Christopher Levesque
speaker
103 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Christopher Levesque’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
In March of 1968, the Tet Offensive was underway, and it was a significant shock both for the United States military and the U.S. public. While some American leaders in Vietnam had seen signs that something was coming in March of 1968, many U.S. forces were surprised by the actual attacks by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, which were coordinated throughout South Vietnam.
One of the things that had been happening is that General William Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command of Vietnam and the Johnson administration, had been assuring the American public that the end was in sight, that a turning point was near, that the war would soon be over. And so when this large offensive throughout South Vietnam, which also penetrated the U.S.
Embassy in Saigon, occurred, it was a shock to the American public because it was clear that they had been misled about what was happening. So it's this sort of large-scale offensive that was on television every night. U.S. news media had expanded their nightly news coverage during the war from 15 minutes to 30 minutes as a means to cover it.
So this was a sort of a constant thing for the American people.
In this case, Charlie Company is in a special type of a situation. They're a relatively new organization. The Americal Division, the 23rd Infantry Division, had been brought back into service in a hurry to meet the demands of Vietnam. Their training was taking place at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.
And so one of the things that happened is they're a unit that is being brought together that's new as part of this division that's being sent to one of the most active parts of Vietnam. They're an average or above average infantry company at the time.
87% of the non-commissioned officers had graduated from high school, which is a rate 20% higher than the average for infantry companies on the line in Vietnam. 70% of the men in lower enlisted rates had graduated from high school, which is also slightly above average. It's both ethnically and geographically mixed demographically.
So half of the soldiers were African-American, which was pretty typical of units in Vietnam. And so one of the problems that we have is that with this background, there's little to set them apart as being the ones who are going to be responsible for this.
The trick is that many of the most experienced noncommissioned officers and other enlisted personnel had been transferred out of Charlie Company during its training. So you get really inexperienced soldiers in what are generally leadership positions. So you get privates first class and specialists fourth class in leadership roles. And so they're not as experienced in that part of it.
Part of what is what explains why a unit that got high marks for training in Hawaii when it gets to Vietnam is seen as deficient. And so they get to Vietnam. In December of 1967, they received their orientation training from instructors of the 4th Infantry Division's NCO Academy at El Cibranco.
They get practical training for things like airstrikes and calling in artillery and requesting medical evacuation, how to maintain the radios, how to deal with civilians and enemy prisoners of war that they interact with. Now, basically, Don't abuse them, don't kill them, but keep them separate and silent and secure. But essentially, don't be terrible, follow the laws of war.
Their training, though, did caution them that because it's difficult to tell the Viet Cong apart from other civilians, that they have to be aware everybody is a potential enemy. They're also told that children are tricky to interact with because they seem innocent, but they might have been set up with an explosive device.
And so they get one day of training before they're given their first mission. And their first mission is to set up the 11th Infantry Brigade's fire base at LZ Carrington near Duck Foe. And this was an area that had been dangerous, but at this point is relatively quiet. They set up the camp perimeter. They dig bunkers and do that type of thing. So they get about a month.
of settling in, doing some patrols and doing some training, but they don't fire their weapons. They lay in night to night ambushes, looking for a single sniper in their area of operations. The trouble really, really begins four days before the Tet Offensive.
And so four days before the Tet Offensive, they're taken out of their regular infantry battalion. and sent to basically a scratch battalion called Task Force Barker. It's got a hodgepodge of infantry and artillery from the brigade, and they're given the mission to go after the 48th Viet Cong Local Force Battalion near Quang Nai City. So they're given a very difficult job.
They're not used to working together. And the reason this happens is that the 11th Infantry Brigade is waiting for its 4th Infantry Battalion to arrive. They're looking for a group to go send out to do this. And they also lose part of their organization. They lose their headquarters companies from all of these smaller units before they're sent to task force Parker.
Yes, and it has a real effect on how this plays out. Yeah. So they're taken out of their normal structure and put into this sort of ad hoc structure. task force. That's a battalion size. So it's basically three companies and some infantry companies and some artillery. How many men are we talking about? The infantry companies are usually going to be about 150 men. So three of those. Okay.
Right. And one of the things that happens is when Tet occurs four days after they're put into this organization... They see things happening around them. They're not directly affected yet. But one of the things that happened is that the division headquarters in July is attacked.
And one of the messages that that sends to the men of Charlie Company is that their home base, where they get all their supplies, where they're supposed to get their support from, has been attacked, even if they're not facing those types of firefights.
And so one of the challenges they face is that they're supposed to be engaging this very effective Viet Cong unit, battalion-level unit, that doesn't engage groups of more than 30 people, that has a pretty fearsome reputation, but all they're encountering is snipers and booby traps. Guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare of the type that we normally associate with Vietnam. Yeah, terrifying stuff.
Showing 1–20 of 103 · page 1 of 6
Next →