10-08-2017, 08:35 AM
A few months ago, the company I work for had a series where an organization in Washington was running an interview series of soldiers who had won Purple Hearts. I do transcriptions for a living and my job was to make documents of the interviews.
The most chilling one came from the guy who talked about the Vietnam war. He was a lucid, thoughtful person who said he had grown up wanting to be a Marine since he was a little boy. He described how there was no clear objective that he could tell for much of his time there, that troops had been dropped there without being properly trained for jungle warfare, and that the South Vietnamese forces were a mess.
Like others, he talked about getting cussed out and spat on when he returned and spent decades fighting alcoholism and depression. He also said he admired the North Viet Cong's reserve and ingenuity. In all, it was a really sad interview but from what he said, his life turned out mostly okay and he had a nice family and a wife who stuck by him.
Beyond that, I don't know much else about Vietnam because I was a little kid when most of it happened. As an adult I learned about Eisenhower's exit speech way back in 1960, when he chillingly warned about the Military Industrial complex. Yeah, it seems like that war was generated to line a few people's pockets rather than stop the spread of communism.
The most chilling one came from the guy who talked about the Vietnam war. He was a lucid, thoughtful person who said he had grown up wanting to be a Marine since he was a little boy. He described how there was no clear objective that he could tell for much of his time there, that troops had been dropped there without being properly trained for jungle warfare, and that the South Vietnamese forces were a mess.
Like others, he talked about getting cussed out and spat on when he returned and spent decades fighting alcoholism and depression. He also said he admired the North Viet Cong's reserve and ingenuity. In all, it was a really sad interview but from what he said, his life turned out mostly okay and he had a nice family and a wife who stuck by him.
Beyond that, I don't know much else about Vietnam because I was a little kid when most of it happened. As an adult I learned about Eisenhower's exit speech way back in 1960, when he chillingly warned about the Military Industrial complex. Yeah, it seems like that war was generated to line a few people's pockets rather than stop the spread of communism.
