does anyone remember Vietnam?

[bat47]

I would be surprised if many people ever give Viet Nam a though. Most people give little or any thought to December 7, 1941 or June 6, 1944.

[benhinds2000]

Most of the people I work with don't even remember the first Gulf war much less 'nam. I would never have been drafted, lottery number to high. But I did enlist in the Navy. Went to Vietnam on the Saratoga, 72-73. Do I remember? I can't watch a movie about 'nam without crying.
Thank you
benhinds2000

[jaeger]

Never been there, but from what I have been told it was hell. I give you nam guys all and then some for respect. In the now we have people that support the troops. you guys had the "baby killer haters". I just want to say " thank you". I have been to afghanistan and iraq and could not even envision of the shit you fellas went through.

just a baby.

USMC
1998-2002 2nd Force Recon CLNC.

[troy2000]

As a Vietnam vet myself, I think you younger people need to know (and some of you older ones need to be reminded) that it wasn't "the country" calling us baby-killers; it was a relatively few noisy people in the country. Most of us came home to family, friends and neighbors who were just glad to see us back in one piece.

The people in this country as a whole didn't turn against the Vietnam War because we were killing Vietnamese, be they young or old. They turned against it because Americans were dying, and they decided 58,000 dead Americans and over 300,000 wounded were enough casualties for a war with no clearcut objectives, and apparently no end.

And while I have no doubt it happened somewhere to some people, I assure you that no one I personally knew got spit on, including me, or the spitter would've been missing some teeth and maybe his tongue.

[samuel]

Troy2000:I am talking about the lifetime health care promised to disabled vets and job preference.I am talking about how this country always has and always will treat the men that protect them.I am talking about what is going to happen to the veterans from the mess we are in now.You are right,we didnt get spit on,we got "SHIT" on. sam.

[nodlenor]

Yes I remember Vietnam, The unqualified leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful. '68-69

[big boomer]

I was drafted in 71, was married with 1 kid had kid 2 while in. They changed the rules so they could draft married people just in time to get me. But as I said I was lucky I did not have to go there but my best buddy was there. He sent me a picture of him, on the back it said just let them try to take this place and then said they did take it.

[NRAJOE]

My brother Rick in Vietnam, Republic of...1966....somewhere near Da Nang
1st Airmobile Cavalry...chopper door gunner...

[samuel]

Thanks for the picture>What great men they were!Unsung heros. sam.

[mdj696]

Turned 18 in 1966, became draft dodger by enlisting. Sent to the Nam 1st Infantry Division 67-68. Nam Vet and I were in same general area but at different times. Ended up fish hook region of Cambodia. Its been 40 years now, but a lot of it still seems like yesterday. VA didn't have much to do with us when we came back. Now they seem to bend over bacwards, at least for me. Its my guess that with so many WWII vets dying off they have to have us Nam vets so they can keep their jobs. I tell all guys I know who went to a least get an Agent Orange physical to get foot in door. We're not getting any younger and medical expenses that devistate other people financially, VA really comes to bat as far as that goes.

[gregkilo]

I am 48 years old. I came of age watching my uncles (5 of them, 3 marines, 2 army and all of them retired from their respective branches after serving more than 20 years, no officers, just NCOs) come home with the thousand yard stare for months. They would talk about WWII, and Korea but would only talk about lighter topics where Viet Nam was concerned, ond only then with tears in their eyes. I want to thank all the Vets for their service, the ones who came home, the ones who didnt, and the ones who left part of themselves over there, and espically those who brought it back home with them. You who know understand what I mean. God bless us all because we damn sure need it.

[rice paddy dadd]

1st Brigade, 5th Infantry Division. Our AO was northern I Corps, just south of the DMZ. We were OPCONNed to the 3rd Marine Division.
To all my brothers and sisters on this board I'd like to say "Welcome Home".

[billy]

to tell the truth i am 45 years old and do not remember anything about it.
my mother had two brothers there and would turn the tv off when the news came on..

p.s. we lived on a farm .there weren't many hippies or demonstrators in the cornfields of Iowa.

[vikingpreacher]

I didn't serve in Vietnam but, I find it amazing today when people say the death toll in Iraq is to high but, when you look at Vietnam and WW2 it seems so little for what we've given the Iraqis.

[kygunsmith]

I been trying to forget, all these years. It was a noble effort by noble men to save a country from enslavement. Like Korea before it. Personally, I can say I don't give a damn whether we were right or wrong! We kicked axx. Until the leftist Dem's cut off the money, following, of course negative media coverage, ie. "The war is lost"- Walter Cronkite, or Senate majority leader-Democrat Reid?
If Obama or Hillary can get the troops home soon enough to cause failure of Iraq's stability they can blame it on Bush. When the mideast then erupts these evil bastards will bemoan the loss of civilization when Israel launches the "big one", in defense, of course. But if the leftists can only drain our pockets even more for a few years it will be worth it, to them. If Iraq survives they will still blame Bush!
I was enthralled when Nixon ordered us into Cambodia an Laos to stop the Ho- Chi Minh refuge mentality of the gooks. When B52's went overhead you knew Nixon loved you! You almost felt sorry for the poor wretches hit by these raids. Almost.
Sorry, I knew I shouldn't have entered this talk! They (VA)give me medicine for this "stuff"!

