Vietnam, Sad Stories From the Conflict, That Was Certainly a War
89It was War, not a "Conflict."
If you want righteous indignation aimed in your direction, then call the Vietnam War a "conflict." I do not recommend that you do this, as many a Vietnam Veteran experienced something much more intense, and altogether awful in Vietnam than a word such as "conflict" entails. This of course, applies to all on either side of the said WAR that was not merely a "conflict." Calling what happened between our United States Military and the North Vietnamese a "conflict," is also another wonderful example of how our government, and it's propaganda wing, the United States Corporate Media, operate to keep the truth from you and I concerning any, and everything. Oh, never forget that they also employee the exact opposite strategy, and THAT they do much more often, blowing up something small into a major "hobgoblin," causing the masses to clamor for safety, as if government could provide such a thing.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our veterans of World War Two, "the Greatest Generation," are dying off quickly. That war, the last major instance in which differing factions with global government agenda's squared off, and was staved off for yet a little while more, all the while being funded by corporations and Rothschild banks, and often the same corporations and Rothschild banks, on both sides. I'll never apologize for such a minor digression, but our WWII veterans are dying off, and if you know one, you should definitely spend time with him or her while you still can. Luckily, the veterans of the Vietnam WAR are still common, yet uncommon individuals. I'd like to encourage all of you, while at the same time making a notion towards myself, to take time out to do something kind for the Vietnam Veteran that you know, even if it's not a person that you particularly like. It's the least that you and I could do for those who experienced such horrors, and then came home to indignation.
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2008
Last month I spent several days "spacecoasting" in a town called Peeltown a bit down the road from the town I normally live in or around. Peeltown is my kind of community except that you can't leave much of nothin' sitting around outside-the place is sort of lawless. That same lawlessness is what will keep you out of the property of places you ought not be, so what was I saying?
Characters! There's lots of them in communities like that!
So anyways I met a Hell's Angel guy who was a Veitnam Vet, and I was at the home of another Vietnam Vet at that time. I'll not name any names, but the guy I met was in an intense mood, and I was too-he didn't know me from "Adam," but he started off talking rather angrily(not at me) about Vietnam, and how it wasn't called a war, but a "conflict."
"You know, the guy who owns this property was awarded two Purple Hearts over in 'Nam ." I pointed out.
"Yeah, but they don't give you no fucking Purple Heart for shooting your buddy ."
"Well, if someone was your buddy, then why would you shoot him ?"
I asked, being rather worried about the situation.
"Because he was a fucking vegetable! would you want to go home as a fucking vegetable??"
"No, I suppose not!"
I'd responded in that way, and was left, feeling sort of tiny. The man then went on to say that he found another friend of his tied to a tree with rats crawling through his stomach-he assured me that the "conflict" that he'd experienced was in fact a war-and this was something that I'd never doubted in my life.
Saturday night, the place was over at my "homegirl's" house in Kaufman, Texas. In the house that night was an aunt of her husbands-and I got to know her. We talked about her nephew Ray, and how he's become a hugely successful Lawyer in Dallas, and how Johnny Cochran had spoke(because Ray had the balls to ask him!) at his graduation from law school. Later, the conversation changed course and headed in the direction of the ladies brother(Ray, the lawyer's father).
"I'd never met him, " I said.
"He came back from Vietnam and was never right after that-he became a terrible drunk ."
I told her that most everyone I'd known or heard of had come back like that if they were lucky enough to come back at all(knowing full well that some probably didn't consider themselves very lucky for having returned home-never had a Vietnam Veteran told me that he felt appreciated upon returning). I went on to tell the lady about some of the sad stories I had heard from the vets I knew. She told me one that her brother had told her, and I'd not speculate on it much, but the setting was a villiage. I'd picture it as more of a jungle. Our troops were at the ready for a firefight, and all of the locals separated from our boys. In the distance "Charlie" was overheard insulting us, and crossing the human gulf of separation between native and U.S. soldier was a small child, a baby really-and strapped to him were explosives. Finally, a U.S. soldier had to shoot this small child because he was clearly packed with explosives and wouldn't stop heading in the direction of he and his fellow soldiers.
