Jared Northridge
English II
Mrs. Davidson
8 March 2012
Guerrilla Warfare
Picture yourself as an American soldier walking through a jungle. The only noises you hear are the drops of moisture bouncing off the leaves of the trees and the footsteps of the other soldiers in your platoon. You are in a foreign country you have never heard of, fighting for a cause you don’t fully understand. You are in a small Asian country called Vietnam performing search and destroy missions, searching for your enemies and then eliminating them. You are in a village searching for the Viet Cong. You have all the residents of the village lined up. They’re all in a panic and you have no clue what they’re saying. All of a sudden you’re being shot at from one of the huts. Some of the people you thought were just residents of the small jungle village are now killing off your platoon, your brothers. Through panic of the villagers and sound of bullets flying past your head, you decide it is just best to lie down and wait. The next thing you know the shooting has stopped, and you hear the sound of some people running deep into the forest. You were just the victim of guerrilla warfare.
A lot of wars have been lost because of guerrilla warfare. Two examples are the United States Vietnam War and the French’s invasion of Spain. Guerrilla warfare is “the use of hit-and-run tactics by small, mobile groups of irregular forces operating in territory controlled by a hostile, regular force” (“Guerilla” p1).
The Vietnam War was fought from November 1, 1955, to April 30, 1975. The Vietnam War was fought between North Vietnam, and their communist allies, and South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other non-communist countries (“Vietnam” p1). The North Vietnamese had a secret weapon called the Viet Cong (p7). The Viet Cong are “South Vietnamese guerrilla force” (p7). The war was an uphill battle for the United States and South Vietnamese, because the Viet Cong were using their guerrilla...