired during any given engagement, the veterans estimated that about 84 percent of a unit’s men armed with individual weapons (rifles, pistols, grenade launchers, shotguns) and approximately 90 percent of those manning crew-served weapons (generally the M-60 machine gun) did so.

From these responses it seems that Americans in Vietnam had little hesitation to engage their enemy. Yet the observations of these veterans prompt the question of why, on average, nearly two of every 10 men were not firing when their unit was in contact. The apparent problem was not of the magnitude Marshall had reported for World War II, but losing the firepower of so many soldiers was still no small matter. In a unit with 500 riflemen, some 80 would not engage. Unlike the numbers from Marshall’s work, these estimates came directly from the men who had fought in the cities, jungles, firebases and rice paddies of Vietnam. Why did so many not fire?

No single factor explains it. A man’s duty position was one critical element. Soldiers surveyed in the 1st Cavalry Division can in general be said to have come from one of two basic groups. The primary job of the first group was to engage the enemy with small-arms fire. These men served as riflemen, machine-gunners, helicopter door gunners, vehicle crewmen or others who were to kill the adversary with the weapon they carried. The second basic group consisted of others who accompanied those of the first group. It included men who might sometimes fire on the adversary, but that was not their primary responsibility. These Marines and soldiers were squad leaders, first sergeants, platoon leaders and company commanders directing maneuvers, distributing ammunition, calling for fire or performing the many other tasks that success in a firefight demanded. They included assistant machine-gunners, whose first responsibilities were to load an M-60 and help the gunner to identify targets. Others were artillery forward observers who called for and directed artillery and aircraft fire; medics caring for the wounded; engineers destroying bunkers, removing mines or investigating tunnel complexes; chaplains; radio operators passing information; or pilots flying helicopters.

In the case of the second group, vital duties were left undone if on contact these men first raised rifle to shoulder or drew a pistol to engage. There were occasions when firing their weapons was essential, but many times their choice to engage rather than perform their other duties would have done more harm than good. Lieutenant General Harold Moore recalled what his responsibilities as commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, demanded of him in his classic book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. Moore noted that he was tempted by the opportunity to join his riflemen in firing on the enemy during fighting at LZ X-Ray in 1965, but he ‘resisted the temptation. I had no business getting involved with the actions of only one company. I might get pinned down and become simply another rifleman. My duty was to lead riflemen.’ For a very different reason, chaplains rarely engaged the enemy. Regulations proscribed men in those positions from carrying weapons, though some felt compelled to do so in a war in which medics and chaplains, who were not legitimate targets under accepted rules of war, were shot and killed nonetheless.

But even the men whose primary job was to engage the enemy found that at times they could not fire. Location was a second factor that determined whether a man pulled, or should have pulled, the trigger of his weapon. A soldier at the tail of a column winding through the dense foliage of a Southeast Asian jungle might hear an engagement to his front, yet be unable to see where his comrades were located. If he fired, he risked shooting his own men. That same infantryman might later be on the perimeter of a defensive position when the enemy attacked the other side of his firebase. Sluing his weapon around in the dark and firing meant those bullets could strike other defenders in the back.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Vietnam War

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.