[Cyrano]

Mom and Dad were both World War II vets. She was an Army nurse who spent the war in an Army hospital in Boston. He enlisted before the war and made the landings in in North Africa and Sicily with the 9th Division, and fought heavily in both of those campaigns. The 9th missed D-Day but made up for it by clearing the Cherbourg area and later going on to clear the Hurtgen Forest, which is where Dad and his buddy got blown out of their foxhole by a German mortar shell and medevacked home by air. He met Mom after he'd been back in the hospital on a different ward for a year (he was in orthopedics, she was working pediatrics).

Growing up, I never heard him talk about what he did in the war much. He saw an awful lot of action; I knew that much, anyhow, from Mom. Both of them were quietly patriotic and brought me up the same way.

My cousin Tom was in the right age bracket to be drafted, so he volunteered instead. He was a state champion rifle shooter and had no trouble shooting High Expert, with the result he was sent to sniper school and assigned to a unit in I Corps. He didn't finish his tour. The NVA took exception to his popping a full colonel who was leading a reconaissance patrol at a distance 800 meters from a guard tower and mortared the hell out of his tower. He got blown off the ladder as he tried to get to a bunker and went 60 feet straight down onto concrete. He spent the next two years getting his right leg put back together at an Army hospital. We used to go visit him on weekends.

As an ex-Army nurse, Mom was a member of the club. Dad was a member of the club because he spent four years on a ward like Tom's. The Vietnam vets normally wouldn't talk to the World War II vets, but they'd talk to Dad because he'd been a grunt just like them. They told him what was really going on over there, not what the Johnson Administration claimed was happening.

It appalled both my folks, how American troops were being so grieviously misued by their own government. It transformed them from "my country, right or wrong" to "I love my country, but not this administration" kind of patriots. They began writing their representative, demanding that he tell the administration to either fish or cut bait: either prosecute the war aggressively with every weapon in the arms locker, chase the enemy wherever he went and to hell with borders, beat the enemy into the ground, capture their capital and hang Ho Chi Minh from the nearest lamppost; or tell the gutless wonders in the South Vietnamese government to fight their own damned war and bring our troops home, not spend American blood to support a corrupt South Vietnamese government.

I got in trouble in the 8th grade for telling my Social Studies teacher that the media was lying about the Seige of Khe Sanh, that we were not losing hundreds of C-130s trying to supply the place. (I'd absorbed some lessons from the GIs on the ward, too.) I was able to prove my allegation, and could have proved it easier if there had been VCRs back then.

I got in trouble again in high school for calling my World History teacher a commie pinko bastard, for lying to the class about how the Communist Party system worked in North Vietnam and Russia and claiming it wasn't really all that different from how the Republican and Democrats ran their parties. Turned out I was the only kid in the class who had a relative who had been to the Vietnam War. I'd likely have been suspended or expelled if a girl whose family had fled Lithuania one jump ahead of the KGB hadn't stood up and ripped the commie-loving jackass (among other things, he'd been to the Soviet Union five times, subscribed to Soviet Life, encouraged us to read every issue he brought in and thought Lenin was a Great Man) up one side and down the other, speaking from firsthand experience.

We both ended up in front of the vice principal when we refused to apologize to the teacher. The vice principal, who was in charge of school discipline, took a dim view of the fact that a teacher was promoting communism in his classroom. He let us off with a warning - it would not have played well to suspend an Eagle Scout and a refugee from the Soviet Union who was ferociously patriotic about her new country. But it seemed like we were the only ones who had a clue about that war in out entire AP class. The rest of the kids didn't say a word, just sat there with their mouths open while we two defended America against the words of a quisling.

Our troops were sent to a faraway place to fight a war for a corrupt ally who would not stand up for his own country, against outside invaders with a political philosophy alien to our concept of democracy. I guess that's why what's happening in Iraq makes me so nervous. It is a point of shame in American history that the troops who fought that war were so shabbily treated by their fellow countrymen when they came home after doing what they were ordered to do.

[irish murphy]

My old boy served in vietnam with the aussies.This song is from ausie band redgum.Its a top song.

YouTube - Redgum - I Was Only 19 (1983)

[samuel]

IM: met several Ausies in Nam.Had good times when partying,Great soldiers in action where it counted.Never met one I didnt like even if we had to get to know each other the hard way. sam.

[Sooner Shooter]

I'm 56. I graduated high school in 69 and entered college with a college deferment. During my first year in college I was too young for the first lottery. The next year my number was 360. I believe that numbers up to 60 was about as high as they went on drafting. At the time I really didn't give much thought to those fighting and dying. I just knew I got a high number and wouldn't be drafted. After college I did not enlist. Didn't even feel guilty about not serving for many years until more conflicts started. Now I'm thinking what if everyone was like me and didn't enlist or that no one wanted to serve. Luckily for America we do have the men that will put their lives on the line. The sad thing is that (mostly Viet Nam vets) our men and women weren't given the respect they deserved. Whether the war was necessary or not we had the men that did what they were asked to do. The strength and freedom of America today is because of the brave men and women that did and still do what I didn't in the early 70's. I remember Viet Nam and I remember those that fought and died. I thank all of you! SS

[Texan]

Originally Posted by nodlenor

Yes I remember Vietnam, The unqualified leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful. '68-69

Pretty good way to put it....

'65-'67

o~\o