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Does it piss anybody else off that some latter-day patriots who never served a day in uniform, and some of whom actually dodged service in Vietnam or other wars, get to tell the rest of us all about war and service and love of country? You know, people like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen and Charlie Daniels and Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith and Gary Sinise and Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg? Is it just me, or does anyone else think they should keep their traps shut because they not only don’t know what they’re talking about, they have no right to be “experts” on the subject.
The only one who has the credibility to say what he wants is Oliver Stone.
I can’t believe I failed to mention the number one Chickenhawk in my book: Ted Nugent.
Jim Intravia: There’s something even better than grandkids. GREAT grandkids! I’ve already got 3!
Clay makes an interesting point about WWII. The Army divisions which actually spent the most time at the front were National Guard divisions who made the first offensive landings in North Africa and stayed in the ETO until the end of the war, fighting in Italy and up through southern France. The 34th, 36th and 45th divisions spent 400-500 days at the front during a 3 year period and they top the list of all American divisions. No Marine division even came close to that many days in combat.
In Vietnam, the 1st Cav has the distinction of serving the longest in that war, nearly 7 years from the first advance party in 1965 until their last brigade left country in 1972. The 1st Marine division spent 6 years. During that time, every single, solitary day was spent in actual contact with the enemy by some element of both divisions. Heck, that was true of ALL Infantry divisions in Vietnam.
During the 1st Cav’s 7 years in Vietnam, (2500+ days in contact with the enemy) they suffered 5,544 KIA’s and 26,592 WIA’s. By comparison, the 45th Infantry division during WWII sustained 3,650 KIA’s, 13,729 WIA’s and 3,615 MIA’s during their 511 days at the front.
So, as you can see, the battles we fought in Vietnam were not as ferocious or long-lasting as during WWII, (which is not surprising given the type of fighting), but it was just as deadly, if not more so.
But. here is a statistic which will blow your mind. During WWII, the average Infantryman had a 1 in 4 chance of becoming a casualty. During the Civil War, it was 1 in 3. In Vietnam, it was 1 in 2. Why? Because by our war, there were fewer Infantrymen in relation to the total force, yet we spent more time actually in the presence of the enemy than in any other war in our history. My own experience in 2nd platoon confirms that statistic. If you start with the average, normal field strength of the platoon (not it’s TOE strength, which nobody ever saw), the platoon did indeed sustain 50% casualties during my tour. And that was near the end of the war when the level of contact was subsiding. Some of you guys who were there earlier may have had even LESS than a 1 in 2 chance of getting out unscathed.
And then some have the nerve to tell us it wasn’t a “real” war.
The only thing which saved us all was that we got to go home after a year. If we’d had to stay for the duration like they did in WWII, I guess the only survivors would have been the last ones there.
One good thing about gettig old. Grandchildren!
Carl,
The nice thing about age there is nothing for it to come out. It is like “Walton” reruns. Everyone is new regardless of how many times they run it. Speaking of old guy disease I have to stop now!
I’ve enjoyed reading all these comments on PTSD. Similar discussions are happening on the Americal website. In reading all of these, I thank the Lord that I have very few of these symptoms. I sleep like a log, getting up only to use the bathroom (old guy disease) but don’t really have any of these symptoms. Yes, I jump at unexpected loud noises but who doesn’t. I hope all is not lying dormant someplace in inner regions of my brain waiting come out at some future time.
Speaking of psychopaths in training–I have a friend in a high level government agency job. It is not an agency which traditionally deals with criminals or even the unruly. He was required to attend training in law enforcement techniques to include going through a course with a laser pistol and pop-up laser images. One of the images was an old lady shaking a stick at him. He didn’t shoot her (No brainer) but he was roundly criticized for not shooting. He said, “It was just an old lady with a stick”. The instructor said, “No, it was an aggressor wielding a weapon. I don’t worry about my friend or you old grunts shooting her. I do worry about some room temperature IQ 20-something police trainee being taught that that is proper procedure. Or gung ho management types in our burgeoning para-military agencies trying to enhance their careers.
I believe PTSD for us VN vets has a lot to do with the way we were used vs the WW II guys. Mostly they would get thrown into a meat grinder accompanied by thousands and thousands of GI’s for some period of time and then generally spend months or weeks resting, refitting and getting reinforcements. I also think they replaced the obvious cases who couldn’t hack it anymore. My platoon/company would be out in the boonies for 3 or 4 weeks (and there were plenty of terror-stricken times even w/o combat) and then get a lovely 2 or 3 days off at Hawk Hill (doing shit details) which wasn’t even the battalion rear. I saw the battalion rear in Chu Lai once when I left the Americal Combat Center for Hawk Hill. It seemed nice. The point being that most of our VN time would have qualified as combat time in WW II including time at Hawk Hill, Baldy & Charlie 2.
