USAF 12/59 through 12/63. I’ve been following this thread since the OP was first posted, but I still don’t quite know what to make of it.
Fortunately, that seems to be the thinking these days. It wasn’t always so. I was one of those who went into the military first and went to college after serving my four years. The timing put me in college in South Florida in '64 and '65. My younger classmates there didn’t think much of my previous occupation.
Then luck led me elsewhere to complete my degree studies, to a university where opinions about returning servicemen were positive and anti-war demonstrations weren’t the “cool” thing to do. That’s one of the many things I’ll always be grateful to Auburn University for. The students and faculty at Auburn welcomed me home, when even some members of my own family wanted to do nothing except make insulting remarks.
John, I hope that you know that I ask this in all seriousness. Did the people who insulted you do so because of your service in the war or because of your views in support of the war?
Thank you for your service to our country.
aside: (Today’s score was arranged in your honor.)
Zoe, Obviously I can’t answer for John. But the anti-military attitude of the 70’s and early 80’s was real, and a problem. The Navy changed the uniform away from the distinctive and traditional dress blues and whites with the tunic and ‘13 chances to say no’ pants expressly because of the need to allow military personnel to have some opportunity to be a little less conspicuous. Several of my senior non-coms were veterans of the Vietnam Era, and most had a great deal of anger about their treatment from war protesters, including several who claimed they’d been spit upon when taking air travel, or public transport… in Norfolk* ferchrissakes. The stories I’d heard were not a matter of reaction in response to debates on military policy, simply a reaction to the military uniform. Mind you, I don’t think even they thought that ALL war protesters were that crass, but it only takes one or two incidents of that nature to give one a very jaundiced view of a whole group.
*Not that Norfolk has a reputation for particularly liking squids, during my time in the area I personally was shot at by drunk rednecks who lived on a trailer park near the enlisted parking lot of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard; there was at least one drive-by shooting of an off-duty sailor at a bus stop. The signs “No Dogs or Sailors Allowed” may not be legal; the attitude is still there. To be fair, squids can be their own worst enemies: I knew several on my ship who spent as much of their off duty time in a drunken stupor.
Absolutely correct. Those who were guilty of such appalling behavior had made the classic mistake of confusing an abhorent policy with the people who had the misfortune to be ordered to carry out that policy.
I don’t doubt their reports. The reason I put it as ‘they said’ instead of a report of they’d been spat upon, I was simply trying to show that while I have no direct experience with the vitriol of the experience of Vietnam Era vets, it’s still a very real part of the institutional memory.
When I first got to Miami I wasn’t prepared for the negative feelings many of the students there had. For example, I was invited to a party by a girl who then introduced me at the party as: “My new fascist friend.” We hadn’t even discussed politics or wars or whatever. At first most of my unpleasant experiences were due almost entirely to the fact that I was just recently discharged from the military service.
For those first few months after I started college I’m thinkin’ that these kids livin’ in college dorms aren’t really very different from the guys they are cussin’ about. Those guys just happen to be livin’ in barracks instead of dorms.
Then after a while I started getting news about friends I had served with that got injured or killed in Viet Nam. It was not possible for me to take a “Love the sinner, hate the sin” type of position. Right or wrong, I wanted us to WIN the dammed war.
So after awhile I learned to dish it out in full measure, as well as take it. By my second year in Miami most of the disagreeable situations I got into were due in large part to my support of the war.
I never was a hippie, old or otherwise, ya’ see. A rock ‘n’ roller, yeah. A teenage pool shootin’ whiskey drinker, yeah. A high school dropout that did it all the hard way, yeah. I was lots of stuff, but never a hippie.
As I stated above, Auburn was a different culture and when I got there I fit in much better.
Before this thread, the last serious discussion I got into about that war was in 1978. I wouldn’t have let just anybody drag me into this discussion, Zoe.
You’re doin’ great with your arrangin’ this year, Girl. Just keep it goin’ on!
It was an ugly, complicated, painful time, John, which is why I’d hoped against hope we–not to mention the rest of the world–would never have to live through it again. It drives me nuts that the whole experience has somehow been boiled down to just “hippies” “hawks” etc. sterotypes. Maybe it’s age, but it just wasn’t that simple. People, myself included, were reviled and pigeon-holed for marching for civil rights while military guys learned color blindness under fire. Go figure. My marine former BIL–and former bigot–lasting best friends are black, made in Nam.
The sound bytes, excuses and fashions just change shape, though they’re remarkably similiar for lack of substance. Ann Coulter=Jane Fonda? Blech.
I adamantly opposed that war because it was stupid. So did my dad, the doughty, rock-ribbed Republican former Army master sergeant. He offered to drive a few friends to Canada to avoid that war, while still firmly supporting others serving in Nam. (Rest in peace, Rod, dead at 21. And Steve. And others. Still remember ya.)
Maybe this really is cyclic but I’m damned sick and tired of fashions for war. People die, and are required to kill. That’s a huge responsibility for citizens, actively or passively.
I’m not too sure how much sense any of us made, then or now. Ugly, complicated and painful is a great description of those times.
I mentioned that the last serious discussion I had about that war was in 1978. I was a CETA co-ordinator at a national meeting of others doing the same thing. I went to dinner with an aging hippie from California that was also a CETA co-ordinator. About halfway through the meal we decided we were both sick of talking about “that fucking war”.
