re: A little history on Viet Nam

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A little history most people will never know.

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The traveling wall came to Baton Rouge when I was a kid. Of course all the schools had field trips there and there were kids everywhere. But as a kid you don’t really understand the magnitude of sacrifice of those on the wall. It’s only as you get older that everything is put in to perspective.

My older cousin was there. Told his family one time that he had to kill a small girl who was approaching his platoon with dynamite strapped to her.

He never spoke of it again. The things those men had to endure there, and here.

Accurate, but a wee bit misleading to those that don't know ammo. The Civil War was prime time for the Minie ball, which was between .58 and .69 Caliber. So, at least *twice* as big as a .223 or .308.

You weren't getting battlefield aid and shipping back home, you were losing limbs as a casualty.

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Overworked Civil War surgeons often had to amputate limbs wounded by Minié balls. Adding to the damage, some soldiers notched their bullets to ensure they would spread out when they hit their target. In the 1870s, doctors urged an international ban on soft-lead bullets, saying they caused the same sort of damage as explosive bullets.

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If you really want to get pissed off at our government watch Vietnam by Ken Burns.

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If you want to watch garbage slanted leftist history, watch anything by the hack Ken Burns

I predicted before the Country Music doc that Burns would tell us blacks actually invented country music.
I wasn't far off.

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39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger. 8,283 were just 19 years old. The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.

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Am I imagining this or do these numbers not line up?

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Military Incompetence is really a common theme throughout military history but it is not inevitable.

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It is not inevitable, but it is up to us to train our kids to understand how effective leadership works, and how to build a good organization, be it a platoon, company, ladies running a title office, or a bunch of tech bros. But there is a way for sure *not* to do it.

I really did not expect some of the places that book went with toddler/kid age issues on validation, etc., but seems fully legit.

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Maybe 51,000 casualties. I think it was around 8,000 killed at Gettysburg.

Either way it was a bloodbath.

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Both sides suffered casualties in the mid 20,000 range over three days, so roughly 50,000 give or take. Of that number, a little over 7,000 were killed.

For some context, a little under 20,000 American soldiers died out of 75,000 casualties in the Battle of the Bulge. This number though was eclipsed by the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in WWI, which lasted a little under a month, where about 120,000 American soldiers were casualties, a little under 30,000 of them being KIA.

Imagine how the American public would react today if in less than a month, 120,000 American soldiers were made battle casualties and almost 30,000 of them were killed. That happened in 1918.

It's not the greatest movie, but The Greatest Beer Run Ever at least captures the sentiment.

I'm not pouring one out for the homies, I'm drinking one for the homies. Magnificent bastards. Everyone SOB that got blown off the back of a carrier, the dumbshits that dropped foot lockers on their feet and were forever crippled. Remember, somewhere, a Navy helicopter crashed this week. Your mail probably went with it.