VietNam Era

by Tina 24 Replies latest jw friends

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  bboyneko 2

  Craig, kill or be killed, simple as that.
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  Hojon

  Oh yeah, I wasn't criticizing it at all. I just think it's interesting from a mental standpoint that they basically put you in a "kill or be killed" situation and then when it's over they put you back in "normal" society here at home and expect you to forget about what you were just doing.
• 

  Ustabee

  Jeffory:

  First, let me say, "Welcome home, Brother." I, too lost a cousin in the 25th Inf at Cu Chi. He was KIA on 30 Oct 1968. He was in the 2nd Battalion, 27th Inf Reg't, 25th Inf Division. His name was Danny Gray of Fordyce, AR. He was 20 at the time, on his first combat patrol. The 25th Inf Div was stationed at Cu Chi, well known by another name, "The Iron Triangle". The regiments in the 25th sustained some of the highest casualties of the Vietnam Conflict especially in 67 and 68.

  LDH:
  

  After all my Dad saw especially, I wonder if that didn't set him up to buy into the WTBS load of bull lock stock and barrel.

  I know in my case, it did to a certain extent. Many of us of the time were sick of the 'establishment' and we had lost too many friends to a war that seemed to have no real purpose. A paradise earth where everyone got along sounded mighty darn good to me at the time.

  The only thing I know for sure is: that I don't know anything for sure.
• 

  Ray Skyhorse

  I was just a little kid during the Nam era. I remember watching the nightly news on our little black & white tv set in the kitchen. There were usually scenes of some news correspondent in the field with U.S. soldiers launching mortars or something like that.

  I remember my mom sitting in the kitchen one day and crying. She had received a letter from a relative. With the letter was a clip of hair from her cousin who was killed in Nam. He was decapitated by a helicopter. I remember trying to console my mom. It was very sad.

  Peace,
  Ray
• 

  Country Joe

  Hi Tina,
  Answering Talley and following old Country Joe and the Fish around on his links was a real Time Warp.
  Man! All the old feelings of the time are still indelibly printed.

  Imagine, Country Joe, the outspoken Revolutionary with an FBI file and CANCELLED from the Ed Sullivan Show because of "Gimme an F.U.C.K" intro to his "Fixin on Dying" tune at some concert, has a website nowadays.
  We just saw the Grassroots at our local Fair. After 35 years those guys are still beating the concert circuit. It was great.

  As for myself, I was pretty well torn apart. On the one hand I got my father and uncles that did their part in WW2.
  My dad was a ground crew Chief with the 8th Air Force assigned to keeping their designated B17, "The Darling Lee", flying out of England. It would come in all shot to shit and they would fix it up and get it back in the air for yet another mission. I've got photos of my dad when he went in while still but 21 or 22 and after 2 years in England his photos looked like he aged over 10 years. And he wasn't even getting shot at.
  He succumbed to cancer at 40 when I was 11.

