I was educated in France and at the height of the war us school kids were out on the streets having running battles with the CRS & police aided by teachers and other activists against the Vietnam war this included the fire bombing of the US Consulate in Nice by persons unknown.

To compare activities in the UK and Europe riots in the UK are a teddy bears picnic in comparison I believe that 15 rioters and three police were killed.

I also knew of French activists who decided to further their beliefs by serving with the Viet Cong on the battle front. They have always had an avid hatred of Americans.

True your saying that the British were there in an advisory capacity on a minimal scale, but the advise imparted to the Americans was to track the enemy forces back to their camps. Gen Westmoreland never took this advise preferring to carpet bomb. One of the French who served with the Viets said to me Americans could be tracked any where as they dropped Coke cans, empty food packs and cigarettes where ever they went and had no jungle lore. This was also helped by the liberal supply of heroin made available to the US Forces by the Viet Cong sympathizers. More Americans returned to the US as dope heads than the forces could believe as they have no morals or the morals of alley cats and are easily lead. Bombing as they did was both ineffective and counter productive and you cannot throw might against a hidden force. Afghanistan is another lost cause. British losses 1839 - 42, 1878 - 80, 1919, 2001 and onwards. Up the 1970 - 90's and earlier the Russians occupied and lost Afghanistan and they had similar terrain to the country along their frontiers with reluctant servicemen posted there. No foreign forces will ever win Afghanistan as in Vietnam and sweeteners do not work.

I understand from a reliable source (reliable to me anyway) that a very small number of British Special Forces were operating in the field in Vietnam during the war. Apparentally they were attached to the Anzac SF's out there in the mid-late sixties. Also, I recall meeting a new Zealand guy at a military history show, oh about eight to ten years ago now, and he told me that when their boys got home from the war in Vietnam they had to hold very low key reunions for sometime, for fear of the anti-war people's rage at their involvement in the conflict. He wasn't sent out there himself though. No, he was doing his national service in the artillery but never received orders to go. The south vietnamese regime was always doomed to failure in my book. They were fatally corrupt, incompetent and as the communists would have said, decadent with it, from the beginning. But regarding the protests in the West, I've always wondered where all those protestors got to when the Hannoi communists were killing, torturing and 're-educating' hundreds of thousands of south vietnamese after the war had ended, not to mention the racial genocidal actions against the indigenous Hill tribe peoples by the communist regime. That seemed to be 'conveniently' forgotten about by the protestors.