I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. If my parents had opinions about current events, I don’t recall them ever discussing anything from the TV or newspaper. They were more interested in making a living, supporting a young family. We had the hallmark look of the ‘60s: my mom ratted her hair up into the bouffant hairdo and wore miniskirts, my sisters and I had simple straight hair and wore bell bottoms, ponchos, flower dresses and go-go boots (bright yellow), my brother had an original Beatles short cut (as opposed to the long hair in later years), my dad’s hair was slicked back, and they both wore unremarkable clothes. As a child I was unaware of civil rights protests and progress, several tragic assassinations, the Cuban missile crisis and landing on the moon. Now I did know about hippies, they wandered around on the sidewalks. One day we were driving along, and I saw one. I wasn’t staring at him; I was just looking out the window. Our eyes met – and he stuck his tongue out at me with a mean face. It really scared me, having this oddly dressed, dirty and disheveled man making an aggressive face at me. I was so glad I was in a car – I was nervous about hippies from then on. That was without knowing they lived a bohemian lifestyle, sharing everything, food, psychedelic drugs, sex, STDs, unsanitary self-care. They rebelled against established mores, rejected conservative values, embracing their free living without being tied to institutional 9 to 5 job. Believing peace and love the answer to everything, they were radically anti-war, leading volatile protests against Vietnam.
The only thing I knew about Vietnam was that one of my Uncles was a Green Beret stationed there, and he worked with a war dog. When he came home on leave, we’d visit him, and he made us laugh at his goofy antics. I didn’t know then, but Green Berets are Army Special Forces, highly skilled in clandestine missions, guerilla warfare, parachuting and handling military dogs. However I knew it was hilarious when he stood in a doorway holding either side, saying he was ready to jump out of the airplane; he would count 3, 2, 1, then shout ‘Geronimo!’ as he leapt into the room after us as we squealed away from him; it’s a wonderful memory. For my Uncle, as with many Vietnam Vets, he rarely talked about his memories and experiences from the war. Still, I knew it had affected him deeply. He divorced his first wife because she wanted children, but after Vietnam, my Uncle refused to bring a child into this dangerous world. I learned about one of the solemn incidents that happened to him there. His war dog was stealthily leading him through elephant grass, which is taller than a man. His dog hesitated, my Uncle had a sudden urge to straighten up slightly just as a Viet Cong machete sliced right in front of him, cutting off his dog’s nose. If he had not pulled back that slight bit, it would have embedded in his skull. I don’t think he told us if the dog or the Viet Cong soldier lived, but I doubt either did.
On a lighter note, the last story I remember is a gross one, but I’ll share it anyway. Just like the dog story, I don’t know why he told it with kids around, but he did. One of his duties was to train newly arrived soldiers. His favorite part of the training was to show them what to do with chickens. He told them there would be times they will have to subsist on what they can find out in the jungle. Having already made sure chickens were running around the training area, he suddenly reaches down, grabs a passing chicken and bites its head off. He got a big kick out of their shocked reactions. I don’t remember if he said he then made the trainees do it. Yuck. Initially, it sounds like an urban legend, you can’t bite the head off a chicken! Google it, it’s a real phenomenon, he wasn’t pulling our leg. As children, we just laughed at his silly pantomimes as he told the story. As an adult, I recognize it for what it is, a stark, disturbing image of warfare survival.
My family ended the ‘60s by moving to Alaska in 1970. The new decade saw the Civil Rights movement march on, environmental concerns gain momentum, the horrific murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Olympics. I was well aware of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, but not its role in easing the energy crisis. Watergate did get my attention. Not because I knew what Watergate was about, I just knew a lot of people were furious with President Nixon. I thought it was a noble act for him to resign so the country could move on and focus on the future. And of course, there was still Vietnam, more controversial than ever. I experienced a significant event about the war in 5th grade that was unlike the fun teasing of my Uncle. Our teacher asked why we were at war in Vietnam. I knew soldiers were to protect us, so I shot up my hand and quickly said ‘Because they are trying to take over America.’ I was very serious, but several children laughed at me, and worse, Mrs. Miller laughed at me. If she told us the real reason for the war, I have no idea. I sunk my head down, my long hair falling to hide my face as I cried mortified tears of embarrassment. I did not volunteer to speak in class again until I was forced to in the required college course Speech. The older I got, the more aware I became of the national conversation about the war, how people believed we shouldn’t be there. I got the impression all soldiers had been pressed into service through the draft. Dodgers either kept going to college as long as they could or ran off to Canada. The media was quick to emphasis the brutalities of war with gruesome pictures, frequent body counts and outrage over civilian casualties as if the military did not care. Besides, some said, it was a civil war, they needed to fight it out themselves, even if communism won over democracy. Detractors didn’t acknowledge that by its nature war is brutal, ugly, horrific, as was every war before Vietnam. Because Vietnam was the first war with unprecedented transparency, journalists’ access and advanced technology, Americans could watch it unfold on their television sets. They were deeply disturbed by what they saw, justifiably so. A lot of the fighting was tragically in or near where civilians lived, collateral damage was inevitable. The media ignored that the Viet Cong were extremely vicious and deliberately hiding among civilians, killing them, targeting their villages, farms, fleeing families, and refugee camps.