  Now here is another war with the good guys fighting the evil bad guys?
  Thats how my uncles viewed it anyway. Especially one in particular who served in the South Pacific Navy.
  Anyway, defecting to Canada for political asylum wasn't an option for me. I'd forever be a Benedict Arnold in the family memoirs.
  Fortunately, I had a great history teacher my senior year High School(class of 68)He really gave us the whole Vietnam political scene and early US involvement up to the present garbage currently in motion.
  Anyway, running down to the local recruitment office for the Army or Marines and signing up so I could blow up the evil bad Commie Guys fixin on invading our Western Seaboard, was also not an option either.
  After all, it was a CIVIL WAR, with hostilities stretching back for centuries.
  Man! The Government Propaganda in those days.
  "If WE Don't Stop the Godless Commies in S.E.Asia, They will soon be invading Our Western Seaboard and Raping your Mothers and Sisters."
  So I did the next best thing and stayed in school using the "School Deferment" option.
  My step brother Bill still cracks me up. He opted for a more permanent deferment by taking advantage of the military's "NO GAYS ALLOWED" rule. He managed to pull it off too(pardon the pun.)
  Always meant to press him for more details on his "Final Exam" as it were, but decided the less I knew the better.
  Shows what sort of convictions I got, Eh What? I'd a rather got shot at.
  Nonetheless, the Government still made sure that if we deferment types screwed up our deferments, they were standing by with a BIG SMILE waitin for us with wide open arms.
  We still had to go through the physical and testing process to make sure we were fit enough to be shot at. Naturally I passed with flying colors.
  It was pretty strange seeing just about everybody I've ever known since kindergarden mostly naked and herded like cattle.
  Again my abysmal lack of convictions showed threw during the written exam part. Right next to me was the classic full bearded hippie type looking a bit like John Lennon complete with head band and round eyeglasses, who at the start of the test went and sat on the floor right next to me and started doing some Mantra Chanting. "OMMMMMMMM" "OMMMMMMMM"
  Back then, I'm thinking "Heres a Nutjob"
  Nowadays I'm thinking "What a Genius"
  Well, this freaked out the examiners and they ended up dragging him off. I recall the poor guy's feet didn't even touch the ground all the way out the door. Later we caught glimpses of him as they dragged him through with the rest of us, like during the physical. The examiners had a time of it making this guy bend over and say "AHHH". I think it took like four of them to do it.
  Wonder whatever happened to that guy!
  Well I bounced around one school to another.
  Went to a lot of great Rallys.
  The Three Day Nonstop Concerts on campuses like at U Of Mass were great.
  I decided that Woodstock was too far to drive, but my sister managed to make it. She spent most of it stuck in traffic though, but she still has the ticket stub and a T-Shirt.
  Never bothered me too much for not going cuz I hate traffic and the weather sucked, but still, who knew, as concerts go, that it would never be equalled.
  It would be Cool to be able to say, "Yep! I was at Woodstock".
  Any Woodstock Folk here?

  Well the Party Scene was starting to mess with my Deferment Scene and the Government Guys started following me around with a butterfly net.
  Then somebody got the bright idea about having a Lottery.
  I suspect that it was more to ease the G-Guy's concience more than to give us Cannon Fodder types a chance at winning or losing.
  Like "HEY!!! It ain't our fault you drew a lousy number"

  Anyways, I pulled a number 202 which weren't bad but not great either since they were hauling off 40 or so numbers at a time. It weren't going to take too long to get to good old 202. Sure enough, in no time at all they got to number 195.
  So I thought, Well, Here it is! I ain't going to Canada and My School Deferment is Toast. I think I figured that by the time I got into the Air Force or the Navy which I think were pretty jammed up that my number would be up anyway.
  So I decided to PARTY!!!
  I ended up hitchiking all over the Hawaiian Islands and up and down the California coast and visiting my 4-F Defered cousin in Arizona.
  Every month they stayed on 195 was another month reprieve to PARTY some more.
  As it turned out, they stayed on 195 till the end of the year, then they had the Second Lottery. So I was basically saved unless they killed off all the Second Lottery guys in which case they would have picked up where they left off in the First Lottery or hopefully by then had a Third Lottery.
  So there you go!
  Man! That was a long war.
  Lost some good friends and neighbors.

  Joe, Who still thinks Tie Dye is still HIP and who can still just barely make it into an old pair of Bell Bottoms. Not bad for an Old Hippy, Eh What?
• 

  Skimmer

  I was too young by several years to be drafted during the Vietnam war, but I remember quite well the social and political environment of the time.

  Some Americans today claim that United States' involvment in Southeast Asia during those years was a good thing as it helped demonstrate to the Soviet Union that the US was willing to expend many billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives to deter communistic expansion. Was it worth it? We may never know.

  The central un-truth told to the American people at the time was that South Vietnam was a real country and that its people were willing to fight for their independence. The truth was that the "nation" of South Vietnam was only a convenient political fiction and that much of its population and perhaps nearly all of its agrarian population did not care enough to fight for themselves. They have received their reward.

