How many Vietnamese served in the Vietnam war?

Answer 1

If the question is referring to draftees (conscripted men), a sample follows: Out of an approximate 250 man basic trainee company in the late 1960's, at a US Army Fort, possibly 3 men were dedicated true volunteers. Another dozen or more men were volunteers because they had originally been drafted or about to be drafted and were given an opportunity to "enlist" (volunteer) for better duty or better job. Use extreme caution when reading statistics; when people say they were volunteers...were they volunteers because they were going to be drafted ANYWAY? On paper that will show up as a volunteer. But in reality, he wanted no part of it, but thought things might go better for him if offered a deal (by enlisting/volunteering).

Answer 2

The answer to that is not easy to give and will require some educated guesses. The South Vietnamese army grew - including its Reserve Militia - to around 500,000 strong, which was about as big as the US army when it reached it full size there. The North Vietnamese themselves give the strenght of their army in the final years as 690,000. But they had considerable numbers of 'auxiliary troops', and the number of the female support (and sometimes combat) troops alone is given as 1.5 million. The male support troops would have numbered as least as much. Then there were the Viet Cong guerilla troops, whose numbers are uncertain, but probably around 25-50,000.

The size of the Vietnamese armies however is just a figure at a given point in time: many more soldiers would over all those years have come, served and left again. As an example, although the US army in its heyday there numbered 500,000, a total of 2.5 million US soldiers had come and gone over the years. That means the number of soldiers involved was five times as big as the army at its largest size. If we (probably correctly) assume that Vietnamese soldiers on average served much longer, we could multiply the number of North and South Vietnamese troops by 2.5 instead of five. We'll assume that the figures given by the North Vietnamese on their auxiliary troops already are numbers 'over time'.

You then arrive at the size of the armies (500,000 + 690,000 + 50,000) times 2.5 equals 3.1 millionVietnamese having served in the armies over the years. Added to that: 3 million 'auxiliary forces' in North Vietnam plus (at a conservative guess) 1 million auxiliaries in South Vietnam makes a grand total of 7 million North and South Vietnamese directly involved in the fighting over the around 10 years that the conflict lasted. But remember, it's largely an educated guess and it does not count those that got caught in the middle.

Answer 3

Approximately 2 1/2 million US fighting men and 7,000 US female nurses served in the Vietnam War.

Answer 4

8 million people