Please answer my questions about life during the vietnam war

I have a homework assignment for my U.S. History class. I need to interview ten people with five questions about life during the Vietnam War. I need answers from anyone who was at least 15 years old in 1970. It doesn't matter whether or not you served in the war, just that you were alive during it. I appreciate any responses I get.

1. Did you support or oppose the Vietnam War during the war? In retrospect, has your opinion changed since it ended?

Supported it at first, changed my mind when we refused to fight it to win. Ring a bell?

2. Did you ever participate in any form of protest to the war?

Yes - in the early 70's marched and boycotted some classes. My school was home to a major riot. Tear gas, burning, beatings, occupation by the law for days.

3. Did you watch the news often during the war? What image seems most memorable from the news during the war?

Tet offensive, the already mentioned little girl. The Fall of Saigon.

4. Were you afraid of the possibility that a family member, a close friend, or yourself might be drafted into military service?

I was of age. Many of my friends were of age. Some went in and some didn't.
I was 1-A and would've gone in if called. However, I failed the physical due to a condition discovered when I was 16 and way before the war - thus a Marine doctor at the physical told me I was unfit for service.

For example:

1. Two friends joined the National Guard to avoid VietName - ring a bell?
2. One become morbidly obese
3. One went - dead. Another served and made it back.

Weirdest memory of the physical:

1. 100 guys standing there in white boxer shorts or jockeys. One guy in read bikini briefs. The Marines running the exam single him out and called him a 'homo' all day. For some reason, they said : "We like homos in the Corps" :eek: At the end of the day he was crying and rolled up like a ball on the cold floor of the examination room.

2. We were given coupons for lunch - this was at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo - the place that invented the Buffalo Wing. It was enough for a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a coke. Some dudes pulled their tickets together and bought beer. They went back and took the mental test drunk. That was a good plan.

5. Did you, a family member, or a close friend at the time ever serve in the military during the war? If so, did you ever see any combat?

Nope.

The take away lessons:

1. Don't fake causes to go to war like LBJ did.
2. If you do fight, fight with everything you have and don't have civilians micromanage war fighting.
3. The people who needed to be freed, ended being screwed from all the fighting parties.

Do we learn?
 
I never knew the politics behind the conflict. Only what DC and/or the MSM wanted me to know.

But when I moved to California I began meeting and talking to Cambodians, South Vietnamese, Laotians.

I learned why we were there, at least, ideologically. It was to protect these people from the communists. Because when the communists overran, South Vietnam, for example, they didn't just set out to conquer. They set out to annhilate. The communists came into the south and, in some regions, rounded up all the white collar workers and shipped them to re-education camps. Many never returned.

However, if you look at the stats, we won that war. We killed two million of theirs. They killed 50 thousand of ours. Yes, I realize that we lost a total of 60,000, but ten thousand of those were from friendly fire.

We drove them to the peace table and they signed the accord.

But Nixon was in office, and when he resigned, America was in a state of chaos. Ford was unsure of himself and that's when North Vietnam began, incrementally, violating the peace accord. It wasn't long after that Saigon fell.

In a way, Woodward and Berstein are responsible for the victory of communism in that part of the world.

(Flame suit: on.)
 
There are as many viewpoints about this war as there are people who fought in it, or fought to avoid being in it.

Why we were there is a mixture of the ideological, and the cynical. No one person is responsible, and blaming a single person is a sure sign that the blamers didn't have much of a grasp on what was going on at the time. It's not going to be easy for a ten year old to recount his/her feelings about combat, simply because they didn't experience combat. The same goes for those who never served incountry. Vietnam was a wake-up call for this country. We learned to never allow non-military civil servants to dictate how to run a war. We learned that, no matter how well one can see from behind the front lines, they can't see well enough to lead the battle. We also learned just how easily led young people are by the MSM. Some of them are still able to believe that crap that they received from that source today. Even in view of multiple exposes from the men and women who were responsible for that crap.

