North Vietnam's American Foreign Legion

A little known factoid from the Vietnam War is that there were a very few American POWs who collaberated with the North Vietnamese. They included a Naval aviator, a Marine aviator and a handful of enlisted men. Dont know the names of the pilots off hand, but they can be found in James Webb's novel A Country Such As This.

At one time, some of these enlisted men volunteered to fight in the North Vietnamese Army, but the Communists rejected the offer. What if they had accepted? Granted, there was not enough traitors to make a sizeable force. But there would have been enough for an AA crew or a sapper squad. What would the impact of Americans fighting Americans in the Vietnam War be?

A really big story for "60 Minutes"?

Someone to hate even more than Jane Fonda?

I dunno. Unless the media pick up on it in a big way I doubt it would have any significant impact. Morale could hardly have gone much lower.

Maybe there would be a number of bad movies made in the mid-80s centering around the theme of American commandoes entering Viet Nam to bring back the traitors for trial?

On CNN a few years back, there was an expose of something called "Operation Tailwind" designed to track down US folks who'd gone over to the Communists and kill 'em with nerve gas.

It turns out that it wasn't true; after all, why use nerve gas for just that? Either use something else (why not?) or use it for more than just an assassination attempt.

However, the allegations never described how many Americans had joined the Communists or what precisely they were doing and, since they weren't true it turns out, it's not entirely relevant.

I always wondered what happened to those turncoats. You'd think the Viets wouldn't want them around once the war was over.... I suppose their throats were cut soon after....

I remember reading a COMMANDO comic a few yrs back which had this same scenario, involving a vet Green Beret sgt who goes renegade and goes over to the VC, assisting them in mounting ambushes against his former comrades and mutilating the bodies. This traitor got his just deserts, when in the end the hero of the story flings a poisonous snake at him, which enables an African-American machinegunner nicknamed 'T-Bone' (only name I remember) to mow the traitor down with his M60.