L, not -L wrote:
> On 28-Jul-2006, "jmcquown" > wrote:
>
>> Dad's job in 'Nam was to write back to the folks back home whose
>> kids had been killed. You think that was easy? Think again. He
>> got many letters of
>> thanks because he made them sound brave and all in the service of the
>> country and all that. Fact is, most of them were stupid. Don't
>> touch that
>> landmine! Oh, so what does the guy do? He touches the landmine.
>
> I just can't let this pass without comment.
>
> I was a corpsman (medic) with the 1st Cavalry in Vietnam during
> 1968-1969 - in combat, the guy everyone yelled for when the S***
> hit the fan and blood was spilled. I can assure you that my
> experience was that those guys did NOT get wounded/maimed/killed from
> being stupid. They were sometimes ill-trained for the task they were
> given, but more often than not they were in the wrong place, at the
> wrong time and encountered a shrewd enemy who had been trained from
> infancy in the tactics of guerilla warfare. One further note on
> those "kids"; they may have been young chronologically but, in
> combat, you grew up fast - those MEN and WOMEN deserve far more
> respect than than your comment suggests that you or your father give
> them.
>
> It was also my experience that the guy who wrote "to the folks back
> home", however well-meaning, however good a communicator, was a REMF
> (a "term-of-endearment" we in combat had for rear-echelon, uh, ummm,
> personnel). The letters were most often written by someone who had no
> first-hand knowledge of what actually happened during the action being
> recounted.
>
> I WAS there, I HAVE first-hand knowledge and most of them, contrary
> to your belief, most definitely were NOT stupid.

Doubtless you have more military experience than my father who was a 30 year
Marine and retired a full bird Colonel. Yeah, he really enjoyed writing
letters of condolence to the folks back home; it was one of his fondest
duties. He saw enough action, sweetums, since he was shot twice. And
sadly, those teenagers sent to Nam were nothing but stupid... they didn't
want to be there (who did?) but they also didn't know how to follow orders.

Dad rarely talks about 'Nam but when he does he talks about those boys who
pointedly ignored an order and got their butts killed because of it. Sorry
if your experience was so movie-land perfect, which is impossible given the
crap going on then.

Jill