Heroes of the Vietnam Generation - Good Read

[Rusty Heap]

Heroes of the Vietnam Generation by James Webb




The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great
Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from
the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has
published two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that feature
ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was
historically unique.



Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns praising the Navy
service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for
its alleged softness and lack of struggle. William Bennett gave a startling
condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few years ago comparing the
heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the
"Woodstock Generation." And Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film "Saving
Private Ryan," was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action
based on the supposedly unique nature of World War II.


In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is a misnomer. Those who came of age
during that war are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole
range of counter-cultural agendas, and nothing divides them more deeply
than the personal ramifications of the war itself. The sizable portion of
the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda,
and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during
the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have
claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World War II
generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors
were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs
in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual
exercise in draft avoidance, or protest marches but a battlefield that was
just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.


The most accurate poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91
percent were glad they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their
time in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our
troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in
Washington would not let them win." And most importantly, the castigation
they received upon returning home was not from the World War II generation,
but from the very elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for them.

Nine million men served in the military during Vietnam War, three million
of whom went to the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology,
two-thirds of these were volunteers, and 73 percent of those who died were
volunteers. While some attention has been paid recently to the plight of
our prisoners of war, most of whom were pilots; there has been little
recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.

Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's
citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be
truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompletely on a
tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of
its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead.

Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all
the work might contemplate that is was the most costly war the U.S. Marine
Corps has ever fought-five times as many dead as World War I, three times
as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of
World War II.

Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States
was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam. The baby-boom generation had
cracked apart along class lines as America's young men were making
difficult, life-or-death choices about serving. The better academic
institutions became focal points for vitriolic protest against the war,
with few of their graduates going into the military. Harvard College, which
had lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in Vietnam from
the classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at Princeton lost
six, at MIT two. The media turned ever more hostile. And frequently the
reward for a young man's having gone through the trauma of combat was to be
greeted by his peers with studied indifference of outright hostility.

What is a hero? My heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and
possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to
their country. Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and
professional lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of
the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, "not for fame of
reward, not for place of for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they
understood it."




The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its torn,
cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the mountains
just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese
Army operated an infantry division from an area called Base Area 112. In
the valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong battalions whose ranks were
80 percent North Vietnamese Army regulars moved against the Americans every
day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and harassed. Ridgelines and paddy dikes
were laced with sophisticated booby traps of every size, from a hand
grenade to a 250-pound bomb. The villages sat in the rice paddies and tree
lines like individual fortresses, crisscrossed with the trenches and spider
holes, their homes sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from
large-caliber artillery shells. The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate
and permeating. Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did
not side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the
government controlled enclaves near Danang.

In the rifle companies, we spent the endless months patrolling ridgelines
and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of tents, barbed wire,
hot food, or electricity. Luxuries were limited to what would fit inside
one's pack, which after a few "humps" usually boiled down to letter-writing
material, towel, soap, toothbrush, poncho liner, and a small transistor
radio.

We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear,
causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in the
bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit trenches
for toilets. We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho hootches, and
when it rained we usually took our hootches down because wet ponchos shined
under illumination flares, making great targets. Sleep itself was fitful,
never more than an hour or two at a stretch for months at a time as we
mixed daytime patrolling with night-time ambushes, listening posts, foxhole
duty, and radio watches. Ringworm, hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were
common, as was trench foot when the monsoons came. Respite was rotating
back to the mud-filled regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five
days, where rocket and mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned
defensive bunkers at night. Which makes it kind of hard to get excited
about tales of Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.

We had been told while training that Marine officers in the rifle companies
had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and the
experience of "Dying Delta," as our company was known, bore that out. Of
the officers in the bush when I arrived, our company commander was wounded,
the weapons platoon commander wounded, the first platoon commander was
killed, the second platoon commander was wounded twice, and I, commanding
the third platoons fared no better. Two of my original three-squad leaders
were killed, and the third shot in the stomach. My platoon sergeant was
severely wounded, as was my right guide. By the time I left, my platoon I
had gone through six radio operators, five of them casualties.

When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with me, I
am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians bareley out
of high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do their year in
hell and he return. Visions haunt me every day, not of the nightmares of
war but of the steady consistency with which my Marines faced their
responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were in the face of
constant danger. The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds teaching green
19-year-olds the intricate lessons of the hostile battlefield. The unerring
skill of the young squad leaders as we moved through unfamiliar villages
and weed-choked trails in the black of night. The quick certainty when a
fellow Marine was wounded and needed help. Their willingness to risk their
lives to save other Marines in peril. To this day it stuns me that their
own countrymen have so completely missed the story of their service, lost
in the bitter confusion of the war itself.



************************************************** **********************************

Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver
Star, and Bronze Star medals for heroism as a Marine in Vietnam. His novels
include The Emperor's General and Fields of Fire. ****

[RonDent]

Thanks Dave. Worth the read.

[Sunroof]

As a Vietnam Veteran (1968 - 1969) I believe their were more who were opposed to the war while in service then is reported. That is at least from my experience. Many who returned realized the futility of the conflict and joined thousands of other veterans in protest. It was not that they were not proud to serve, but that they questioned their governments motive for staying in the war. All who served in Vietnam shared a common dedication to duty and service. When the numbers began racking up in the tens of thousands with no victory in sight that was when the signs went up to, "get us the hell out of there".

What was painful were the peers who shunned you when you came home, classmates in college who blamed you for the carnage, friends who kept asking why the hell you enlisted and now the sight of 58,000 names of brave souls etched in black marble who still bring me to tears whenever I visit the "Wall".

We all have our own stories and experiences like James Webb, but no one but those who were in Vietnam could truely understand what it was like.

Bob

[DARISC]

Originally Posted by Sunroof

As a Vietnam Veteran (1968 - 1969) I believe their were more who were opposed to the war while in service then is reported....

There were indeed. Only after enlisting did I learn what a horrific mistake our country was making. Thanks for the well written response to the patriotic screed about a filthy war in which we should never have been involved.

[Roadrunner911]

Thanks for posting. It's good to look back with the clarity of time, to remember the truth of happened. I served with many vietnam veterans but wasn't there myself. Surprising that our leaders haven't learned from this history.
Thanks again to those that served and sacrificed.

[Bill Douglas]

This thread reminds me. A month ago I went to the funeral of a fine gentleman, Tom Rangi. He served in Vietnam, borneo, Maylasia, and Korea. Then later worked for our SIS.

[flyenby]

I was a 19 yr old combat infantryman 1 st division, also served in the 25 th Infantry (Mac Kenzie's Raiders). Vietnam 1969-1970. I arrived home at 20. I came home to hell....and will never forget