re: Any Viet Nam vets here? do you want to share your experience?

quote:

---

In my experience,the guys that actually saw combat don’t really talk about it.The guys that want to talk about it ,all the V.C.they killed etc.are usually the guys that didn’t actually fight.

---

My experience too.

Although as they get older if the subject comes up they talk a little more it seems. I don't ask but occasionally something comes up that they want to talk about.

I'm sure IBF would have been a real soldiers soldier. A genuine bad motherfricker. We talking rambo type shite. Y'all look out!

quote:

---

So, nobody has a story? Like, no one? It's all just, "don't ask me anything about Vietnam." Even WWII vets talk about it and that was deemed, "hell on Earth."

---

Well, first off, there just aren't many Vietnam vets on the board. Had he asked about Iraq/Afghanistan he'd probably have a couple stories by now.

quote:

---

Aren't you severely hated on the poli board?

---

That's not really a bad thing. Nobody outside PT sees PT as a sane place

I talked to one vet he did not say much but that when you went out on patrol the pucker factor was high. He had a purple heart.

I just found a Life magazine with the Title”The Faces of The American Dead in Vietnam, One Week’s Toll” from 1969 that had pictures of servicemen who died in that one week. Hundreds of guys mostly 18-22. Absolutely haunting.
I had many Vietnam Vets in my National Guard Unit in the 80’s. They never chose to share the experiences unless drinking. Most of it was that they never saw the enemy, but were being fired upon daily and nightly. This was a major psychological thing.

All your Vietnam vets are late 60s to early 70s now. The population posting here is going to be very small.

My Dad was in Vietnam ('68) and then career military for 32 years after that. He bleeds Army. He will talk openly about any time during his service (even wrote a book), except Vietnam. I am in my 40s and I still do not have any stories from him for that tour in Vietnam.

Had several friends who went. Made friends with a few at work. One told me he would set up in a different spot about every week. Local girls would come and the would stay and basically live with him until he moved on. Pack up and repeat.
Another told me they had to mow down entire families if they ran when ordered to stop.
Damn, that is sad.

Probably 25 years ago I was in a civic club and that club had several WWII vets. We would have "board meetings" once per month during the week at night that involved eating steaks and drinking. I was still young and working hard and couldn't keep up with the old guys when it came to drinking during the week. I did enjoy the "meetings".

One such meeting these two WWII vets got into this rather loud argument about whether or not we should have nuked Japan. One guy was a B17 pilot in the air corp and flew reconnaissance in both North Africa and the Pacific theaters. The other guy was a silver star marine in the Pacific theater--a real American hero actually. The pilot thought we were right to nuke them and the marine who fought hand to hand with the Japs thought we didn't need to nuke them! I ask one of the other guys why after all these years they still argued about it and how it even comes up and he said the two of them over the years argued about that same topic every time they got into the Scotch together.

It was interesting to witness.

Pop was there in '68/'69 with the Air Cav. (think "We Were Soldiers")

Made it back with a broken back and one leg an inch shorter than the other. Got hurt with 23 days and a wake-up to finish his tour. I won't go into some of the things he did over there, but I will tell a quick story about how fast life changes and how Fate is a mother.

Had a day off from patrols, so he is hanging out with a buddy of his who's a Huey pilot. Sitting n the edge of the Huey , drinking a beer, telling stories from home.
They finish their beers and flip a coin to decide who has to get the next round from the hooch. Pop loses the coin flip, heads to the hooch to get a couple more beers and is just two steps out of the hooch when the "thump" of a 82mm mortar is heard from the nearby woodline. Pops take cover in a trench as the first round hits directly on top of the Huey his buddy was sitting on, blowing he and it to smithereens.

Pops didn't drink another beer for the rest of his tour, and the few times he ever drinks one today he tips the can in honor of his fallen "brother".