The no. 1 cause of death on my watch as a Casualty Clerk during Vietnam was burns from White Phosphorous and Napalm. That’s what the hospital specialized in.
Not that the Vietcong and NVA had these white phosphorous (and napalm) weapons. No, they would overun US camps and bases and turn the American’s weapons of mass destruction against the invaders of their homeland.
I’ve tried to escape my PSTD from working 2.5 years with American casualties who died in our special burn wards in Wiesbaden AF Hospital. The men who died on those wards still haunt my dreams.
Here, in this video, our interviewed American soldier explains what he heard after the Russian’s used white phosphorous on Ukranian positions.
He heard 20 to 30 Ukranian soldiers scream in uncontrollable pain as the Wally Peter landed on them. (White Phosphorous ignites when it hits oxygen.) In a powder form, it slowly descends from artillery shells with fuses set to explode in an air burst.
Were it to land on say on your arm, it will burn through your skin, burn through your bone, burn throug the skin on the other side of your arm. It’s the nastiest weapon - other than Napalm and Agent Orange - and the only way it is supposed to be used is as an illumination round, nothing more.
Artillery was my first MOS (military occupational standard) and one of the things team leaders of batteries had to be aware of is never leaving artillery pieces usable if a position was about to be deserted in a retreat.
How do you destroy the long tube on a 155mm howitzer so the enemy can never use them against American Troops (as Ukranian troops are doing with captured Russian tanks and artillery pieces)? This is how: you drop a White Phosphorous Grenade down the tube and let that sucker melt through the steel and destroy the breechblock as well. And White Phosphorous is not to be used in anti-personnel weapons ever again. But then there’s that sick frack, Mad Vlad Putin, and he doesn’t have a conscience.
If you watch this video, you’ll see the white phosphorous float from the skie like a rain of white lights with streamers. Were it July 4th, you’d stand their slack jawed and think, “Pretty fireworks.”
When the CBS reporter asked “Do you think this is a righteous war?”
Without hesitation, this American soldier fighting for Ukraine blurted unequivocally “Yes, because we are fighting pure evil.”
In this soldier’s retelling, after hearing Ukraine soldiers sob in the worst pain from being burned by White Phosphorous, he heard gunshot after gunshot. The harmed Ukraine troops were committing suicide with their own pistols.
