Thanks so much for this important story, William. I wasn't 10 years old yet, but was impressionable like you and read everything in the papers and watched TV. In another year, my family would lose my first cousin at Quang Tin. Twenty five years later, another first cousin would take his life from undiagnosed PTSD from his time in Viet Nam. About ten years after that, another first cousin's husband took his life from his PTSD and Agent Orange exposure in Viet Nam. From everything I have read about the war and the history of the country, we should have never been there in an adversarial capacity. We had the opportunity to assist them with independence from France and for various political reasons, we refused to do so. Look where it got so many. It is a shameful past for us to have put our people over there and a shameful situation at My Lai and so many other places. But William, it is a story that needs to be told over and over.
It would seem you and I are the same age. Of the saturation coverage of the war it is My Lai that stays in my mind along with, perhaps, Khe Sanh. In their different ways both show the absolute folly of the war and its complete pointlessness. I sometimes think war has at its core a sexual impulse and that accounts for the prevalence of rape.
I’m not persuaded that Little Big Horn is remembered because of the massacre but more for the acuity of Sitting Bull and the bravery of Crazy Horse and his warriors.
I had a very difficult time reading all of this. It was my 3rd year teaching school. I had a very dear friend who was in Nam at the time (no involvement in the massacre) and never came back home. He was flying with other officers to Da Nang, their plane went down in the Gulf of Tonkin. Plane & bodies were never recovered. Stupid Vietnam war. Whatever was it for? Why the hell were we there in the first place? So the villagers were all enemy combatants or sympathizers and had to be eliminated. No rhyme or reason. Very young guys in the jungle totally unprepared for that type of warfare. Men who came back alive were a total mess. Hooked on drugs. Messed up psychologically. Vietnamese citizens were the boogie man. The massacre - totally wrong but also a result of the absurdities of war, misinformation and hatred of the other. Times were very different. Before this little war, I had never heard of Vietnam. Had you? Nothing left for me to say except that you brought back really bad memories.
Thanks so much for this important story, William. I wasn't 10 years old yet, but was impressionable like you and read everything in the papers and watched TV. In another year, my family would lose my first cousin at Quang Tin. Twenty five years later, another first cousin would take his life from undiagnosed PTSD from his time in Viet Nam. About ten years after that, another first cousin's husband took his life from his PTSD and Agent Orange exposure in Viet Nam. From everything I have read about the war and the history of the country, we should have never been there in an adversarial capacity. We had the opportunity to assist them with independence from France and for various political reasons, we refused to do so. Look where it got so many. It is a shameful past for us to have put our people over there and a shameful situation at My Lai and so many other places. But William, it is a story that needs to be told over and over.
It would seem you and I are the same age. Of the saturation coverage of the war it is My Lai that stays in my mind along with, perhaps, Khe Sanh. In their different ways both show the absolute folly of the war and its complete pointlessness. I sometimes think war has at its core a sexual impulse and that accounts for the prevalence of rape.
I’m not persuaded that Little Big Horn is remembered because of the massacre but more for the acuity of Sitting Bull and the bravery of Crazy Horse and his warriors.
I had a very difficult time reading all of this. It was my 3rd year teaching school. I had a very dear friend who was in Nam at the time (no involvement in the massacre) and never came back home. He was flying with other officers to Da Nang, their plane went down in the Gulf of Tonkin. Plane & bodies were never recovered. Stupid Vietnam war. Whatever was it for? Why the hell were we there in the first place? So the villagers were all enemy combatants or sympathizers and had to be eliminated. No rhyme or reason. Very young guys in the jungle totally unprepared for that type of warfare. Men who came back alive were a total mess. Hooked on drugs. Messed up psychologically. Vietnamese citizens were the boogie man. The massacre - totally wrong but also a result of the absurdities of war, misinformation and hatred of the other. Times were very different. Before this little war, I had never heard of Vietnam. Had you? Nothing left for me to say except that you brought back really bad memories.