veterans

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Vietnam Era Veterans; All Veterans Remembered


I am a Vietnam Era vet. I did not serve in Vietnam as I was sent to Korea. And that turned out to be a bit of a hot zone all by itself, though Americans had little if any knowledge of that. But I am getting ahead of myself.

When I joined the army, I was sworn in February 19, 1968, the Vietnam war had taken a dark turn for Americans. Earlier that month the Viet Cong mounted what is known as the Tet offensive. Tet is the Vietnamese New Year. Americans let their guard down figuring the Vietnamese would be busy celebrating Tet, their new year. Contrary to what people were told in America, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong were very smart and very savvy. They hoped we would let our guard down so they could spring a surprise attack of large proportions, and that is what happened. Starting on January 31 they attacked over 100 South Vietnamese cities and nearly overwhelmed many American strongholds. Hue, Danang and even Saigon were attacked. The Marines at Hue were nearly overrun and suffered nearly 700 casualties.

But who were the men who were fighting in Vietnam? All branches of the armed forces, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, and the U.S. Coast Guard too, who in those days fell under the auspices of the Treasury Department. A very large portion of those in Vietnam were draftees even though some were never formally drafted. Many guys waited for the draft notice to show up and went for induction. But others with the knowledge that they were probably next, gave in and enlisted just prior to their likely drafting. Then there were the poor. The army was filled with a disproportionate number of blacks, mostly poor, mostly poorly educated. To them, the army seemed like a good deal. Then there were the white kids like me who, lacking direction, enlisted because we did not know what else to do but also because our fathers had fought in World War 2 and it seemed like the right thing to do.

When I arrive for my basic combat training at Fort Polk Louisiana, I discovered there were four identifiable groups of men, those who had signed up known as RAs, those who were drafted known as USs, those who signed up for the reserves, ERs, and those who joined their state’s national guard, NGs. The two letter codes were the letters that preceded our soldier’s identification number, for example, I enlisted and my number was RA11625182. Some things you never forget. But had I been a draftee the RA letters would have had US substituted. And since we all had to recite our number many times in the early days, we knew what every man had chosen.

A tour in Vietnam was mandated by law to last no longer than 12 months. This meant there was a high turnover of personnel going and coming to and from Vietnam. But there was also this country called Korea which also had a maximum 12-month tour. From 1964 to 1975 over 9 million men in uniform served in Vietnam, 58,145 died there. And here is a stunning fact: over the 4 years an infantryman served in WW2, he saw about 40 days of combat. Over the 1 year an infantryman served in Vietnam, he saw about 240 days of combat. It is small wonder so many came back so screwed up.

The infantry training at Fort Polk, in those days, was rough. The drill sergeants were charged with bringing together a very disparate group of men into a single fighting force. One of their most successful ways of doing that was to pit us against each other. I was in Company B, 5 Battalion, 1st Training brigade. I was in what was called the “Yankee Platoon.” We were men from north of the Mason-Dixon line of course. Then there were two southern platoons and finally one “misfit” platoon. The misfits were from states like California which were not easily grouped. The drill sergeants showed great favoritism towards the southern platoon in large part because every one of them hailed from the south. The drill sergeant assigned to my platoon was from Texas. Our company command was from Alabama and his executive officer was from Georgia. But a funny thing happened during those 8 weeks, we all came together. Any sort of divisions which existed at the start of basic training disappeared along the dusty roads were we force marched along. Their plan worked magnificently. On graduation day a full 95% of the men of our company were loaded onto the back of cattle trucks and taken to “Tiger Land.” Tiger Land was the advanced infantry training course with an emphasis on tactics used in Vietnam with a faux Vietnamese village to boot. I had gotten myself into helicopter training school so that was not in my future. But for as much as those drill sergeants yelled at us “Charlie’s gonna get you!”, Charlie being a euphemism for the North Vietnamese army, I do not remember a single conversation regarding the possibility we could die over there.

