I’ve been thinking about that lately. I remember that one scene near the end of “Full Metal Jacket” in particular. Half of the brigade gets wiped out by a sniper… who turns out to be a teenage girl, no older than fifteen I’d say. I thought it was pretty poignant, how they spent most of the movie going through all that training and then raising Hell on the battlefield, only for half of them to get gunned down by a kid that managed to get a drop on them.
And at the end of “First Blood”, Rambo recalls how his friend got blown up by the bomb detonated by a child soldier during the Vietnam war.
There was also that one “Cold Case” episode where the perpetrator turned out to be the Vietnam war veteran, paralyzed from the waist down. Near the end, he reveals that he became paralyzed after getting shot (or stabbed?) in the back by a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl, as a revenge for killing her family.
My question is: how common was that back then? Were there really lots of child soldiers fighting in the Vietnam war? Are there any stories from the ones that might have survived the war?
I can cite no statistics, only memory. I knew and served with VietNam-era troops who joined when they were 16 or under. After a tour, they were still oh, so young. And they said they fought children.
I knew a 35-year-old ex-marine who had pulled his 20 years for retirement… by 1972. Do the math. Underage enlistment has long been a big lad’s escape from poverty. In a hot combat zone, child soldiers are likely an existential necessity. Everyone fights, or else. Welcome to total war.
I was a Marine there in 1969 and don’t think I ever saw anything like that.
My guess would be any really young members of the VC (the NVA were pretty much like us and 18 and up) would have their duties limited to fetch and carry kind of things. Just general helpers around the camp.
That’s not terribly helpful. Without knowing where those picture came from they just be kids “playing soldier” somewhere far from the battlefield. Some of those images are just children and soldiers in frame together and some just pictures of children.
No doubt this will be harder to answer due to one’s definition of “child”. The term “military aged” is going to be flexible, based on the age of those participating in combat. So, in an area with a lot of younger combatants, 14 year-olds may be considered “military aged”. Any after-action reports will just include them with the rest of the group. So if a group of 10 enemy were killed, and four of them were 14, it’s just going to be reported as 10 adults. And it’s not like all of the enemy are that thoroughly identified anyway. Reported age is going to be based on appearance. Is that an 12 year old, or a 15 year old? So, accurate data will have to come from primary Vietnamese sources, such as “stories from the ones that might have survived the war” as you suggest. I just don’t imagine there will be accurate reports from the other side.
Case in point: I’ve seen Full Metal Jacket dozens of times, and never once considered that the sniper was a child or unusually young. I figured she was late teens or early twenties. I never got the impression that she was supposed to be a child.
I recall years ago reading that American soldiers in the Vietnam War tended to underestimate the age of the Vietnamese soldiers. I just did a search on this and only found one source that claimed something like this. Perhaps someone else can find a relevant source. Supposedly this is why American soldiers often thought there were a lot of Vietnamese child soldiers:
I’ve always heard stories about Viet Cong using children as soldiers, but it’s pretty hard to find out much about it. I did find an article on cracked.com* that was based on an interview with Nguyen Hoa Giai, who joined the Viet Cong at age 15.
It’s not what I’d call hard data, but it’s a fascinating read. The comments afterward are also interesting.
*Some time in the many years since I last went on there, cracked began publishing well-researched, serious articles along with the old comedic fare. I must be the last to know.
I wonder how many of the child “soldiers” people saw in Vietnam were** actually** recruited into the Viet Cong or just simply grabbed a gun and decided to start fighting the “evil Americans”. That’s a problem when invading a country; not only are you fighting the “official” enemies, you also end up fighting anyone who doesn’t like you and doesn’t want you there.
Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War” is an excellent watch for anyone with an interest in the history and minutiae of the war.
If I recall correctly, “child” soldiers and women were initially only used in support roles, the Ho Chi Minh trail being their main employment.
Later in the war during the last gasp offensives by the north, the age for combat and support service was lowered. I want to say to 14, but I’m not 100% sure.