  The beginning of the end of US involvement started around 1968 or so when the Selective Service (the conscription branch of the Department of Defense) went to a lottery based system. This change was prompted by an ever increasing public perception (mostly correct) that the earlier draft was biased in favor of the white, the wealthy, and the politically connected. After the lottery was instituted, it became much more difficult to evade the draft based on social standing, and this in turn raised more uproar from a broader base (the well-off parents of the potential draftees).

  The US Selective Service is still around and there is still a requirement for registering for the draft for eighteen year old males. I very seriously doubt if a draft will be re-established short of a national emergency, or at least until most of the Vietnam conflict participants are in old folks' homes. Personally, I think that conscription is little different from slavery and it has no place in a free society. If the taxpayers are unwilling to pay a fair price for soldiers, or if volunteer soldiers can't be found due to the the unpopularity of a conflict, then the national leadership should wise up and keep the hell out of the war.
• 

  CPiolo

  Tina:

  I was a child and a teen during the Vietnam years, but I remember well the images on TV and in LIFE magazine. No one in my family served either, my father and uncle served in the Korean War, in the Navy. Funny thing was my uncle got deathly seasick. Sure picked the wrong service. My grandfathers never served in the military, one immigrated to the U.S. after WWI as a teen, and the other I'm not sure why he never served. Both were too young to serve in WWI and had families during WWII. Maybe they didn't go because of that. By the Korean War they were too old.

  My first wife's uncle served in Vietnam and nobody could make sudden loud noises around him. He'd jump up and hide behind whatever was near, and sometimes would yell about the enemy --the remnants of his service over there. I also had a boss who had served, but he only acknowledged he'd served if someone asked, and never went into any detail beyond what he had to to answer their questions.

  CPiolo
• 

  waiting

  Howdy,

  I met my to-be-husband in 1968, he had been "hippie-style" for 2 yrs. However, then he turned 18, the lottery system was in - and amazingly, he wanted to come back to The Truth (he was baptised when around 13.)

  All of a sudden he was righteous - haircut, underwear, meetings, etc. And the hypocritical stance worked, but he didn't need it - his number was never called.

  A friend I had in hs got into college, but didn't make the football team (his first love.) Joined Army/Marines (don't remember which), and about 6 mos. later, came home in a box from VietNam. Wasn't even 19 yet. I really don't think he had even shaved yet. Just a kid.

  There were waaaay too many kids brought home in boxes and wheelchairs.

  waiting
• 

  Patriot

  My father served an extended tour with the 82nd.

  Recieved numerous citations and medals.

  According to my mother, he was never the same.

  I remember that about every 5 years or so, he would get drunk and cry for hours looking at a photo album whiched contained pics of all of his friends that never came back. He never ever talked to us about it. I found out more information when he past away in Jan. this year and I went through all his papers.

  He was 61.

  Mav-
• 

  buffalosrfree

  Vietnam, yeah I remember it, I had three tours of duty there. I to want to cry when I think of all the dead left behind, both American and Vietnamese. I hated the hippies, stayed away from them because I knew if they f***** with me they would be in la la land, and I would be at Alcatraz U so to speak. It will be something thats always just there in the back of my mind, I was a loner when I grew up and that paid off with dividends in Nam, I didn't grow attached to anyone, and in fact seldom if ever even talked to anyone. I didn't need them, and didn't want them relying on me to be thier friend. In fact after awhile on the first tour, met a high schoold buddy from home and he later told me that I scared the sh** out of him just looking at him.
  I served with units of the 4th Infantry Division, 1st Infantry Division, 101 AirBorne, and 144 avaiation company. Been there done that and don't have any dreams about it, have only mentioned Vietnam once or twice since leaving there, In fact my sister recently told my nephew 30yrs old, who was curious about Vietnam and what went on there to not talk with me about it, because I had never talked about it with anyone from home or for that matter from anywhere else. My favorite saying back then was that I was in fact that I was the "quick, and charlie was the dead" had super quick hands and reflexes then, still do to a degree. Well enough of that, thats more than what I wanted to say about it anyway. Buff