Question by Brendan: Did any Soviet foot soldiers help Vietnam during the war with America?
I know it was mainly the Viet-Cong and NVA fighting against the Americans, but I also heard somewhere that there were Soviet commanders and foot-soldiers fighting with the Viet-Cong and NVA against America. Also didn’t Australia have a major presence of soldiers helping America in Vietnam?
Answers and Views:
Answer by pauline
probably had advisers, and there where rumours of the chinese being involved, and yes the aussies where there for a while, all so korea.
Read all the answers in the comments.
Know better? Leave your own answer!
Morgan says
There were no Soviet foot soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and the only Chinese foot soldiers were Nationalist (Taiwanese) Chinese soldiers fighting for the U.S. The Soviet Union provided limited aid and military advisers to the North Vietnamese until about 1967, the time at which Soviet support dropped off almost completely. Australia had a force of soldiers fighting but it was small compared to American and ARVN military power.
Walter B says
No, there were no Soviet or Chinese "foot soldiers" involved in the war. There were some Soviet and Chinese advisers to the "People's Army of Vietnam (the name is NOT the North Vietnamese Army) in the northern zone. The name of the insurgents in the southern zone of Vietnam was the "National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam" (NLF) and NOT the Viet Cong, a shortened slang for Vietnamese Communist, something that less than 4% of the NLF members were and even less understood anything about Marx, Lenin and Engels.
Assisting the Americans were the Australians, New Zealanders, South Koreans, Thais and Philippines. There were ethnic Cambodians who were born in the Mekong Delta area of current Vietnam — the Khmer Kampuchea Krom who were trained by the CIA and the Green Berets and were the "Mike Force". In 1970 they were transferred to the army of the US-backed Khmer Republic of Lon Nol.
Edit:
The only Taiwanese Chinese were civilians assisting with the US supply of military equipment and they were in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam with the supply teams.
jamar says
Vietnam actually had a lot MORE help then everyone thinks, to be honest, going there was a death sentence for many of those young men, I am 'Nam vet myself, I was there fromn '68-'69. I lost many brothers in the 'Nam, and their families lost even more. Most of the guys who were sent there from 67-69 were draftees, many troubled kids, 18, 19 years old. A lot of them were poor like myself and couldn't afford college and what not, so they got sent over to the 'Nam for a year, a bunch of poorly trained 18 and 19 year olds in the middle of a jungle. I was from Harlem, NYC and never seen anything like the 'Nam i wasn't ready for the terrain or anything, we basically fought ourselves more then the dirty commie viets, a lot of racial stuff went down, i'm black and my platoon was mostly African-American, White and Puerto Rican. Anyway to get back to the topic, yes the Viets had a lot of help not just the 3,500 Soviet special agents, commanders and soldiers but i think about 2,300 cubans and 1,000 chinese and don't forget the Cambodians. Plus all of the weapons they wanted from Russia….so yeah the Viets didn't exactly fight 'by themselves'. RIP to those brave young men on the wall in DC, those who will remain 19 forever.
Robert says
In fact the Chinese provided over 300,000 troops (17 AAA divisions + well over 100,000 engineer troops) to North Vietnam. This plus promises from China to provide gound troops if SVN and US troops encrouched outside of SVN borders.