"That's fucking awful. " I told the lady who was relating this tale.
"Yes it is ,"
she agreed. We both wondered who it was more awful for, the man who had to shoot the child to protect himself and his fellow soldiers? The other soldiers who witnessed it? Or maybe even the N. Vietnamese?
Last night I had trouble sleeping because I was thinking about this, that, and the other. . . . .and I remembered back to when I worked at the Dallas Independent School District. There was a man there who was new to our HVAC department, he was a quite man, but very kind. One day he and I got to talking, and I told him,
"I heard that you were in the Marine Corps over in Vietnam? "
I didn't promp him to tell me a sad story, but he did anyway.
"Todd, the saddest thing I saw was when it was time to go home. The plane that left right before mine took off into the air, and it was packed as full as it could be with soldiers, and I knew nearly all of them. As we saw it take off somebody out of sight fired an RPG at it and the plane full of my friends who had served their tour, and were headed home was blown out of the sky."
Another HVAC employee at the school district told me more than once that it was at least ten years after he came home from the "conflict" that someone told him that they appreciated what he did for his country by serving over there.
Scenes From The Vietnam War.
Coda
When I'd originally published the above on Myspace, I got a lot of comments on the thing, and in the comments, the stories got a whole lot worse.
My uncle returned from Vietnam and was a horrible and violent drunk. One Christmas he was in a decent mood and not drunk yet, and I asked him about the war; and he told me that he'd been in charge of driving a transport truck through a very dangerous area; and that one of the tactics of the North Vietnamese had been to send children out into the roads to make transport trucks stop, and then the North Vietnamese would come out of the woods, and kill any and all on the trucks. For this reason my uncle was told that under no circumstances was he to stop the truck, and if anyone got in the way on the road, he had to just run over them, and so he did, he started crying, and telling me about running over children, a lot of children, that they'd sent out into the road to try and make him stop the truck. He said that they were nothing more than babies. He went home that night, and killed himself with a shotgun.
Horrific Tales Set To Music - Concerning The Vietnamese War.
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amen brother. My next door neighbor is a vietnam vet, and he is the coolest guy in the world. Not the typical ones you see in hollywood that go nuts when they hear an explosion. Nicest guy in the world, and though I have not asked him about, I have a feeling his experiences shaped who he is today. He values life. And I brought A plate of cookies, least I could do.
There are books that will never be written but should have been. Stanly Patrick was camping out on land wrapped up in an estate that had been ignored for decades. Stanly withdrew from society. He had nowhere to go. The police came and supposedly Stanly committed suicide. When I heard that Stanly died, the police were involved, he supposedly shot himself - it was distastefully "normal" for Veterans. A veteran in a small town, not fitting in, an outcast, treated like a criminal, yeah, what are the chances. He was camping out. It was his last resort. I too have wanted to die, take my own life, and hurry the process up. I've been homeless. My life continues to suck out the big butt with a straw - regardless of small accomplishments. I've lost two or three lifetimes. I've been arrested for having grains of marijuana in a can of Prince Albert tobacco. What macaroon would do that? I spent some time on the chain gang for it. The story is much longer than I can elaborate here. People think they know how America works. Bull$#it! I've lost all I've worked for because I will not hire a lawyer against my ex. I will not have my daughter suffer. I will not divide what I built. People don't know $#it about the courts of the US. They know little about the Vets coming back. Some Medal of Honor winners are quitting the service after serving their country and finding out some indisputable truths. I could write a few hubs right here. We wanted to be heroes. Our country lied to us. We stood for all the right ideals. The businessmen lied about the War and the reason. It's usually the "businessmen"! Great hub Bub. I'm rehashing too much $#it! But no matter - it's always - Semper Fi! As I sit right now- there's no doubt in my mind - I've lived 40 damn years too long. But it's always Semper Fi! We want to be "always faithful". That's what we signed up for. We were lied to. And that's why I will not sugar-coat some of these lame lies about these businessmen who send us around the world for their profit. "WE" are always faithful" and "they" are always liars. Semper Fi! God bless!