The American forces in Korea in 1968-1969 number in excess of 50,000 troops. There were two full infantry divisions, 2nd and the 7th. And there were countless support units. I was stationed a mere 25 miles from the DMZ and had change to travel in its proximity on several occasions. Places known as Camp Humphries, Camp Casey, Camp Red Cloud and others we each an armed camp unto themselves. They were armed because there was always the very real threat of a North Korean incursion into the south which actually happened though in small numbers. Still, anything north of the Han River was considered a combat zone and many an infantryman in Korea saw his share of combat, as did some of the field artillery units. Remember, this was the time when North Korea captured the USS Pueblo and shot down a US Air Force EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft.

During my tour in Korea a fair number of American soldiers were killed in action by North Korean soldiers but most of that was never reported.  Few new of that war zone.  Those tasked with guarding the frontier were under the constant threat of an attack from the north.  North Korea regularly lobbed artillery shells into the south.  A lieutenant who was inspecting the DMZ was cut to pieces by a machete wielding North Korean soldier.  America seemed to have forgotten that even 15 years after a truce was declared, it remained a truce in those days and that truce was violated by the north of many occasions.  American soldiers died and no one knew.

As for Vietnam, on April 30, 1969, there were 543,482 men station there at one time. But one thing was consistent for the soldier in Vietnam, his short-time calendar. A “short-time calendar” was the outline of a naked woman with 365 squares, or what passed for squares, within her body. You filled in one day waiting impatiently for that day you could call yourself a “short-timer.” A short-time was someone who had 99 days or less of time to serve. You got to call yourself a 2-digit-midget because you were getting so close. Sadly, stories abounded of guys who were within two weeks of rotating back to the U.S. only to be killed. Everyone knew such a story and some even knew the guy. Such things wreaked havoc on the psyche’ of the young soldier. Many came back so damaged, not just physically, that putting them back together was an impossible job. It wasn’t until either very late in the war or in the first few years following it that the term PTSD came into being. The VA and Army hospitals overflowed with men so damaged that it was felt they would never be right. I knew of at least 2 such individuals. One put a gun to his head and the other had a heart attack at the young age of 34. He had yelled at the VA that he had been sprayed with agent orange but that fell on deaf ears.

If you want a good picture of the army in those days first watch “The Boys of Company C” which will give you an excellent view of basic training during Vietnam and then watch “Good Morning Vietnam.” Each in its own way does justice to what really happened, to the tensions which existed, the horror of war, and how boys were forced to become men literally overnight.

About 90% of the men who served in Vietnam never saw any combat but it did not free them from the horrors of the war. No one was ever very far from a medivac hospital where surgery was frequently done in what would be considered unsterile conditions but the surgery being needed in such an immediate fashion, the doctors had no choice. These doctors and nurses suffered greatly as they attempted, too many times in vain, to put back together the wounded soldiers, and to provide some sort of reason and solace for those of his friends when the soldier died. The rock group, Country Joe and the Fish, came out with a song in 1968 which had a line that went “then it’s one two three four, what are we fighting for, don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam.” That was the sentiment of the soldiers in those days. We don’t know why we are here but we will do the best job we can.

While in Vietnam there were phrase such as “back in the world” which meant back at home, and round eyes, which meant American girls. The soldiers had created a language peculiar to their environment which helped them deal with what they were up against. Many of those soldier had never traveled more than 100 miles from home and now they were in a country so alien to them, that fitting in was impossible so they worked hard just to get by. Soldiers received no training about the customs of Vietnam nor what to expect of the general population. It was all on the job training.

Guy did not do marijuana in Vietnam. Why would they when they could get the more potent form of cannabis known as hash, of Thai Stick. Much stronger in content it allowed many troops to escape the horror of the day. And there were those who found solace in the all too prevalent heroin.  And what did the military do about those problems? Virtually nothing. They were too busy fighting a war than to consider the welfare of their men.

Soldier returned to America in large numbers from 1968 to 1972. But they found no welcome mat, no parades, no gestures of kindness. Americans knew the war was ugly and they wanted to distance themselves from it. They did this by ignoring the returning troops. They turned a blind eye to the problems the troops returned with. They did this because of their collected guilt.

It was well-known that the upper middle-class and the upper class did not serve, or if they did, they found comfy jobs in Washington or in Germany. Their service would have been good except that they took extraordinary measures to insure that the Department of Defense would not mistakenly assign them to Vietnam.

