See also: Vietcong (homonymy)

The pejorative term of Việt Cộng is the contraction of Cộng Sản , word Vietnamese to say “communist” - what makes of them being equivalent it of the French expression “coconuts”. This name was used during the Guerre of Việt Nam by the South Vietnamese and their American allies to designate the combatants of the National front for the release of the Vietnam (FNL), from which they compared the action to a communist Guérilla . In truth, the FNL, certainly opposed to the mode South Vietnamese of Ngô Đình Diệm and faithful to the North-Vietnamese Communist government, was ideologically not more communist than in its time the league Vietminh was it: those which it gathered with the first chief were the victims of the expeditious methods of the South Vietnamese mode, which counted as well the Marxists as liberals. The Communism which he sometimes asserted was as well as possible only “instrumental”, being used as support with the fundamental nationalism of the Vietnameses.

The combatants of the FNL frequently made use of the vegetation to approach the enemy and to tighten ambushes to him before disappearing again. The Americans used chemicals, of which the orange Agent, to deforest the forests, in the hope to deprive the combatants of the FNL of their advantage. This was and is still at the origin of very many malformations and diseases in the civil population Vietnamese, and returned large unproductive land surfaces and polluted. That nevertheless was not sufficient to come to end from the determination and ingeniousness from Việt Cộng, accustomed to fight on this type of grounds:

• tunnels of Củ Chi dug to 40 km of Saigon, located under an American base, tops of 1m20 and broad of 0m80 where they lived under terrible conditions.
• the German shepherds used by the G.I to flush out the combatants Việt Cộng were ineffective because those put Poivre on their way and were washed with American soap.
• the rats of tunnels of US Army were created to dismantle them.

The American conventional army could not come to end from the techniques from guerilla, using of their knowledge of the ground, of the logistical support of China and the “psychological warfare” in spite of the very heavy losses undergone at the time of the offensive of the Small fireclay cup in 1968. The United States embourbèrent itself in the War of Việt Nam and the crises which it caused on their own land. She did not manage to prevent the unification of Việt Nam under the impulse of North.

See too

• Armed conventional: popular Army Vietnamese