I dont have a right to say it, but semper fi Micky
Me neither, Chris, but Micky Dee is one cool dude. But you figured that one out already.
dated a nam vet for three years in 80's. he was a mess before he went, and hopeless after. that war's toll continues. good hub.
I recently wrote a human rights hub on the Vietnam Vets. (It can be found on my profile page.) I am a daughter of a vet and have heard many stories of what my dad seen and experienced there. The lack of respect these men and women recieved is unbelievable even today.
Hey cool! I'll check yours out after some coffee! :-;
Todd this is a great hub, George Carlin used to do a bit about this very thing. The only one I remember is in WWll we called trauma "shell shocked" and now it's PTSD. Point being we try to make the most horrific shit not as bad by making it sound better. A lot of my friends don't even want to talk about Nam and I respect that. It took a terrible toll on all of us but especially folks like my brother Micky Dee. It was "War" and I ask what for? Peace!! Tom
These stories need to be told over and over again, until today's people "get it."
Good for this Hub. I hope it elicits more stories like Micky's. The stories aren't just about what happened there and then, they are also about the devastating emotional fallout after soldiers returned home. In this sense, the Vietnam War (not a conflict) is still alive, a heritage of cancerous denial that is embedded in the generations that followed.
. . . . .and so it is also for those returning from Dyncorps sexual slavery parties, that weren't aware of the inherent evil associated with "international police training in Afghanistan," and we've all seen the video of the civilians gunned down by our soldiers from a helicopter in Iraq, so forth and so on.
The last P.O.T.U.S. admin started wars in order to build the Tapi pipeline in Afghanistan, in Iraq the war was for Haliburton to make money; the 9/11 murders came because the day before it was released that two hundred trillion was missing from the pentagon, and the next day a jet crashed into the accounting wing of that building, but our elite liar sinister, and altogether criminal government created a fake enemy to kill.
Really great hub. So many stories will never even be heard.
My first husband is a Vietnam vet and probably that fact alone, was the root of many of his and our problems. I find it not possible to forgive him, so it is a difficult road for many vets to walk down, but just as hard for the wives and children to walk also. I just may have to create a hub about that one day. Great hub.
I appreciate all of the shared stories, which apply probably to veterans of most wars, but especially to unpopular ones. As for the use of the word "Conflict," I'm pretty sure it's used deliberately to underscore the fact that the Vietnam War was never ratified by an act of Congress and therefore, technically, cannot be considered a bonafide act of War. However, I'm with all of the posters who agree it was a war.
Thank you, Jalus!
Hey Bobbi Rant, definitely; evil shit snowballs, or domino effects us all!
Hi Jonihnj! Yep, pretty sick definition. It would be no different if you had witnessed a totally wasted coroner who just wouldn't admit that a given body was lifeless, and refused to sign a death certificate.
Wesman, a fukking conflict? I don't remember it like that at all, a conflict:A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.
I wonder how many life insurance policies were denied under the "war clause" that was on just about every insurance policy of the day back then.
Conflict is what we had when argueing who's turn it was to set the 55 gallon drum full of shit on fire and stir it until it was done. I don't know why we didn't load them in one of our choppers and fly over Charlies camp out and dump the drum halves on them, ha ha now that would have been the shit!, 50
Damn, 50 Caliber, that's a depressing thought; that life insurance thing. That's a disgraceful thing. I'd like to expose that.
Vietnam destroyed this countries morale..but it informed a whole generation of what not to do....hence when Bush Invaded iraq, millions took to the streets world wide in a pre-emptive protest.....that had NEVER happened before, and vietnam had plenty to do with it.
it turns out the "focus group" was right after all.
Interesting. I'd not thought of it like that.
Thing is, the protests didn't change anything.
I was going to leave a comment, but I can't.
Is Afghanistan another Vietnam?