The fact that we returned home to mostly indifference and some animosity sure didn’t help. I bet I spoke to nearly no one in any depth about VN for about a decade. I think a lot of WWII guys had PTSD and either broke down or suffered through some damn miserable times. Regarding the use of silhouettes I would vehemently disagree with the idea that or other programming contributed to an army of psychopaths. I’m glad that I knew no one in my platoon who wouldn’t shoot at the enemy. A healthy sign of the instinct of self preservation and effective training. The discussions in training about our enemy had more to do with their capability and their deserved respect as an adversary. WWII guys heard a lot more racist dogma about killing the animals they were facing than I ever heard. For what it’s worth the FBI, among others, have been using a photo of John Dillinger on their targets for decades with few if any psychopathic reactions recorded.
For what it’s worth I went from the battalion to Cam Ranh Bay to home in about 3 days. We got a humorous talk at Ft Lewis about the “world” for about an hour and then out processed. More decompression time would have been good. I was like a fish out of water for months; maybe years. Didn’t want to kill any one but loud noises scared me and for decades I woke up yelling either before or after throwing myself out of bed. Spent a huge amount of time thinking about VN and “what if” scenarios. Drank a lot too. Still maintained a career.
It was a screwed up war with no coherent aims, goals or strategies. It was orchestrated by LBJ, among the most crooked of politicians and his brown-nosing entourage. The senior US brass understood all of this but put their careers ahead of any principals they had. Today,amazingly, southern VN is largely left alone by the north to pursue capitalistic ventures which they learned from us by selling black market goods, drugs and their sisters. The spirit of enhancing personal well-being as opposed to supporting a bungling and incompetent government is slowly moving north so maybe we kind of won after all.
I’m with Bill: Room service!
For mw, putting aback pack on has not nor will not happen since 1970. Camping for me includes a trailer or a motorhome!
Russ, I finally got over the fireworks.
Gary, we have a lot of sportsmen on this site but I turned out as you did with no desire to hunt. For those who do so be it. As for me on a cold, rainy, foggy, 4 am morning I want to roll over in bed at a Holiday Inn, touch my dear, and think about the buffet. Hard core me!
Russ: Fireworks don’t bother me, but I agree with you about camping. It just doesn’t hold any fascination for me at all. Outside of the Army, I’ve haven’t spent a night on the ground since I was a Boy Scout and don’t intend to.
And, this may sound strange to some of you, but I’ve never been deer hunting either and don’t want to. What’s the thrill of sitting in a blind to ambush Bambi after you’ve hunted game which hunted you back?
We’ve always been the only guy on the block that hates fireworks. At least I was., and still am. My kids could never understand that, and I surely can’t blame them. And the other issue has always been ‘camping’. Just can’t do it….. camped out for a year…once upon a time….
I agree, denial and ignoring symptoms can be and has been dangerous if not fatal.
Yep, me too. Just be sure you’re not fooling yourself, though.
I agree Lt.
PTSD is like this, “All have some, some have alot”
July 4th 1970. I got home on the 2nd and was so cranked up to be home I could not sleep. My folks had friends over and I finally fell asleep at 4 on the 4th.their home looked over a small valley where the town held the fireworks. When the first one went off I, from a dead sleep, fell off the bed to hide. When I realized where I was I came up to look out the window and everyone was staring up at me. In the proces they told me afterward I screamed out “incoming”.
So, ya ain’t got PTSD huh?
http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/basics/symptoms_of_ptsd.asp
I had several incidents in my first few years back from Nam at Ft. Lewis that I recall vividly. I remember one day driving home to Tacoma after work through North Fort Lewis and driving by the M-60 range just when they opened fire and I about drove off the road. I was in a GoGo joint in Tacoma one night when an underaged youth tried to get in and the bounce refused. The kid pulled a .45Cal pistol and tried to pistol whip the bouncer and failing that he brought the thing around and shot him through the gut. I heard the shot and the bullet hitting the wall and was under a table in a microsecond as my training told me if there was one, there would be another(the bouncer lived). One other time I came across an accident scene where a horse had been hit by a car and I just cried. I told myself that had it been a human at that time I would have reacted differently as I had been somewhat conditioned to see human death. Have woken up crying and hollering stop or keep away over the years but never accepted that it might have been PTSD.
PTSD. I always felt lucky that I didn’t have it. My ex-brother-in-law went to the big Vietnam thing in DC that first time, 1986 or so. He went downhill after that; strange because most guys thought that was kind of cathartic and the country welcoming them and all that. He and I never compared experiences but I believe he was artillery and was there in 67-68 which I consider a worse time by far than when I was there (69-70). He became an alcoholic, quit his job and never bounced back from it. I’ve lost touch with him.
