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I think it was the My Lai Massacre that turned our hearts against the Vietnam vets. Obviously, not all soldiers participated in the massacre, but the coverage of it painted American soldiers pretty badly.
The My Lai Massacre as bad as it was was in one no way typical of the conduct of the majority of Americans in Vietnam. Sadly there have been a few bad actors in just about every war this country has fought. It was played up in the press and insinuated to be typical conduct by our troops.
From my own experience for instance in the Marine Corps there was a program where corpsmen regularly visited villages and hamlets in their zone of operations and gave routine health care to any Vietnamese civilian that had a health problem.
You have quite a few who tried their best to treat Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans as trash (similar to how many treated Vietnamese veterans), but I think the left realized how unwise (politically) that was.
You have quite a few who tried their best to treat Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans as trash (similar to how many treated Vietnamese veterans), but I think the left realized how unwise (politically) that was.
That's one of the strangest things I've seen somebody post about this subject. Many people saw no reason for the US to be in Vietnam. Since the war was so divisive, and so many of the soldiers were forced to participate, there weren't any public celebrations when they came home.
We were told the Afganistan and Iraq wars were responses to the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. Therefore, there wasn't a problem with knowing why our soldiers were there. Everyone in the military is now a voluntary participant.
This is not about left/right. The differences between today's circumstances and Vietnam are abundantly clear without trying to turn this into a political discussion.
That's one of the strangest things I've seen somebody post about this subject. Many people saw no reason for the US to be in Vietnam. Since the war was so divisive, and so many of the soldiers were forced to participate, there weren't any public celebrations when they came home.
We were told the Afganistan and Iraq wars were responses to the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. Therefore, there wasn't a problem with knowing why our soldiers were there. Everyone in the military is now a voluntary participant.
This is not about left/right. The differences between today's circumstances and Vietnam are abundantly clear without trying to turn this into a political discussion.
you do know that 2/3 of the soldiers who served in Vietnam enlisted/volunteered
I can't begin to tell you how many people thank my husband for service. No one has ever been anything but kind.
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I can't begin to tell you how many people thank my husband for service. No one has ever been anything but kind.
My DH has the same experience. It sorta embarrasses him. I asked him if he ever experienced anything bad upon his return, but he just left that all behind and got on with his life. He never walked around in a uniform, etc. except when he was still working on base...
It was a different time. Lots of people were checking out of American life, free love and drugs and all that...so the military and any establishment rules etc. was not a good thing for many. These days there is much more respect for those who serve.
We have a better understanding of PTSD and other war related residual issues than we did 50 years ago. I don't think there was a conscious effort to treat recent vets better. The whole situation was different. Vietnam was very unpopular -- mostly unpopular. Opposition to Iraq pales by comparison. Vietnam had no clear purpose, no apparent plan, and thousands were drafted into service to fight there. My experience was that some vets went out of their way to oppose or even threaten those protesting the war so that may have prompted some broader ill treatment or animosity toward vets, especially on campus. The supposed bad treatment claims have been somewhat inflated over the decades to the point where it almost seems every Vietnam vet was treated poorly. I never saw it and none of my friends experienced it but apparently some did but much fewer than commonly perceived.
No one ever yelled, spit or discriminated against me when I came back. This whole treatment issue I think was mostly a myth and an invention of Hollywood anti war films. I don’t doubt some vets may have been treated poorly but I think they were in the minority.
I received a generous Vietnam War bonus check from the state I lived in at the time. The federal government paid thousands of dollars to send me through university where I obtained a BA degree. I got a decent well paying job in the insurance industry.
Kind of hard to document actual incidents in a era before cell phone cameras.
Kind of hard to document actual incidents in a era before cell phone cameras.
Oh it’s well documented by news cameras using old fashioned film. But in my case I just didn’t experience such a situation.
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