If nothing else, the War in Vietnam should have taught us what not to do, which skirmishes to stay away from, and to let people pitted against themselves the space to work out their issues. But we did not do that. Iraq 1 seemed a necessity and I have no issue with it. But Iraq 2 was a pure boondoggle. In Vietnam we said we were preventing the expansion of Communism. In Iraq we were supposedly going after weapons of mass destruction. In each case not only was the premise faulty, but our actions were and are virtually defenseless. But once again, the American soldier has been asked to do far more than is right. Our armed forces have been decimated by repeated reductions in force to where once again soldiers are being asked to do more than their psyche can handle, and it shows in the returning troops.

One thing which has changed for the better, it is common to hear the phrase, “thank you for your service.” But as nice as those words are to hear, they do not heal the injured psyche, and that remains an all too prevalent problem.

All who serve, by the nature of the oath they take, promise to put their life on the line in defense of our Constitution and our country. No other job requires this of a person. A truly grateful nation will take care of all its veterans to whatever extent is needed, but that is not happening. Too many veterans come back to no jobs and no prospects. Too many come back severely broken, are patched up and pushed back into society long before they are ready. If America wants to show how it is truly grateful for the service of all veterans, it will do whatever is necessary to insure a safe and secure future for them. It will find the reasons they turn to drugs and sometime crime and resolve those issues. It will make Veteran’s Day more than just a national holiday, it will treat it with the same respect as Christmas gets, only necessary people work that day and all others take a day to remember those who put their lives in danger so that we can live feeling safe and secure.

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A New American Polical Party: The Moderate Party


 

This country has been a two party nation since Thomas Jefferson ran for president.   He called himself a Democratic Republican in opposition to the Federalists and John Adams in particular who he ran against. Since then we have always had two major political parties. Since 1858 it has been Democrats and Republicans. Prior to the present day Republicans there was the Whig party.

I am personally tired of the self-serving rhetoric coming out of both parties. Each party has its own fringe although the Republicans seem a bit splintered. The Tea Party of today is just a reincarnation of the Moral Majority of 20 years ago. The wrapping is different but the message is the same; they will settle for nothing less than a Christian nation.

I am hereby inaugurating the Moderate Party. It is my belief that such a party will actually represent the general views of well over 50% of the people of this nation at any given moment. We will take what we believe to be the best of both parties and embrace them. We will as political aspirants sign a pledge to never take a single penny from any PAC. We will listen to those PACs but we will never compromise ourselves by taking money from them to support our election.

Today’s Moderate Party will neither embrace the socialist views of Sen. Bernie Sanders nor the Xenophobic racist views of Donald Trump.   We will not make campaign promises of going to war in any part of this world as a solution to regional or world problems. We will look for ways to reduce the tax burden on the middle class. We will end federal subsidies to otherwise profitable corporation. We will tighten the tax laws to close all loopholes available only to the rich or to large corporations.   We will impose a minimum tax rate on all persons and corporations that realize a certain level of income after reasonable expenses have been accounted for. We will vigorously support the second amendment while putting into place gun laws which afford the general public a reasonable feeling that all guns are being sold only to those who have photo IDs showing themselves as legitimate buyers and they will not be kept from buying any gun they desire to include assault weapons. We will also require all gun dealers to be federally licensed and be required to complete a simple background check on all customers. They will be required to keep extremely accurate records of all gun sales.

At the start we will neither support nor withhold support for abortion or the death penalty. The position of each will be decided by a caucus of representatives of all 50 states and 4 territories.

We will look for ways to reduce the size of our government without eliminating existing services. For example, all parts of the Department of Homeland Security can be folded into the Department of Defense. And where it is necessary for such jobs as airport security come into play, those jobs will be held by the military police of the Army, Navy, and Air Force however their will wear a non-traditional military uniform. These men and women will be entirely made up of reservists and national guardsmen. The Veterans Administration will be transferred to the Department of Defense and all veterans with an honorable military discharge will be able to avail themselves of the medical services on any military installation. Veterans educational programs will become an extension of civilian oriented military training.

We will re-write the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) so that access to it and what it offers will be close to what Americans who are part of group plans can expect. We will also require all insurance companies offer health benefits under this act or be sanctioned.