I had a few “flashbacks” during the first 10 years or so. In the six months or so after getting home, if I saw a dead animal on the expressway, I automtically got off the previous exit for the next few days so I woudn’t see it again. It seemed automatic and I don’t remember a lot of effort-it just kind of took me over. July 4th of 1970 (got home in April) I was at a beach thing at night with my girlfriend. firecrackers started going off (probably had been for days) and I suddenly practically collapsed; sweating, shaking, etc. my girlfriend let me out of there by the hand. But the worst one was about 1980 or so. I was cleaning up my kid’s toys and i picked up a gi Joe figure that was broken in half at the waist. The image of the medic and the booby trap of Feb. 1970 just overwhelmed me and I sat down and cried in my living room.
As a 90mm guy, I didn’t see as much combat as the rest of you guys. It feels lousy to dump this stuff on everyone but it also seems the right thing to do.
Whoo Hoo! Thunder sleet in North Texas…and a lot of it!
I may have mentioned this before, but one morning in class right after I got out of the Army, a jet flew over the campus and for some reason my mind processed it as an incoming 122mm rocket. I tried to dive out of my desk to the floor, but only succeeded in lurching toward the windows, dragging the desk which was caught on my hip.
Surprisingly, nobody said anything, not even the instructor. They just gaped at me with their mouths open.
I came home to my wife of three years. Couldn’t sleep, restless, and wound up on the couch so she could sleep. She found me under the coffee table once when a car backfired while I was sleeping on the couch.
Not long before I ETS’d, I got sent up to the tiny little firebase at Hill 151. I went from there to a college classroom in less than a week.
Man, I didn’t even know what PLANET I was on, but whatever it was, I knew I didn’t fit.
Larry, I got a hold of Fred Mayorga. I gave him the web site info Still working on Dane Hammond.
A majority of the original (Fort Devens) 196ers were eligible for, and probably took, separation at the time of rotating out of Vienam. I was discharged from active duty and home in Los Angeles in just over 48 hours from the field. Field as in patrolling, setting ambushes and 25-50% night alerts.
I did go on some hikes with friends in the first few weeks that didn’t really go well, especially the after-dark ones.
For years, gun shots freaked me out, now I just automatically flatten myself for small arms fire that cracks overhead.
The idea that some retraining and decompression would have made a huge difference is a good one.
The only problem I see is that the Army would have screwed that up as badly as it did everything else.
Gary, I agree with you 100% on that as being one of the issues. Consider this: The American people had already lost the war by the end of Tet. After that we were just replacement parts and expendable.And don’t forget about all of the support we got from the protesters. Baby killers at al. Although I’m really upset that I missed 1. The landing on the moon .2.The Jets winning the superbowl. 3. The knicks winning the NBA championship,and most all 4. The Mets winning the world series
What gets me angry is that the politicians lied us into Vietnam and they got away with it….Then they lied us into Iraq and Afghanistan and got away with it again…the only people to benefit were the corporations and contractors who supplied the planes, helicopters and other materiel……and then the Army forces the soldiers to serve 6 or 7 combat tours…. Talk about PTSD…These guys are going to be walking time bombs for the next 40 years, with or without compensation…..And like Terry said, the families are also damaged……I don’t want to wish anybody into Hell, but it wouldn’t bother me if those war profiteers spent a thousand years in purgatory.
Mark: Being cannon fodder isn’t necessarily what did it. There’s more to the story which affects our generation of Veterans, and the current one, more so than previous generations.
Based upon S.L.A Marshall’s deeply flawed study about men in WWII combat, and their reluctance to shoot at other human beings, the Army revamped training in the 1950’s and 60’s. The training scenario was partly designed by psychologists with the objective of creating soldiers who could kill other human beings without much moral effort. Among the things they did, for instance, was switch from using paper bullseye targets to human silhouette targets, the idea being to familiarize us with the concept of aiming at a human shape. It goes much deeper than that, but the bottom line is that they set out to deliberately create an army of psychopaths. With the advent of MILES equipment, it reached a whole new level in the 1980’s and went farther yet in the 90’s and 21st century with virtual reality video training.
The problem is that they spent our first 14-15 weeks in the army conditioning us to be what they wanted us to be, but never reversed the process before we got out. When we arrived at the Reception Station, we immediately became part of a total immersion program, stepping into an organization and training program built around the concept of making us killers on demand. Yet, when it came time for ETS, instead of a similar period of re-training out of that mode and into one acceptable to society outside the gates, we simply got a plane ticket and a “Thank you.”
THAT is what causes us our problems.