American Soldier Simulation Analysis

For the first half of 2nd trimester, I experienced being a vietnam soldier in a simulation. We did this activity so we could experience what it 's like being a soldier during a time of war. During this simulation we went through different events that were similar to what the soldiers went through. We learned about the strategies that both offenses used and the brutality the american government used on the vietnamese. In this essay, I describe and compare the life of an actual soldier in combat and what me and my classmates went through in the simulation.
The life of an actual american soldier was very violent and uncomfortable. They always had to be on their toes to avoid the vietcong and things were always moving fast. One thing they went …show more content…
Soldiers lost their limbs or were ultimately killed by traps such as these. A third thing would probably have to be the lost or decline of the moral. They had kill so many civilians because of not knowing whether or not they were vietcong or innocent. The vietcong would use women and children as traps to guilt the americans. Some would strap grenades onto the children and have them walk up to an american soldier and they would explode. This made american soldiers angry because they didn 't want to kill the innocent but could not take chances. My lai was probably the biggest tragedy, it was the death of 400-500 civilians from a vietnamese village although this was done illegally. A fourth thing would probably be the diet of the soldiers. While on missions they had these stale meals in a can called C rations. These meals were very old and were probably just sitting around and given to them. They had to use C4 explosives to heat them up but could not be done at night in case it attracted the attention of the vietcong, so many times these meals had to eaten cold. Soldiers really didn 't complain about these until …show more content…
I didn 't have it as bad as others but I had my share of experience. The first thing I went through was the lost of my deferment. I had done all the work I needed to do as well as scored well on my quizzes. I thought if I just kept that up it would get me through the war but we had a surprise draft. Mr. Ferry kept picking birthday months till at least three people went into the war. I was the first drafted when september was picked and I was very upset. Another thing I went through was getting shot or bombed throughout class. Now that my deferment was gone I had to start worrying about how many life points I had. I needed make sure I could sit and eat during the movie at the end of the unit. This was getting very difficult for me because as time went on, I kept losing points for some reason and I was very unlucky when it came to getting bombed or shot. I made sure I was truthful about if I got shot or not because I know that actual soldiers could not choose their fate and they had to experience way worse consequences than me. The third thing I went through was having to do my notes all the time. I knew that they didn 't count towards my experience in the war anymore but I still wanted to do them to the best of my ability because I still had the test to take at the end of the chapter so I needed to make sure I got the right amount of knowledge needed for that. The fourth thing that happened for me was having to