Operation Wandering Soul (Vietnam War)
Operation Wandering Soul was a propaganda campaign by the US armed forces during the Vietnam War .
background
The company aimed as a psychological warfare on the Vietnamese belief of the erring souls (English: Wandering souls ) of the belief in spirits and the cult of ancestors . This states that the deceased must be buried in their homeland, or the soul wanders aimlessly and suffering. So if someone is buried improperly or not at all, his soul wanders forever. It is believed that they can be contacted on the day of their death near the place where they died or were buried. Vietnamese honor the souls of the deceased on holidays when they return to their place of death.
The operation
Engineers from the 6th Psychological Operations Battalion (PSYOP) spent weeks recording eerie sounds and distorted Vietnamese voices in a reverberation room, which, among other things , were supposed to represent the voices of the ghosts of fallen Viet Cong fighters and North Vietnamese soldiers in the field. This tape was called Ghost Tape Number 10 . You could hear Buddhist funeral music on the tapes , heavily distorted, eerie noises and the voices of supposedly “deceased” who called out to their compatriots or “family members” and “friends” instead of dying a senseless death and wandering around as ghosts to give up and go home. The aim was to demoralize the enemy and make him leave his positions.
Some US soldiers carried loudspeaker rucksacks during this operation, and the tapes were played with loudspeakers from river patrol boats of the US Navy and helicopters at daytime and especially at night. The tape was described as so effective that US forces were directed to use it out of earshot of allied South Vietnamese soldiers, although some of them, along with US soldiers, were actively involved in its use.
The whole thing was supported by a series of various propaganda leaflets from US American and Australian PSYOP units, on which photos of fallen, unburied Vietnamese and North Vietnamese soldiers in the field were shown, which were provided with Vietnamese texts and dropped on enemy territory. The extent of the company's success is unknown. Viet Cong fighters were usually shot at for responding to tape. This discarded the intended effect of the operation.