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What you see above is what is referred to as a standard bell curve. The way to read it is simple. Look at the straight line at the bottom. The -3 to +3 represents an entire population, of anything, but in this case I am using it for American citizens. The points between -0.5 and +0.5 are where you will find the position most Americans on any given subject. I believe that we can actually extend this between -1 and +1. The slope of the curve represents how strongly people feel in one direction or another about any particular subject. It is my belief that the 68% represented by these two points is where you can find most Americans and their willingness to work together. The remaining 16% on each side are those so deeply entrenched in an idea that you would be hard pressed to get them to change.

This bell curve is extremely important right now because it is my belief that the beleaguered Republican Party is being ruled by the 16% on their side of the curve. To be certain, many of Bernie Sanders’ ideas lie well within the 16% of the Democrat side and are simply not palatable to the other 84% of Americans, regardless of how hard he pushes.

I believe 68% of Americans are not interested in any particular groups religious beliefs, gun beliefs, money making beliefs or philosophical beliefs. They hold and want recognized their reasonable and moderate view of the world, the United States, and the town the live in to be respected. This is something that is not now happening.

I only wish I had the resources available to start such a party because I would. As a registered Democrat I embrace certain Republican views and find that among my Republican friends, we generally agree on most things. This, to me, epitomizes what the Moderate Party represents.

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Whatever Happened to the American Dream?


The simple answer is ‘it is alive and well.”  But the form it takes varies greatly.  That form is, of course, defined by whoever has that dream.  But like so much of what I write, this subject needs a little history behind it.

The first people to have a dream that America could possibly answer were English merchants, followed by the group of separatists we now call the Pilgrims.  They were followed by the Puritans.  Each of these first three groups had their own separate and specialized version of the new American dream.  The English merchants saw huge economic possibilities in the New World.  The Pilgrim came purely for religious freedom, and the Puritans for a combination of both, religion and  business.  All three groups realized the American dream, some quickly, some a little more slowly.

Through 1945 at least, the idea of freedom of some sort, religious, business, personal, was the single most attractive part of the American dream.  Even when immigrants were sold a bill of goods, as the Italians and Poles who were recruited at the beginning to the 20th century to work American factories with the promise of riches, many had come to escape the persecution of the Tsar, military impressment, and starvation that the Italian immigrant had known.  They were huddled into ethnic masses, ghettos, in America’s cities, and while the original immigrants found it difficult to escape the squalor they found themselves in, most quickly came to realize that the potential for their children far outweighed whatever shortcomings they had endured.

But the end of World War 2 saw the return of over 2 million soldiers to the American economy.  The federal government, remembering the economic travails of World War One vets, decided to give veterans a way to buy their own homes through the Veterans Administration which gave rise to the VA Home Loan.  World War One vets had felt abandoned and when the depression hit, they formed what was called “Hooverville” right next to the capitol building.  They were a constant reminder the president and congress of the unfilled promises made them following WWI.

Enter a man named William Jaird Levitt.  In the late 1920s he developed an idea of selling a large tract of affordable housing to upper middle class Americans on Long Island.  The idea, while successful, was derailed by the depression.  During WWII he won a large contract to build housing for the navy.  But when the federal government came up with the idea of government guaranteed loans, Levitt cashed in by creating an entire town on Long Island, Levitttown.  Small tract houses were advertised to the veteran as a way to realize the American dream, at least as defined by Levitt.  Levitt invited ex-servicemen to visit his model house and see how they could cash in on the new American dream, a house, a car, a wife, and two kids.  That advertising ploy was hugely successful, so much so, that some years later Levitt repeated his idea in Pennsylvania.  But now, burned into the American psyche, was this new version of the American dream and it has survived to this day.

In 1922 Congress passed an immigration law, the first of its sort, the limited the number of immigrants who could enter the U.S.  The law, hugely racist, was passed using 1900 immigration figures as the basis of who could enter the U.S. and in what numbers.  In 1900 the largest portion of immigrants came from northern Europe.