Probably it is, Shadowblack, but Dyncorps is throwing child sex slave buying and abusing parties in Afghanistan, doubt we actually had official corporate sponsored sex slave parties featuring children in Vietnam. Also, in Afghanistan we get to "fight the terrorist" while building that profitable Tapi natural gas pipeline!!
I'm happy to see you haven't been duped by the bullshit, Wesman. Afghanistan is a war that can only be won by big business.
Hey Maggie Hicks, I regularly preach to the choir on these kinds of issues. I think everyone else must be busy watching the Grammy awards, or something.
Wow, that was intense. And that comment about the children...I'm glad that we have learned our lesson in supporting the troops instead of treating them so horribly when they return. But even now, I've heard some horror stories about the ones returning and there not being enough funding or stuff to get them the help they need. So sad.
By the way, have you ever heard of the children's crusade? They did something like sending kids out in droves to try to end some conflict in the medieval period. Sad times.
And then, of course, there is "the kill team."
http://www.rollingstone.com/kill-team
you know, the folks that - or at least the type, that people like Hanoi Jane thought "baby killers."
There just ain't nothing decent about any of our current wars, IMO, and of course we have silent wars here at home. Guess I'll not go into that stuff, I'm having a good enough day so far to not wanna.
I've got a very nice book on the Crusades that a neighbor gave me, but I've not read it. I've got books that taunt me all day long "you've not read me, punk."
The Children's crusade sounds like some awesome history that I need to look into though!
Id refused the VN draft...we all have the right to refuse actions that endanger children and war is useless anyway.
My husband served in the VietNam WAR for 4 tours. He will not buy Michelin tires to this day. He wouldn't use them if they were free. He said many of his guys(he was a sergeant) were killed because they Cong would hide in the Rubber plantations and fire at them.. They were not allowed to fire into the Michelin plantations. He got fed up with it and set fire to the plantations. He does not drink and I thank God. He does have PTSD and many other problems from then. He is totally disabled and sometimes is hard to put up with. But he is mine and I would not change him for anything.
As for getting treatment for PTSD, it is a joke here in Nashville. They are affiliated with Vanderbilt Universities teaching hospital and the therapists are students. They are there to learn how to treat patients and those are the ones treating my husband. 1 year and they graduate and go. No therapy is any good when the therapist changes yearly. I guess it is better than some places where they don't have any therapists but not much. They also have groups that my husband won't go to. He said all they do is talk about wanting to kill someone. He doesn't want to kill, he just wants to avoid people. He is going deeper into isolation every year. But they are treating with the most drugs they can. He doesn't take all that they want him to take because they make him into a zombie.
Advice is dangerous to give - and in no way do I think I know what would be best.
I do have some observations that I'll offer, but I'm nobody's therapist, and I've only life to offer as my training: I think your husband could benefit from talking to other veterans about those things - and trying hard to express what effect that they had on him, and to accept that those things happened, and that despite those experiences, he's still got life to live, and great things to do, wisdom to share, and joy to receive despite the horrors that he's witnessed and been a part of.
I'm not a therapist, and I'm damn sure no Medical Doctor - but I also think that big pharmaceutical industries are the exact kind of corporations that are ever on the increase in their desire to profit - and so they inevitably lead nations into more wars, and create more people with PTSD as a byproduct, intended or unintended.
I don't take big pharma meds - I'm not saying that I wouldn't try them if I was in more pain than I am now.
It's not bad to talk about wanting to kill people - it's only bad to act out on those desires. I don't have a clue here, except for me and my experiences - I'm not a veteran of any nation's official military, and I've never killed anyone. I often get very angry and think that I want to kill someone - and if I go so far as to say that, or type it out here - it's not long before I can look at what I've written, crap about wanting to kill someone, and then I see that that is just stupid, and wrong.
It's not wrong to be angry, it's only wrong to decide to go kill someone in anger. I admit here freely that I could get mad and kill someone too. I hope that never happens - but I'm human just like every other human that has killed someone. Making mistakes is human, but not recognizing that you've made a mistake means that you think you are God, and not a human.
