WILL VIETNAM VETERANS AWAKEN AMERICA?

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lincolnmemorial_400FROM JUNGLE FIGHTERS AND LIONS TO A SLEEPING GENERATION
BY:  G. DUFF

I served with a Marine Rifle Squad in Vietnam.  Leaving Vietnam and my squad, I felt like I was leaving my only real home and the best friends I would ever have.  40 years has proven that to be more true than I would guess.  Kids and family are one thing, but the men you share combat with are always part of your life.  These experiences molded my life and the lives of a generation that served, not out of revenge or hate, but out of an obligation to "do their share", even in a war that we knew never would have a winner.

We weren’t the "Greatest Generation" of World War 2.  Those were our fathers, uncles and older brothers.  Their battles were the legends we grew up on and their sacrifice led us, at least some of us, to follow in their footsteps though the path was far from the same.  Vietnam didn’t ask that we hate Communism or "gooks".  It only demanded that we serve as best we could and find purpose and loyalty where reason and our hearts found it, in each other.

Decades later, we stand "cast to the winds", separated by time, by geography, by money, by politics and, too often, by death.  We are older, some wizened by years, some ground down by life, many dead, too many dying but all of us with the memories of that time indelibly etched into our lives.  Four decades were nothing like we expected.  We had fought a horrific war so our kids would live in peace, as our fathers had, and as with our fathers, we send our children off to war…

     

Vietnam had no "liberals" or "conservatives".  There were no  "airport spitters" and really very little of the "anti-war" talk used to stir up hate and fear among those who weren’t really there.  Many vets joined the movement to end the war because the buddies they left behind in Vietnam asked them to.  The message was clear.  When you threw your gear on the truck and headed out, the screams in the background of "Get me the hell out of here" rang strong and clear. 

Mostly we came home and tried to put our lives together, trying to work, raise families or go to school while fighting the nightmares and visions and guilt.  They call it "survivor guilt".  Living thru a war where your friends die causes an emptiness inside that never goes away.  This was the reality of then, the reality of who we were and, too often, the reality we, over the years, have forgotten as we began to listen to the endless pounding of lies.  Many of us sold our souls out of a need to be accepted, a need to belong, even if it meant we had to live a life of lies.

Things weren’t easy for Vietnam veterans.  Movies, TV, politicians, newspapers attacked us at every turn, blaming us for atrocities they knew nothing about, blamed us for losing a war we had won with honor, blamed us for everything they hated about themselves, especially their own cowardice.  It became convenient to ignore the sick and wounded and society quickly turned on the damaged and traumatized combat vets.

The real "airport spitters" were the corporate hacks that, in company after company, sent out memos advising that Vietnam vets were not to be hired.  Vietnam vets were a bad risk, they used drugs, they were violent, they were "dangerous".  Our upper and middle classes knew this because TV and movies had been telling them this for years. 

For decades we have had to either explain that we didn’t really "shoot up heroin" or bayonet babies, nor did we form gangs and rob banks.  For decades we have been introduced to other Vietnam vets, only to learn that they had "secret assignments" and weren’t allowed to talk about their experiences.  As time went on, their numbers grew and you couldn’t shake a stick without hitting a former Marine, Navy Seal, POW, Army Ranger or SF, all with secret discharge papers and no real memories of the war.  A generation with threatened manhood either used Vietnam vets for whipping boys or joined the army of what became millions of phony vets, all with outlandish tales pieced together from movies and delusion.  I met so many of them I could only turn away feeling embarassment and pity.

We became a generation that disdained each other, having found the doors to conventional veterans organizations like the American Legion and VFW closed to us (No Baby Killers Allowed!)we moved on, quietly disappearing into the landscape.  As time went on and more and more of us got sick and thousands of us began dying of Agent Orange cancers and PTSD, nobody was there to speak for us.  We had joined the ranks of that other forgotten war, Korea, and withered away, forgotten in all but Hollywood blockbuster and other fictional and outlandish portrayals.

Lessons we had learned, lessons about loyalty to each other and distrust of authority, lessons supported by common sense and reality were, as time went on, replaced by a need to be accepted, a need to belong and a need to feel admired.  What the reality of war had taught us, self reliance, and the difference between those who "walk the walk" and those who "talk the talk" began to disappear.  Vets who should have known better became "patriots", following leaders we, in our lives as soldiers, would have easily recognized as cowards and fools.

It became easier to join the groups that had pushed us aside, selling our values and love of what is right for a "thanks for your service" and a "decades too late parade."  The military that we knew was glad to be rid of us, the dirty, the unruly, the combat vets, the jungle fighters, the soldiers that could live on nothing, move with stealth and kill with merciless precision when needed, became the peacetime military again.  We could hang on in National Guard and Reserve units, but real fighters were of no use in the peacetime military where ass kissing and knowing which fork to use was more important than understanding how to set up an ambush.

