Why New Soldiers Didn’t Survive in Vietnam

After graduating from college in 1965, Robert Ferguson enlisted in the United States Marine Corps to escape the draft. Ferguson completed Officers Candidate School, but was rejected from flight training due to poor depth perception. Instead, he trained as a radar operator and deployed to Vietnam in 1966, completed seventy combat missions in seven months. He was then reassigned as a Forward Air Controller (FAC) to coordinate air support in the field. In 1967, Ferguson was severely burned when an armored vehicle detonated an explosive device. He was evacuated and spent the remainder of his military career recovering in various hospitals in Japan and the United States.

[markwestervelt]

My dad was a platoon sergeant in Korea. He told me he would never put a new guy on point. Never. Only a coward squad leader would do that.

[Floridaman_]

His platoon put the cherries on point? Tell me your unit's leadership sucks without actually saying it.

[prestoni]

We tried to avoid sending FNGs as points because they didn't have the experience to detect anomalies..sad your unit threw them out as fodder

[MikeDrop]

I read an interview with a WWII veteran. The squad had decided they were all going to "make it home" so they made a conscious decision to sacrifice replacements. They put new guys out on every dangerous detail, patrol, or post.
Those replacements died like flies. But they "made it home".
I wonder how they got through long nights alone with these memories.

[pandavelli]

My platoon sergeant wouldn’t even eat until he watched every single one of us get chow. My platoon leader stopped me from clearing a rooftop one time and made me let him do it (it was a dangerous area too). I can’t believe they put the new guys on point.

[lewishamilton]

This is a good reason to not just blindly respect and trust your elders.
Not all are deserving of it.

[pyme]

My uncle is a VietNam veteran. He doesn't talk much about it, but since I am a retired veteran myself, sometimes him and I will talk. He said that he always took point by choice. His thinking was that if he was going to get killed, it was going to be because of something he did, not that he died because of something that somebody else did wrong.

He would've never put the new guy up front.

[IXvictortwo]

Fucking disgusting behavior from a leader. As a veteran this is sickening.

[dannyjones]

As a retired Marine, this is pretty fucking sad. You never put a new guy in a position where he can fail and kill himself. Should've had an experienced guy train him. Nope- y'all just let him kill himself.

[marcblank]

What a crap way to treat those without experience.

[kelsiewilson]

So, they intentionally sacrificed a kid with no experience. Great guys.

[eljusticiero]

As a young man, I feel so so lucky for not having to get through this. All the men that had to, have my absolute respect

[HateIncarnate]

"Recruitment is down and we have no idea why"

[boosty]

“It’s a numbers game” when you’re talking about your own comrades life is insane

[scotthollars]

I served 6 years and was deployed to Kandahar Afghanistan in 2014. It's unfathomable to me how a group of enlisted soldiers would voluntarily allow the newest in their Platoon to shut off a mine and do that over and over again replacing their head with someone new. Talk about the lack of respect! Your throwing your new guys into a mine field and making the newest step behind the second newest while you all patrol a route that you know was clear. What in the ever living hell. Thats not a soldier that's a fat lard of human waste anyone who would do that.

[stshepherd]

So casual about the death of a youngster serving his country.
R.I.P. young soldier 💔🇺🇸🙏🏽

[samcornwell]

Any man that would do this to somebody is worse than any enemy. Truly despicable.

[mauserwaffen]

Maybe if you had taken the time and shown the new guy how to disarm the mine, he'd still be alive.

[wesleygeorge]

When I was a junior enlisted. I had great NCO's that trained me on how to be a good leader. This training molded me into the officer of a platoon and company commander.

[safffff]

My buddy served in that war and always took the point, as he grew up in the woods of West Virginia and hunted he felt safer by not being led into a trap, since he could see things in the forest no one else noticed. Rest in Peace Fred, died 2023