I don't know if Veterans groups would be good or not - but I'm positive (nearly) that your husband has some friends that are veterans that he likes to talk to.
I don't have the kinds of problems that he has - but when I have problems, I talk to a few select friends about them, and that always gives me a different perspective on what might be going on.
I hope that that helps - it's about all that I can do right here and right now.
I appreciate you trying to help but he really is dealing with it. He talks to friends with the DAV. They are much saner than the guys the VA put him in with. I do not think that the VA tries as hard as they could to help our veterans. He has his disability so he doesn't have to worry about how we are going to get by. For a long time, he didn't have it, I supported us and it wasn't good for him. Made him feel like less of a man.
Things are better now. Only took 17 years to get the disability.
I'm glad to hear it.
That it took seventeen years to get disability for a military induced problem like that is disgraceful. I hate the U.S. Government.
This is a very intense read and you do justice with this hub to the very sad stories that these men brought home with them.
Only last night I was watching a documentary about a group of British soldiers who served in Afghanistan and I see things really haven't changed.
I wonder whatever happens to people like Bush who commit a nation to such carnage for their own ends.
Thank you.
Spirit Whisperer - Thank you very much! I think we can only hope for a settling of scores by higher powers. Outside of that, then doing all manner of evil for material profit has no real punishment - in fact, it's rewarded here on Earth.
Very intense. Very Real. Unspeakably unjust.
Then and still.
And NOTHING HAS CHANGED. If anything, at a political level, it's worse. No names, but guess who...Get elected, take a position of high office, orchestrate eye- off-the-ball 'diversions' at immeasurable cost, but not to you personally, manipulate the Muppet whose hand quivers above the button, LIE about geopolitics IN ORDER TO CREATE WAR, invent absurd and obscene concepts like 'pre-emptive strike', invade for invented reasons. Destroy everything in sight, so as to BENEFIT from the rebuilding contracts awarded to companies you're a director of.
Pretend to give a shit about the deaths of thousands. Retire respected.
I don't live in the U S of A, but you can't miss the odour of BS, even from way down here at the ends of the earth. There should be a penalty for politicians who cause the deaths of thousands, and for their 'superiors' who are too dumb to know what they're doing.
Media manipulation in America goes back at least as far as Manifest Destiny (England, America, and the Indian Nation), and continues unabated. George Bush enhanced the skillset of the string-pullers by his lack of moral fortitude, and worsened things through his inability to think before opening his mouth. The new guy created his own black mark not only in the crass Geronimo naming of the Osama bin Laden takedown mission, but also by at first claiming it as a personal triumph, then denying it as an unfortunate misunderstanding, 'the work of others'.
It upsets me so much, I wrote a Hub about it. Not as visceral as this excellent piece. But, I suggest that when the Afghanistan 'conflict' is over, there'll be similarly gut-wrenching stories to the tragic ones from Viet Nam. At present, as far as I can see, the mainstream media is again failing to tell the whole truth; by default, participating in the deception.
We're just slaves - and the oligarchs want us to know this.
Henry Kissenger - satanist Jew oligarch stated that military men were just stupid beasts to be used as pawns in foreign policy - that's pretty much his quote, I'm just too tired at the moment to put it into quotations.
Hear about this yet?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059169/Ai
Our corrupted corporate fascist society honors these "pawns" so much that they just dump their bodies into landfills - because they can.
That is obscene. And yet, we read (and are expected to believe: "General Norton Schwartz, the chief of staff of the Air Force, apologised for the mistakes made at Dover.
‘We understand the obligation of this work, the sanctity of this work, the need for reverence, the need for dignity and respect of our fallen, just as if these were our sons and daughters’.
No you don't. Else this aricle would never have needed to be written.
It's all spin.
But people like to see someone stand up and tell them what they want to hear. In fact, I believe that most folks would rather just be told what they want to hear than to hear someone who was honest tell them something that had some integrity behind it.
I think of Ron Paul - now, like him or not - I believe that that guy will do what he says he will do....if he says he's going to nuke China if elected - bank on it.
