KFC Sandwich to Operation Speedy Express

LTG Julian J. Ewell "ELIMINATION"

The video opens with an appetizing close-up of KFC's National Hot Chicken Sandwich, then abruptly cuts to footage and text about Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell and the Vietnam War's brutal Operation Speedy Express, ending with explosions and bombing imagery. The joke is the absurdly dark bait-and-switch: a cheerful fast-food tasting clip is paired with a grim historical narration about mass killing and elimination ratios, making the sandwich introduction feel ominous in retrospect. EN: The video opens with an appetizing close-up of KFC's National Hot Chicken Sandwich, then abruptly cuts to footage and text about Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell and the Vietnam War's brutal Operation Speedy Express, ending with explosions and bombing imagery. The joke is the absurdly dark bait-and-switch: a cheerful fast-food tasting clip is paired with a grim historical narration about mass killing and elimination ratios, making the sandwich introduction feel ominous in retrospect.

The new National Hot Chicken Sandwich from KFC. Let's see how it tastes. 1968. The US Army begins Operation Speedy Express. Led by General Julian Ewell, the operation would be a land, air, and sea offensive in the densely populated Mekong Delta region. Mobilizing helicopter gunships, B-52s, Navy vessels, thousands of ground troops, Navy SEALs, snipers, and F-4 phantoms dropping napalm by the ton, Ewell became obsessed with elimination ratios, meaning the number of Vietnamese KIA compared to Americans. Body count was everything. It didn't take long for Ewell to become known as the Butcher of the Delta. Before Ewell took control of the 9th Infantry Division, they managed an elimination ratio of 8 to 1, which was slightly higher than the average in Vietnam, but that wasn't enough for Ewell, not by a long shot. Under Ewell, the elimination ratio would rise rapidly, doubling and tripling until it reached an astonishing 134 to 1. Speedy Express marked the introduction of night search missions, with helicopter gunships prowling the countryside in the dark of night. Anybody that was out there was fair game. According to whistleblower George Lewis, the number one deadliest policy was firing on anyone who ran. Run from the GIs, run from the gunships, they'd zap them. Over the course of Speedy Express, the 9th Infantry Division fired over 300,000 artillery rounds. 6,000 airstrikes were carried out, dropping 5,000 tons of bombs and nearly 2,000 tons of napalm. The countryside looked like the Verdun battlefields. By the end of it, the 9th Infantry Division reported nearly 11,000 enemy KIA, despite recovering only 748 weapons. According to the Pentagon's own estimate, as many as 7,000 of those were civilians.

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