Since we have strayed into military memorabilia, and I know there are at least a couple vets here, do you have things that bring back memories--both good and bad--about your time in the service? Something that always bothers me are songs. Anne Murray and "Snowbird" and Chicago with "Color My World" always bring back times that make me want to scream. Wife doesn't understand it at all. Does anyone here?
When Country Joe, and his band, The Fish, sang that song about Vietnam at Woodstock. I really dislike how it starts out and the entire song. Don't know how "good or bad" this is, but having the work, and watch, hours I did in the Navy, it sure shaped me for getting up early to be at work at 7AM on civilian jobs.
Right off hand, I can’t think of anything that reminds me of anything good about Vietnam. That said, there is one event each year that will inevitably trigger a memory I’d rather forget, but can’t. Christmas Eve. It was around 2100 hrs and from where I sat on the deck of my UH1-C, there were no booms, no lit up skies, all was quiet …almost serene one might say. Normally there would have been men milling about, getting ready for the next day’s missions but that Christmas Eve, there was no one to be seen, or heard. I, with a beer sitting next to me, just sat there and felt an emotion that I had never before had and have never had to that magnitude since. I think it is called loneliness but to be truthful, I had thought that I knew what it was to be lonely but that time was a brand new level of it. It is difficult to describe but it was as if the whole world had disappeared and I was the only one left. I was alone. Just me and a beer that I hadn’t even touched yet. For the first and last time in my life, I really wanted to be around people, regular people. But there were no regular people. Even me. More than anything, I wanted to be a regular people and the more I wanted to be the clearer the picture became that I would, in all probability, never see a regular person again. They were gone. I was left.
My oldest cousin joined the Navy, he tried to talk our brothers into joining Navy before they got drafted, but like he told them they went straight to the jungles of Nam in the Army. Or his did anyway, mine got out. I visited them with a friend at VA and what I saw was not good at all. The guy that took me to visit them ended up committing suicide like so many do, bless him. I had my own war going on here in the states with the hippies, on top of hurting for the boys over there. Thank you for your service Cody.
I see I forgot to thank @Don Alaska and @Bobby Cole , must have got interrupted with something going on here, so belated Thank you both and all our vets.I visited some real messed up young men in VA Hospital, horrible condition. Nobody was going to harm them without my objection. V.N. War was very unkind to my generation. I didn't like most hippies for that main reason, I understand being against war, but don't attack the young men coming home, I got into a fight with a group of hippie's on the Lions Bridge in Sr.Augustine ,Fl. for them picking on vets,rolled up my car window of ones head after fussing him out.