I'm sure that some of our members must be Viet Nam Vets and I would like to know how they feel in retrospect. My war was Korea and not Viet Nam but I was one that bought into the whole BS concept of The Domino Theory when the war began. I did not become a anti war activist but did loose all motivation to support the war as it continued on. I don't want to create a argument about this subject but would appreciate your thinking.
I think the majority of us bought into it and rightfully so. Communism was on the march and doing very well it seemed. Most of us knew that the Soviet Union was in alliance with Ho Chi Minh and so was Communist China so what was not to be believed? No one knew that if South Vietnam fell that Communism wouldn’t spread throughout Southeast Asia and let’s face it, not many people other than the top people in our free world governments even actually knew why we were there other than to stop the north from taking over the south. The whole affair was indeed fraudulent and everything we were told was either a lie or a vast exaggeration of a basic principle. I lost a lot of buddies over stupidity and yeah, I was there. ‘68-‘69
@Bobby Cole "I lost a lot of buddies over stupidity and yeah, I was there. ‘68-‘69". I missed out, but only by a hair's (hare's?) breath, was certain back then to be sent over, had been called for the Armed Forces Physical Exam, suddenly fate intervened unexpectedly, as it is prone to do, and I "inherited" two kids. I was therefore re-classified out of 1-A. That inheritance may have saved my life. It certainly DID change it, and drastically, but certainly not in any way like fighting in a "war". Frank
Did 30 months incountry. I came from a military family and did not share the ill feelings some did and still do so.
Yep, tomorrow is Vietnam Vets Day. My first Westpac Cruise to Nam, on a Guided Missile Destroyer, was out of San Diego on Dec 28, 1968. I had enlisted in the Navy before I graduated from high school and got "called up" the week of my 19 birthday in June 1968. Got my Draft Notice, on the farm, while I was at NTC Great Lakes, Illinois. Thank God the Navy didn't release me for anything, or the Draft/Army would've got me. I was never on land in Nam, but VERY HIGHLY respect those men and women who were. Of course the women were in MASH units, not combat. I never contested the Conflict, which was never declared a war.
Delivering some food and ammo close to Ia Drang I was asked to join Shadow Company and for the thrill of it and many of us did so, we flew where we were not supposed to be mostly all at night in non marked aircraft with no US ID or weapons inserting and extracting SF teams, many other non discussed missions, we had special quarters separate from others, better food and many other things. My DD 214 simply states 'other duty'. The last words we were told 'your on your own until you get back across the river' best radio call ever made was the 1st #31 feet wet, later it did not bother us much. I felt lost when I came back as such a change and transferred into working with K9's then into AMTU and sent to Ft Hood shot in ATMU there for 3 more years on Gold Team traveling all over, all changed when a truck injured my leg, lost flight status. I would have asked for another tour if not for my leg for sure did 2-1/2 (30 months).
During TET some NVA and VC were observed resupplying in some villages we were given locations and some kind of new weapon to drop at night at our max ceiling but had to wait on a certain weather forecast and be ready when called all fueled and weapon loadings guarded 24/7 very heavily, not any explosion noticed at all, next day recon no movement in area hit at all nothing! No animals, people or anything. All just had a dull white color on everything, I always wondered on some of the missions what took place. We were told not to even fly over it anymore. Just a sampling of our missions. We did inquire why we were to do it rather than fixed wing craft, told we could get a more precise drop hovering over and dropped in very light wind almost zero at exactly 0300 EXACTLY. We were never told anymore other than a successful mission.
@Lulu Moppet At the time the use of that stuff was finally being revealed publically, I actually thought they had named it "Asian Orange"! Frank
I do not think so as that did not bluntly kill everything including animals in 1 day as our recon showed, we did not spray anything just dropped a cannister of about 100 lbs and told to evacuate the area after release immediately at max ceiling 7000' for air density, everything there was deceased, we dropped 3 of them on 3 targets, same results noticed. I saw defoliated jungle from AO and nothing was like this stuff. We were told to notify Capt Nance after release by head set and he replied hang on! We are out of here. WO Giles and myself both had to confirm cargo released away from Huey. I mean everything like water buffalo, everything deceased. Flight logs showed NOTHING. Blank.... You could see the villages from a distance in the air a whitish color, the next day we did notice on our recon flight where jungle birds and others had fed on the deceased were on the ground beside them.
side note we asked about the weapon we dropped all we got was the weight as he refused to take off without that info.
Uh huh. Some 58K American soldiers were killed outright in Vietnam and by the year 2000, over 3000,000 American soldiers were in the Agent Orange registry for exposure and medical problems from that exposure. Other than diabetes and nerve damage, it still hasn’t been assessed as to how much damage Agent Orange actually does to the human body nor has it been assessed as to how many veterans of Vietnam have died as a direct result from exposure to the stuff. For me, it’s nerve damage but since it isn’t provable there really isn’t any recourse of action other than free VA medical help.
Isn't it a bit spooky that we now eat many herbicides as part of our commercial food chain? The food crops are engineered to be resistant to the weed killers, then we ingest that to which we have not been "engineered" to be resistant to. We even saturate the lawns and playgrounds upon which our children and grandchildren play with variants of those herbicides.