The draft was emphatically protested so much, I thought all soldiers were drafted until I did research for this article. Turns out only 25% of military personnel were drafted into the Vietnam war. I also still didn’t know why we were there. I read that in August 1964 North Vietnamese torpedoed two U.S. Destroyers in international waters. President Johnson ordered retaliation. Wading into Vietnam was also going to back up South Vietnam’s democracy against North Vietnam’s communism. By February 1965 we were bombing North Vietnamese military targets, and critics, initially mostly college students, artists, intellectuals, and, of course, hippies, began their propaganda parade against the war and the American soldiers in combat there. The media fell in line, as previously indicated, by reporting the worst of the war without the reminder why fighting communism was important to the world, and not sharing some tangible positive outcomes, such as the civic action projects built by the Navy Seabees (Construction Battalion). Further, the military was never allowed to use its full strength during the war because of politics. The Rules of Engagements promulgated from Washington DC politicians and executives, not necessarily even military educated about the battlefield, were restrictive and constantly changing, guaranteeing defeat in the end. Politics defeated the Vietnam Vet. Despite their average age being 19, they quickly matured into combat soldiers because they had to despite the fluctuating, conflicting orders received from up the command chain.
What about the atrocities committed by a small number of our soldiers? First of all, demographics of the military will naturally reflect the diversity of our society – which has people with predilections towards depraved crime. Some will tragically commit atrocious crimes. It is important to remember the Viet Cong had a massive complex of tunnels, allowing them to pop up across a large area. They hid among the villagers in their homes or in the plain sight pretending to be one of them. As we all are painfully aware, 58,000 U.S. servicemen died in Vietnam. To this day there have been more added to the wall who have died from wounds or illnesses caught in Vietnam. Now imagine you are a 19-year-old, fresh out of high school, dropped into a foreign country, cannot understand the language, so many rules of engagement you are confused about how and when you are allowed to defend yourself and your unit. The enemy can pop up anywhere, including amongst women, children and the elderly. On a routine patrol, you are suddenly in a firefight. Fellow soldiers drop on either side, one shot in the neck, no way to stop the blood flow. Gurgling, spurting blood he drops to his knees and then face down in the damp mud and grass on the jungle floor. In the same moment, on the other side another soldier is hit in the arm, leg and abdomen, screaming for the medic. He writhes on the ground praying the medic can get to him now, though it is the red ants who reach him first, swarming his flake jacket. As you drop to your knees and start firing your weapon, you see your best buddy and the unit leader do the same. In the next instant a grenade explodes between them, throwing their arms and legs in different directions, your best buddy’s head lands facing you, terror frozen in the dead eyes. Depending on your personal mettle, you either throw caution to the wind and angrily, swiftly continue to advance wanting to kill every Charlie you see, or you vomit and reach deep down to find your primal urge to fight for your survival. The nightmare continues for hours, more horrific casualties until the enemy is finally driven back. But you are not done, those alive and able to walk pick up the dead and all their body parts so no one is left behind. You can’t stop to grieve the carnage you’ve just seen for the first time in your life. The next morning there is intel that the VC is hiding in a nearby village, and you are appointed the new unit leader though you’ve only been in country for a month. It will take superhuman restraint to remain professional and follow protocol to question the villagers when any of them could be the Viet Cong you fought yesterday. You have to keep reminding yourself the true villagers are innocent, caught in the midst of war, you must question them calmly to ferret out the truth. But if you are one of the few who have the propensity for unbridled violence, you are still steaming with ferocious anger, you will barrel through that village leveling it until you find the enemy. The same response may come from a psychologically damaged person who just can’t handle it and breaks into a frenzied attack. Those responses are reprehensible, the person has lost their way, other soldiers need to pull him off. Or if the other soldiers’ anger breaks out triggered by the frantic behavior, all may join in, caught up in mob mentality, justifying it believing villagers were hiding the VC. Even if they were hiding VC, its complicated, the combatants are among innocents who need protection.
What would the anti-war protesters do faced with such horrific events. They, the politicians, the American public had no right to judge, disdaining returning soldiers, calling some baby killers. Unconscionable. Shameful. And we are still recovering from that sin. I won’t belabor through to the end of the war except to say our military didn’t lose Vietnam, they could have been successful. Actually, they were winning, but the noble cause of defending our character after a handful of unprovoked attacks in international waters and combating the spread of communism was methodically assassinated, made irrelevant by political agendas and uninformed public who didn’t have all the facts, just the sensational ones that sold newspapers and garnered audiences. But even with actual facts, each of us may interpret them differently. I respect contrary opinions; I agree to disagree without the vitriol this subject can easily spark.
I’ll end with an experience I had in college. I worked in the Business Office registering students. A man came up to my window, we chatted while I processed his paperwork. Somehow it came up that he was a Vietnam Vet. I sincerely apologized to him for the awful way they were treated by the public back then, and I thanked him sincerely for his service, I knew what they did was important. I shook his hand. He didn’t speak for a moment, tears filling his eyes. As I handed him his copy of paperwork, he quietly said thank you as I wished him well. Tears filled my eyes as well, wanting to relieve residual shame heaped on him by the previous generation. My 5th grade-self came out of the back of my mind, realizing how insignificant my shame had been back then, he really suffered. From my childhood, I have been thankful for Vietnam Vets, who fought against impossible odds, still upholding the strength, determination and honor of the American Soldier, regardless of how the 1960s and 1970s portrayed them. They will always have a special place in my heart. I sincerely, deeply thank them for their service.
