Hi when somebody say "He served 3 tours in Nam". Does it mean that he was in Vietnam for 3 yrs right?
Hi everytime when I watch war movies, many people would say stuff like "I served 3 tours in Nam & I served 82 Airborne Div". When someone say 3 tours, does it mean 3 yrs? Thank you & I'm just a civilian.
The normal tour for the Army was 12 months. For the Marines, it was 13 months.
I do not know what it was for the Navy or Air Force.
So, if they are not trying to deceive you, 3 tours should be three years or a bit longer for Marines unless they were wounded and sent home early during one or more tours.
Unfortunately, many people use the number of tours in order to imply that they were there for a year or more per tour when they were not.
Part of the confusion is that officers were reassigned to a different unit every 6 months. Yes, it was dumb, a senior NCO would just get a new officer trained well enough to function without endangering the lives of his men and he would be transferred to a different unit facing different challenges.
Anyway, I have seen a number of folks who were officers who will represent their time in Vietnam as number of "tours" based on how many of these six month assignments they had. Their thinking seems to be that a change of unit is a new "tour".
I always get suspicious of anyone who gives me their time in country as number of tours as it means different things to different folks.
When someone tells you that they served x numbers of tours, ask them how many months they were there. That way, they have to give you a meaningful unambiguous answer or admit to themselves that they are lying.
Many of us extended our tour of duty while we were there. Generally, these extensions were for six months.
I was there for a year and extended for an additional six months. So at the end of the year, I went home on leave and then came back for six months. Some would characterize the six month extension as another tour. I do not.
That is why I always give my time in-country as 18 months or say that I was there from January of '69 to August of '70.
Another game that people like to play when talking to those who were not there is to list the number of campaigns that they were on.
This allows for deceiving folks who were not there without actually lying.
The war was broken down into a number of campaigns based mostly on large scale military operations that took place. All of us got a campaign ribbon when we went and got an additional star on the ribbon for each campaign that occurred while we were in-country.
Please note that this does not mean that we personally had anything whatsoever to do with the particular military operation that a particular campaign period was named for. There are many veterans who like to impress civilians with their campaign ribbon without explaining how meaningless it actually is.
The real problem is that some years had multiple campaigns and some did not. So, the number of campaigns signified by a veterans campaign ribbon tells you little or nothing about what that individual did in the war.
I was there for six or seven campaigns just because there was a lot going on at the time. It means nothing.
I really do not remember how many campaigns were declared for the war. I think it was about 12 or 13 over the entire war.
Introduction to Vietnam Holidays by Kuoni Travel
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