Talk:Tour of duty

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Tour of Duty in Vietnam

I think a section on the actual length of a tour of duty in Vietnam would be helpful. Most people think a tour of duty in 'Nam was a year but this varied. Air Force pilots would fly 100 missions, the last ten missions being "milk runs" before they rotated out. Then, after some training stateside they might go back for another 100 missions. Many servicemen were sent to Vietnam on Tempotary Duty (TDY) for a few months which extended into half a year or so. The actual number of American troops in Vietnam was deceptive because just listing PCS (Permanent Change of Station) troops did not include TDY's. I recall at one time the number of troops in Vietnam was given as 500,000 BUT they did not list the 250,000 TDY troops, which actually brought it up to 750,000 troops. Also, I've heard officers only had to serve 6 months in Vietnam while enlisted men had to serve a full 12 months. And so forth. Anybody got any published, verifiable sources that we could use in the Wiki article? The military has all kinds of ways of "cooking the books" to juggle the numbers. For instance, I've heard that company commanders would be raked over the coals for getting too many casualities in Vietnam so they'd go to the aid tent where the wounded were being treated and kick out the guys with light, superficial wounds so they wouldn't be counted, thus depriving them of their Purple Hearts.--But they'd thus artificially bring the casuality count down. 71.154.158.137 (talk) 07:03, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]