We are in real danger of repeating some of those mistakes today. The simple fact is that many of today's politicians, and civil servants, don't have the experience to lead a group of children to the bathroom when it comes to the grisly business of warfare. The lack of military training is merely inconvenient when it's the general population you're talking about. Most of them can't remember what day it is. It's when you get into the senior leadership positions, with their turf-building, and instinctual distrust of the military, that it becomes a lethal problem.:mad:
 
I was a little young but...

1. Did you support or oppose the Vietnam War during the war? In retrospect, has your opinion changed since it ended?

While I was too young to have an opinion, I do remember my folks stating their support. Mom pretty much supported ANYTHING Nixon did.

2. Did you ever participate in any form of protest to the war?

Nope

3. Did you watch the news often during the war? What image seems most memorable from the news during the war?

Absolutely. The images I remember always seemed to involve a wounded soldier being carried on a stretcher to a waiting helicopter. The news always seemed to focus on that, rather than any successes we were achieving. How things don't change.

4. Were you afraid of the possibility that a family member, a close friend, or yourself might be drafted into military service?

No. My brother and I were 12 and 9 respectively when we pulled out in 1972.

5. Did you, a family member, or a close friend at the time ever serve in the military during the war? If so, did you ever see any combat? No.
 
I never knew the politics behind the conflict. Only what DC and/or the MSM wanted me to know.

But when I moved to California I began meeting and talking to Cambodians, South Vietnamese, Laotians.

I learned why we were there, at least, ideologically. It was to protect these people from the communists. Because when the communists overran, South Vietnam, for example, they didn't just set out to conquer. They set out to annhilate. The communists came into the south and, in some regions, rounded up all the white collar workers and shipped them to re-education camps. Many never returned.
Click to expand...

My next-door-neighbor is Vietnamese. He was a pilot in the RVN Air Force
during the war. After a couple of beers one evening I asked him where he
was and what happened to him when the Communists rolled over South
Vietnam in 1975.

He told me he was in DaNang, and he was arrested the same day the
NVA moved into the city. He was sent to a "re-education camp" for
SEVEN years. When I asked him what he did there, he told me it was
just a hard-labor camp. They mostly worked in rice paddies from daylight
to dark.

He got to this country 3 years after he was let out of the "camp",
only because of pressure from the US government to allow former RVN
officers to leave Vietnam. Two years later he was allowed to bring over his
wife and two of their children. His oldest child, a daughter, was married with
kids at that time, and she was forbidden to leave the country.

I don't have any regrets about what I did in Vietnam. I am sorry that our
government decided to bail out and leave the RVN forces to fend for
themselves. But then ,we were there for over a decade, so maybe the
ARVNs should have stepped up to the task when they most needed to.

What a crappy war. But like someone else said, somewhere,
"Is there any other kind?"

Walter
 
Biased reporting

3. Every night on CBS Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite, who had an audience of at least 50%, told us how bad the war was. The other networks weren't any better. Based on their reporting the U.S. never won a battle. Of course, the opposite was true, but you'd never know it by watching the news!:mad:
 
Impact, . . . you asked:

1. Did you support or oppose the Vietnam War during the war? In retrospect, has your opinion changed since it ended?

2. Did you ever participate in any form of protest to the war?

3. Did you watch the news often during the war? What image seems most memorable from the news during the war?

4. Were you afraid of the possibility that a family member, a close friend, or yourself might be drafted into military service?

5. Did you, a family member, or a close friend at the time ever serve in the military during the war? If so, did you ever see any combat?

1A: I spent three tours there, last 2 as volunteer, would do it again under the same circumstances. No, no opinion change.

2A: No, . . . there was enough long haired hippy scum doing that without my help.

3A: Didn't need to watch it, . . . I lived enough of it.

4A: No, . . . like I said, . . . I was a volunteer, . . . most of my friends were also.

5A: Answered earlier, . . . but yes, and yes.

Good luck on your history paper.

May God bless,
Dwight
 
Yes, there ARE honorable reasons to go to war. And those reasons are to resist the aggression of countries like those mentioned in the quote below.

No but that was Germany and Japans reason, and that they wanted power and resources.
Click to expand...
 
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