Vietnam...again
Impact of Reason--I Was 28 in 1970, and a teacher for 4 yrs then. The draft/lottery was very real at the time for all of us who were of draftable age. I had a 2-A deferment but we all still worried about it--not so much being horrified at a war, as being afraid our life would change and we'd not be remotely in charge of the change.
Your questions:
1. At the very first I thought the Viet Cong were monsters who should be cleared off the face of the earth at any price. On further consideration, I didn't support the war, as I didn't feel we should be fighting for the freedom of a country that didn't seem very committed to fighting for its own freedom. The S. Vietnamese seemed kind of lukewarm about it. We seemed as a nation to have dragged ourselves into the conflict bit by bit, and woke up one morning to find ourselves mired hip-deep in the war, unable to get out. I HATED the idea that Washington was running the war from afar, and that our troops and their commanders on the scene couldn't do things that made sense to someone who was there and could see first-hand. In retrospect, I think we never should have gone to war in Vietnam in the first place. Still do. But on the people who actually went and did the fighting, I have always felt exactly the same: They deserve nothing less than our support and respect. The demonstrators who spit on our returning GI's should have been horsewhipped.
2. No, never. Also never attended a support rally or anything else.
3. Yes,of course. Some of those guys over there were friends & acquaintances. The image that I remember, well, there are 3: The little naked girl in Life magazine who has just survived having her village burned and is fleeing with not even a shirt on her back, another B&W photo in Life of a Cong officer executing someone, and TV shots of our troops being "welcomed" home and called pigs.
4. Each of us of draftable age handled this in his own way. I have no quarrel with anyone, no matter what they did about 'Nam, if they can look the guy in the shaving mirror in the eye about it. My brother-in-law got his CO status, and spent 2 years as an orderly in a mental hospital instead of a military hitch. A college roommate went Army, wanted to shoot Cong in the worst way, qualified as a helicopter pilot, got good at spit & polish and at formation flying, and they made him a chauffer for generals and bigwigs. He spent his whole hitch doing that. I had a 2-S deferment during college, decided to become a teacher (would have, VietNam or no--it wasn't simply to avoid the draft) and so had a 2-A deferment from then on. Spent 32 years teaching middle school science, so it can be said that I did serve my country, although not militarily. None of my college friends got drafted while they were at school. I lost touch with almost all of 'em after we graduated, so can't say if they got drafted then or not. Oh, now that I'm thinking about it--I did pass up a chance to become a state game warden after college because of the certainty that I'd be promptly drafted out of that job, and possibly no openings there when (if) I returned. In retrospect, if I'd joined the military, I'd be a different and possibly a better man than I am today. But I might be just a thoroughly rotted skeleton in the jungle, too.
5. The college roommate who became a heli-chauffer occasionally got shot at--that's about as close to combat as anybody got who has shared war stories with me. Another good friend was stationed @ Subic Bay in the Phillipines, another yet was on Okinawa for his hitch. Not everyone in the US military was sent to 'Nam. Yet another friend won't tell me much about his service at all; draw your own conclusions.
Well, you asked. Have fun making a coherent statement out of all these answers! I think the one thing you can say of everyone of thinking age at the time, is that nobody did not have an opinion on the war. We mostly just put up with each other--I can't remember ANY long, passionate, arguments about the subject.