Obama has some sort of witchcraft going to where he can say something ambiguous and everyone around here hears whatever it was that they wanted to hear....except of course, those folks who've wisely decided to not listen to him because they already know he's full of shit.
The USA is screwed - much better to be where you are, I think.
Still those media are spreading lies more than ever as per the long term political gains. Unfortunately innocent American people are accused but politicians.
Im really angry how they acted on sri lankan matter. For them it was ethnic conflict while the FBI had named LTTE as the most brutal terrorist outfit. LTTE was the worst ever than Al Quida you can find facts if needed. But still american politics play havoc on Sri Lanka.
I'd like to know a whole lot more about that, magodis, unsurprisingly - it was probably never covered truthfully in the USA - assuming that it was reported at all.
Dear Todd, Im happy that you have some interest on this matter. You will be amazed to know that LTTE was the most dangerous terrorist group in the world.
Kindly check this blog post http://magodiya.blogspot.com/2011/11/global-assess
Meanwhile, you can simply search this fact online. LTTE Atrocities
http://www.spur.asn.au/ltteatro.htm
Also you may find a lot of anti-srilankan media sponsored by LTTE funds around the world. Do not forget that LTTE terrorists had more than enough funds to convince / lobby or threat high level politicians in the powerful countries like US, Canada, Australia, UK, Norway etc etc.
You might have heard of Mr Raj Rathnam (recently sentenced to be in jail for 11years in America)who funded American politicians (Mrs. Clinton?) through TRO.
You may amazed to watch UK based Channel four film "Sri Lanka killing fields" which used LTTE funds to bribe UN officials too for acting in that. After watching that please look at Sri Lankan response for that "Liess agreed upon"
I have many things on this but I don't want you embarrassed on my lengthy answers - You know this is about our lives so words flow...
Thank you
Im sorry I missed one very related thing.
Sri Lanka army rescued 300 000 civilians from clutches of LTTE terrorists at the last stage of war. This is the largest rescue operation ever in WORLD HISTORY I think. But this was telecast by CNN and BBC as just 3000 civilians and gave less emphasis on this number and later was crying over the death of terrorist leaders.
This is real dirty politics
Thank you for the info! This is all brand new to me - I'm sure that you've noticed, but US citizens are most often practically ignorant of world history, and even their own history.
I'm probably a bit better than ignorant, but not much - there's so much to learn.
My father did I two tours in email ietnam...on the front lines..great hub....I voted up..debbie
My phone messed up...my father did two tours in vietnam..
Thank you Deborah!!!!
You're quite lucky to be here!
By the grace of being born in England, I missed 'Nam, otherwise, had I been born an American I would have been a shoo in for the draft.
My father fought in Burma in WW2, he was never the same after, and to his dying day suffered from 'survivors complex'.
Always in his sight was a photo taken in Afghanistan (in the Khyber Pass) of his unit, before they shipped out to Burma, he was the only one to return home.
Wars fought on behalf of maintaining the elites stranglehold over humanity are something we just have to stop.
Maybe the final war will be to remove the 1% who keep us in subjection to their will?
That one I would be prepared to die for.
I don't know what stops people from rounding up the richest one percent of the world and executing them on public television.
I'm not one for capital punishment, but I might be willing to let that pass without a word...as if my words mean much anyway.
Well if enough of us keep uttering those words, we may see the sheeple rise up and take action, happened in France, albeit they killed anybody who looked 'wrong' - but we can easier identify those who need culling today, so we could easier get the right culprits.
I'm not one for violence either, but when you see a cancer, you need to deal with it to save the body.
Yup.
Bankers make money of both ends of every war...you can't go wrong by starting there. Mass media does nothing but blow smoke up everyone's rear in support of those wars, there's the second line of folks to go.
Munitions and armament CEO's and stock holders all profit from death, there's the third tier.
Evelyn Anne 17 months ago
I was a teen and young adult in those years. It was a very sad, confusing time. Sad stories were abundant. No one returns from war the same man or woman s/he was before. It was a conflict alright--we all suffered with conflicted consciences and emotions.