We decided that instead of more war discussions, we’d ask the two women dining at the next table to go rockin’ out with us after everybody got through eating.
The four of us had a helluva fine evening. Since then, whenever talk of Viet Nam comes up I cause myself to think about how much fun the four of us had dancin’ to those disco tunes that night. I sing Y.M.C.A. to myself and I don’t study war no more.
Unfortunately it’s probably a pretty good description of any time. There’s no new tempting deception under the sun, right? It just changes form and rationlization.
I hated the excess that paraded itself as liberalism in the 60’s because it disgraced the sound underlying principles. The fashionable philosophical cant disounted individual quirks and ultimate responsibility. Now it’s conservatism’s time in the sewer, doing exactly the same thing, under the same rubric. Differerent justifications; same old nonsense recycled again. And again. And again.
I mainly remember ‘that war’ as a time of wildly diverse opinions and experiences muddling through chaos as best possible. Hell, ‘that war’ was the background for Nixon’s impeachment. I’m still torn on the guy: brilliant international statesman who couldn’t hold the essentials at home. I was literally at sea–on a Dutch freighter–when he resigned office. None of us knew ‘what it meant’, but there was real fear that the center, whatever that was, wouldn’t hold. It did, and all of us–American, European and South American, with all those different perspectives–kept sailing on anyway because what was the alternative? Now that’s all stale history, but it seems to keep repeating itself.
Different players, different justifications, different rhetoric and fashion but still the same old/same old.
There it is. Most people’s acquaintance with war is from watching old movies on Turner. Ah, the nobility, the grace under fire, the heroism. How noble to die for your country, or at least to have someone else die for your country, while you sip your cold Bud in front of the TV and make profound utterances like “Sadam was a gathering danger.” Whatever the fuck that means.
Nobility becomes meaningless when you see the torn, bleeding bodies of your friends, indiscriminately ripped to pieces because of a politician’s ambition. Then it’s no longer just a notion. It becomes more than a fuzzy idea in one horrific, deafening moment of mayhem when an incoming round detonates on the hooch twenty feet away. That’s when you see the devil laughing at you. That’s when you realize that all the doughy-faced politicians back home really don’t have your country’s best interests at heart.
I don’t think in your wildest imaginations (plural, meaning those who have not been in the front lines of war, not targeting anyone w/negativity) how hard it is for me to post here.
But I got to. I gotta grit the teeth, take a deep breath, wipe the eyes and keep going, cause it needs to be done.
I made it back alive. Close only counts in horseshoes (and darts, I suppose).
In war we lose people. Fathers, sons, brothers, and now wives, daughters and sisters, too. Real people, just like you. It’s a roll of the dice who goes and who stays. To politicians it’s numbers. To combat veterans it’s faces, memories, letters, photos, long stories of somneone else’s “back home.” Memories of when they saved my life, and memories of not being there when they needed saving.
Roll of the dice, wrong place, wrong time. How do you fix a life? How can you say a soldier’s death was “worth it?”
And sometimes I think the ones that died were the lucky ones. Luckier than those of us form whom the war never ends. Luckier than the wives, children and relatives and friends who don’t have them any more. I talked to Scoby’s daughter yesterday. It was hard, real hard. What do you say? “Your dad was a great guy, but I just couldn’t get in front of him fast enough.”
Some wars may be necessary, but I don’t think I’ve been alive during a “necessary war.”
John, by the late 1960’s I was surrounded by earnest and very caring members of the peace movement – ones that were actually peaceful. So it was always difficult to believe back then that people promoting peace could be so mean-spirited toward those in the military whose lives we were trying to save. But given human nature, I guess anyone who disagreed with the movement got the brunt of our frustration – regardless.
For those who did not remain peaceful and for those who did not value your courage in service to your country, and for those who did not honor your rights to your own opinions, I am deeply ashamed. I am sorry that things were not good for you when you returned home – just when you needed it most. Readjusting would have been hard enough without the added problems.
Please try to understand that most of us, although loud about our convictions about the war’s being wrong, were not angry with those in the military. We were trying to save lives, trying to bring you home. We, too, were trying to do the right thing for our country.
The reason that I chose the title I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore is that I see old wounds opening and I don’t want to be a part of that – and I could see myself slipping into my old arguments. I don’t want to argue Vietnam anymore. I don’t have to join any peace marches for Vietnam and no one in the military has to fight Vietnam all over again or explain why they did what they did.
Thanks for being willing to talk about what happened when you came home. And you caught the spirit of this thread perfectly when you described Y.M.C.A.. I promise not to drag you here again. The next time it will be a virtual dance floor.
Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if I were alive.
I felt the whole world was so tight …
That’s when someone came up to me,
And said, young man, take a walk up the street.
There’s a place there called the y.m.c.a.
They can start you back on your way.
It’s fun to stay at the y-m-c-a.
It’s fun to stay at the y-m-c-a.
Peace and Harmony to all.
I’ll take that virtual dance right now, Zoe. But not to Y.M.C.A. Let’s try this mushy slow one instead:
“Lonesome Dove, we’re not so different
You sing a sad song but you’re not alone
…
I know how you feel Lonesome Dove”
Thanks, Zoe, for the dance and Trisha Yearwood for the tune.
