Published at: 01/10/2025 09:00 PM

14 Yankee helicopters shot down by the People in arms of Vietnam

(LIFE, Vol. 25, No. 10, May 24, 1965)

• From the foothills of the mountains of Da Nang, where the United States had the most active air base, a procession of 14 helicopters packed with marines departed to bomb and straff the thousands of Vietnamese guerrillas marching south along the intricate Ho Chi Minh Route. Jungle path built to defeat the United States by strategist Vo Nguyen Giap.
• In that mission, the face of defeat was reflected in the 14 helicopters neutralized by Vietnamese artillery, 4 of them crashed, 2 dead pilots, 2 dying marines, 14 others badly injured and the cries of the officers broken by death to whom they were sentenced from the White House.
• To calm his nerves, one officer shared a marijuana cigarette with an injured person, while another inhaled and shared a heroin pipe with the nervous and wobbly marines on board. A hell of a “Home Made in USA”.
• Thus, among the thousands of air missions that the United States carried out over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, one was frozen in time through the report made by war correspondent and photographer Larry Burrows for LIFE magazine.
• Of the more than 536,000 marines deployed during that war, 58,126 returned in metal boxes wrapped in flags, 22,736 of these veterans who were in the War Theater took their lives and another 71,761 also committed suicide, although they did not participate directly in combat operations; 303,000 injured and 113,000 disabled for life.
• 11%, 59,960, were left suffering from severe mental disorders, alcoholism, addictions or being homeless. A hell of a “Home Made in USA”.
• 70,000 marines were caught up in drug addiction, which they usually supplied them on combat missions to inject, along with heroin, some cold blood and commit atrocities. Verbi Gratia, the My Lai Massacre.
• Furthermore, once back home, the children assumed these same behaviors and addictions as part of a lifestyle: “The American Way of Life”.
• Later, in 2019, a U.S. Veterans Department Report revealed that in addition, more American veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017 than the 58,136 who died during the entire Vietnam War.
• To these studies, statistics are attached to the wars in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, as well as the invasions of the Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada and Haiti.
• Textually, the report reads: “Over a period of ten years, more veteran soldiers committed suicide than we lost between 1955-1975.
• “Create two, three... many Vietnam” was Ernesto “Che” Guevara's message to the peoples of the world at the meeting of the First Tricontinental Conference, held in Havana, Cuba, between January 3 and 15, 1966”.
• Nine years later, the arrogance of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who ordered the worst bombings and genocides, staged a historic and resounding defeat in Vietnam. Turning against them, like a stone in Goliath's eye, the prophetic words of “Che”.

Mazo News Team