On April 30, 1975, the American embassy in Saigon Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese communists.  Americans saw on their television hundreds of Vietnamese, friends of America they were called, being airlifted off the top of the American embassy.  Shortly after that hundreds of Vietnamese who feared for their lives took to boats to escape their native land.  They became known as the “boat people.”  Most of those refugees were welcomed to America in no small part because of American guilt over what had occurred in their homeland.  The point here is, first, America made an exception to the immigration law, and second, but more importantly, these Vietnamese had an American dream in their minds that did not include a house, a car, and two kids.  Their dream was a throwback to the original settlers of English North America and the immigrants who came through the early part of the 20th Century.

Today’s politicians are selling the American public the idea that the American dream includes a right to a job, a right to very low taxes, and a right to feel entitled.  Those three things are a gross exaggeration of reality.  At the beginning of the 20th century poor immigrants desired one thing and one thing only, a chance.  They did not feel entitled to anything.  I think Americans today believe the American dream should be given to them and not worked for.

The American dream is alive and well, it is just not the one being sold by the politicians.  It is not up to the government to find you a job.  It is up to you.  It is not up to the government to lower the unemployment rate, it is up to business.  You are not entitled to a car, a house, or anything else save a chance equal to that of anyone else.  The American dream is the chance to lead a happy and successful life according to your own definition of what that looks like, and nothing more.

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Killing the Federal Government’s Sacred Cows


This post may seem rather odd coming from a lifelong registered Democrat and yet it does.  But I do believe that there are entire agencies within the federal government that need to be greatly reduced if not entirely disbanded.  Our government is trying to be all things to all people, and that is just an impossibility.  Most agencies were founded with the idea that since they apply to all people in the United States the federal government is the natural head.  That is both idealistic and overly optimistic.

One of the sacred cows of the Democrat Party is Health and Human Services.  This is an agency that should probably exist, in a much reduced form, under another cabinet head with most of its services being relegated to the individual states.  I think this also applies to housing and urban developement.  This does not mean I am in favor of eliminating welfare, but it does mean I believe welfare should be entirely funded by the individual state.

I have no idea why the Department of Energy exists as a cabinet post at all.  It would seem that its various organizations are better fitted beneath other existing agencies such as transportation and commerce.

Another cabinet post that thoroughly aggravates me Homeland Security.  This was a knee-jerk reaction by the Bush administration to the events of September 11, 2001.  While I agree in principle that greater security measures were needed, I entirely disagree, obviously with how this was carried out.  Title 10 and Title 32 of the U.S. Code dictates how our military troops can be used on U.S. soil.  Events following the incident at Kent State in the 1960s forced the issue of how the army can be used during civil discord.  It was affirmed that they cannot arrest any U.S. citizen for any reason, that is the domain of local, state, and federal police forces.  It should be noted, however, that there is absolutely no function which is the domain of Homeland Security that did not exist under some other authority prior to the events of 9/11.  It did mean that such activities needed to be better defined and expanded, but not to the extent that has happened.  Our troops, to included the Coast Guard, can be and should be used to assist in security our airports and seaports.  In fact, an open military presence at such facilities would likely underscore the commitment of the U.S. Government to the protection of its people.

Democrats are calling for a huge reduction in the Department of Defense’s budget citing the reduction of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Republicans seem to be complicit by the simple fact that they have not raised much of a fuss over proposed budget reductions.  This is one, along with State, of the cabinet posts that neither needs reduction in personnel nor funding.

The Department of Veteran Affairs should be made a part of Defense.  And with that, a compact needs to be struck such that anyone who has honorably served in our armed forces can expect lifetime care by the DoD.  This would not only make the military a more attractive place to young men and women, but would also enable all disabled veterans to get a consistently high level of care they deserve.  Understand, the VA would not go away but would become an active arm of DoD and find its funding there.

The federal government does need to redefine how its distributes funding among its various agencies to support the needs of the states.   Republicans are fond of saying how American business is better suited to do certain things the government now does.  And where the Department of Energy is concerned, save the regulatory portion, I could not agree more.  I believe that all portions of research and development done by the DOE, as well as any number of other agencies, is better left to the private sector.

Every person in every state must realize that to reduce the size and cost of the federal government means individual states taking on those tasks.  Health, welfare, housing, and many other programs now run by the fed will be taken over and funded by individual states.  As an individual you have to come to terms with what that means and what it is going to look like.  Personally, I am all for it.