Rockabilly,
Thank you for your service. I did one tour in Viet Nam as an Army grunt, and owed my life, on more than one occasion to some “Air Farce” guy, and my stepson who is in the Marine probably does too, as well as a lot of others since the Air Force was created. The forward air traffic controllers, they were all pilots that never thought they would be humping the bush with a bunch of grunts, that I worked with, displayed a level of courage that a derisive “chicken-hawk” could never imagine or aspire to. Unless someone has been in combat they can have no conception of it, which is probably for the best, as few who have experienced it up front and personal would ever wish to do it again.
When I had been in country three weeks I killed my first Viet Cong, I was the second FNG (expletive deleted new guy) and got the M-60, there was no three to five round burst, I mashed the trigger and went from his right hip to his left shoulder with a fifty round belt, cutting him in half. He had been standing less than twenty meters from me, I shot several more men during the firefight that lasted less than ten minutes, and then I puked and changed my pants. On the next patrol, our squad leader, who was less than a month short, was killed while providing us covering fire during an ambush. That is when I learned, you may die for a noble cause, but there is nothing noble about death. There is no inspiring music, last words are usually profanities, and your friend is lying there in his own excrement and urine. That’s the glory, all the platitudes espoused by some “leader” just ring hollow after that, but you go on fighting, not for the “cause” but for your friends.
The majority of people will never know what we sent or young off to, if they did they might think about more, but they do not, so they spout their bravado, wave their flags, and tie their yellow ribbons, and chances are it will not be their child coming home in a box anyhow. In a few years the boys that became men will tell their war stories, but when they are alone they will remember, their friends who did not come home, and even the enemies they killed, and if they are very lucky they will have a good reason for why their friends died and they killed. It has been about thirty-five years now, for me and I still do not know why. I got on with my life, and it has been a very good life, but war changed me, and when I look at my stepson I can see that this war has changed him.
So no, I do not like this war, and to those that have been fortunate enough not to have gone to war, feel free to debase or deride to your hearts content, because it donÂ’t mean a (expletive deleted) thing.
Life is no joke but funny things happen
jon