As a gaggle of "heroes" began to put themselves forward, notably absent a single enlisted combat soldier between the bunch of them, our generation of fighting men would sink into permanent obscurity behind the public face of our sacrifice.  Men like "Duke" Cunningham, Oliver North or John McCain with their histories of scandal and "buck chasing" or a Pentagon filled with generals whose service in Vietnam, in most cases, was restricted to making coffee or "arranging dates" spoke for us, always forgetting the 2 million men who served in Vietnam, the dead, the disabled, the sick and the honor of their sacrifice.

To be a real American, a veteran had to follow his leaders and leadership in America is based on following money into banks, not men into battle.  The hope that we would somehow wake up from the nightmare of 40 years of disappointment and broken promises was always stirred to life by the piggish rhetoric of political hacks, paid liars and public thieves whose love of America begins and ends with an envelope under the table.

We, the veterans of Vietnam, face a moment of clarity rare in our lives.  We face a presidential election with two candidates none of us, by any stretch of the imagination, could ever trust.  None of us have the remotest idea who Barak Obama is and all of us know that John McCain has sold us down the river for years.  It just doesn’t get better than that!

You can’t call one "liberal" and the other "conservative".  You can’t call one "weak" and the other "strong".  You can only marvel at the convoluted and twisted process that could confront us with a choice that actually makes all of us want to vomit.  I believe that distrust in government is the purest form of patriotism.  Real patriots believe nothing, watch everything and are forever vigilant.  Seven year of deceit and blundering, starting with a disaster and ending with the total dissolution of trust in both congress and our president could be a horribly costly but constructive force.

We may starve, learn to walk instead of drive and start borrowing money from Cuba and Argentina to live, but at least we will stop believing in lies and propaganada.  My mother would sit up nights and talk about the 30s, "the Depression" and what it was like growing up in a mining camp in Kentucky.  America did nothing to cause the Depression, it was manipulated by the action of banks in the US and Britain, as we have managed to piece together over the years.  The Depression we are in now, and you can’t really call it any less than that, was one of our own stupidity.

If only the Vietnam veterans, the survivors, the smart ones and the ones waking up after being asleep for decades could become something, become a voice, become a force, then maybe, just maybe, we can hope for more than "more of the same."  I remember us when we were young and strong.  I remember us when we were hopeful, capable of taking on the world, filled with dreams.  America is and always has been a dream, a state of mind, an expression of hope.  There is a need for who we were and who we can be again.

In well over 200 years, we have only had a handful of leaders as good as the people who put them in office.  We have become sheep, looking to leaders to tell us what America means.  For every sheep, there has been a shepherd, a paid liar, a propagandist, a "spin doctor", working for someone we should have been watching, not being led by.  For every sheep there is a "shearing" and we are now being "shorn" by an army of experts.

Now they have their hands in our pockets at the grocery store, gas pump and more, taxing our every necessity to fill their own coffers.  There is no denying the truth, our worst nightmares are happening every day.  For most Americans, holding onto a job or a house has become a miracle, for many a miracle out of their reach.

"They" are taking our things, our jobs, our homes and our money.  They have taken thousands of our children and mortgaged the lives and wealth of generations.  All we have left is our honor.  We had sold that for "safety" and bought only disaster. 

Sometimes I close my eyes, as so many veterans do, and see the faces I left behind 40 years ago at a remote firebase.  I have the address book in a bag in the closet, frayed cover, yellowed pages, names of my friends, mostly dead, many who never returned from Vietnam.  My dream has always been to be part of a country much like that moment, where I could see into the hearts of comrades, of friends, of brothers, knowing we would always be a family, always the same.  Time was to kill that dream, time and bombs and bullets and disease and despair. 

Over the years I have seen pain and struggle and honor without war. Heroes and cowards surround us wherever we go.  I have always thought of veterans as special, a group of people who chose to give, whose experiences made them special, more capable, more intuitive and more able to work for a common goal.  Veterans aren’t the only leaders, the only heroes, but to me they will always be the best.

I don’t have a direction.  I can’t say that this law is good or that war is bad.  I can only remember what things were like and what I want to see again.  Maybe we can all wake up a bit.  I am willing to keep trying.   I remember right and wrong.  I think I know good from bad.  I remember that and more, much more.

gduffGORDON DUFF IS A MARINE VIETNAM VETERAN AND REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR ON SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES.

 


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Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades. Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world's largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues. Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than "several" countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.