I would like to know from both sides, what the war was like and what happened? Im here for an english class, and I'd like to hear from someone who remembers it and kew what went on - or even a good website or article would be okay too.
I was too young to go, just missed it. I remember the death toll counts on TV, and how we always got way more of them than they did us. None of the older dewds in the neighborhood wanted to go, and they were all scared of the draft. My old man, a staunch rightwing repug and cop, would tell me that all hippies should be lined up and machine gunned, along with the black rioters. He thought Kent St. was the best thing that happened in the US during the war. When the Vietnam war coverage came on the news, he would say "There's one place you don't want to go boy, you better hope this war ends before you're old enough for the draft <slug of Bud, drag of Lucky Strike>." That would scare the bejesus out of me. When we bailed out of Vietnam, it seems the whole country was happy about it. The country went into party mode, and Vietnam became one of the most oppressive communist regimes on the planet.
A dear friend went to Nam & killed lots of people.Whole villages,(old people,babies,animals,it didn't matter) were blasted away,the soldiers got into it "just doin' their job,it was us or them..." He came back with no visible wounds,his head is sure screwed up tho.It's been hard for a lot of Vets to get their disability pay for going to war ,paying their dues & gettin' shit upon coming home! America,the WAR WHORE,can do better for those that are fighting!!!!
Actually, I know someone who was a command for the South Vietnamese army. He flew planes, and was often asked to take people to the mountains. Surveyors. Far from any battle area. Turns out they were finding stuff to mine and move out in troop transporters. The war was basically over uranium. It being the cold war, they were worried should China acquire basically a mountain range that was soil over high grade uranium, they'd be able to make bombs REAL easy. One day he heard that the VC were within hours of Saigon. He grabbed his family and identification documents, walked away from his family's entire house/empire and stole a US fighter plane. They tried to block the runway when they found out some "gook" was trying to escape alive with his family. He took off with one engine, fired the other three in midair, and flew the treeline with both sides shooting at him. They met up at an area everyone fled to - an island off the country, in which the USians and Thieu already had palaces and medical supplies set up. One of his daughters developed a fatal diarrhoea and thankfully they had her birth certificate. Thieu's daughter was born the same day as this girl, and superstition has it that two people born on the same day have their destinies intertwined. Thieu allowed the girl into the house to be treated (and have her life saved) while others died on the beaches. The US showed up and told the assembled VN generals, supporters etc. that the US would look after them, since they'd lost EVERYTHING and backed the US. Turns out that some ORANGE GROWERS in CALIFORNIA would give them jobs picking fruit. They wouldn't need money or to learn to speak English. Tents would be provided and they'd get free food and shelter. This offer was made to high ranking politicians, generals, doctors, nurses. Most went to the US and immediately went into Canada, where they were given far less racist treatment.
If you wanna understand the Vietnam war, understand that they NEVER went in there to win. The best way to loot a place is not to go in and steal. You'll be noticed. Instead, have two friends start a fight in FRONT of the place. While everyone's watching that, steal stuff out the back door. They took heroin, silicon and uranium out of there by the ton. The government they set up was installed in the most one-sided election imaginable - the guy they installed was recruited from a Japanese university (he was a student) and when he was no longer useful they invited him into the back of a truck and killed him. Ho Chi Minh originally asked the USA for help against the French and wanted to model his country after the US, including the constitution. The French, who had lost their colonial war, basically told the US it was a nice earner, the US promised some stuff in return, and they invaded under false pretense. Decades later they admitted it was a US boat that deliberately fired on its own side in the Gulf of Tonkin as pretext for the war. How rich is Vietnam? Recently Japan just bought one of its beaches. The sand is almost pure silicon. The governor for the area got a million or so for it, and was executed cause it was worth many HUNDREDS of millions on the open market.
yep ho chi min lived in parris and in nyc ...he was a big fan of the americans and their ally in driving the japaneese out of se asia . at the end of the war [ww2] truman ripped them off and gave the place back to the french [who didnt even deserve france back cause 1/3rd of em were nazis ]...just like the kurds 10 yrs back or the arabs that beat the turks for the brits in ww1 , they were repaid with trechery and went elsewhere for friends
I obviously am not old enough to have been around, but my dad was in Vietnam...He was a sniper on a recon team.....Just today he was talking about how in vietnam there would be firefights between the white soldiers and the black soldiers at times..but when they were up against the enemy they had each others backs....i am confused about my dad though...he went into the war mad because his cousin was killed there, but when i see pics of him in his albums there is one where he is holding a guitar with a peace sign on it and another where he has a peace sign painted on his forehead with a camo stick.....mom said that he would not even step on a roach when he came hoem from the war....the most important thing i have learned from him about vietnam is that it was a tragedy and that all wars are..
Brandon, Well I guess I can talk about this now that Denny has died of cancer but Denny did once tell me that he wasted a "panthuh" that had wasted a friend of his during a firefight. It's also a fact they let Denny off the line because there was a price on his head. I don't think "grunt on grunt" murder was all that common though. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/vietweb.htm TH4
