Thanks.

And a respectful Thank You to those who didn't make it back

Thank you.

No shit, you motherfuckers had no internet.

Every Vietnam vet I come across I make it a point to to shake their hand and welcome them back.

I was IQ times two, AF times two. Every time I came back Vietnam vets were welcoming me back instead of spitting on me... as always the current horde of warriors stand on your shoulders with respect.

Don't call if you want a discount at Home Depo or such but read the above and realize you are much fucking appreciated. 1SG T

Thanks

Thank you all, very much

Thanks

A sincere THANK YOU!!

Thank you

Yes thank you guys.

Thank you all.

Vietnam veterans, thank you for answering the call. Your service and sacrifice, and those you lost, are not forgotten!

Yes, thanks to you all.

Speaking as someone who was born in 1963, I was about eleven (but more realistically like fifteen) years too young to have gone. You guys are my heroes. Thank you all.

I still have some profoundly distinct memories of that time though.

I remember being a little kid, riding in my great aunt's Rambler (yes, a Rambler) down the main drag in her small Southwest Oklahoma town when I realized I was hearing a newscaster talking about American casualty numbers on the radio. It was probably 1970. All of a sudden, it hit me. I realized for the first time that the U.S. was in a war! This really hit me like a ton of bricks, I distinctly remember actually feeling it in my chest. This was because I could not believe our nation was at war and there was positively no difference that I could see on the home front. Nothing like I heard about with WWII. It kind of pissed me off.

I also remember in 1973 telling my oldest brother who just graduated high school that he was a communist after he inferred that he might try and avoid the draft if were to get a notice. Pretty harsh, yes, but I was very serious at ten years of age about draft dodgers.

I have always regarded the treatment that many vets received upon coming home to be particularly disgusting. So much so that I actually got into a huge fight with a girlfriend in high school (1981) over that very subject. She was a thespian, dontcha know and completely filled with crap about this. When she told me she would have likely done some spitting had she been there, I took her ass home. I am probably the only dumbass in my age group that ever missed getting laid (a sure thing at that particular point) for that particular reason.

I sincerely hope ya'll all had a great day!

I grew up watching the vivid accounts and footage on TV. I was some kind of military historian by age 10 and Vietnam Veterans were largely my inspiration for serving. I wanted to be Airborne. I wanted to be in a LRRP unit. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of giants. When I joined up I went 11X and begged for Jungle Warfare School in Panama. When I joined we were still using the a lot of the same equipment. Quite a few uncles were those Vietnam Vets and I still find myself looking up to them. Giants.

When I came back we were told to change into civilian clothes at the airport because of protestors. It didn't work since it was easy to pick out tanned men with military haircuts.

I still remember being cursed at and spit on.

I have no words, as a VN decorated army guy my private thoughts on the draft dodgers, peacenicks, and other pieces of crap including the shithead politicians and non-veteran government workers ar that they need to just die and go away.

We were in a war to protect the rubber plantations for the tire companies. IMHO it had nothing to do with communism. We really had no vital national interest in that area of the world. I flew a joint military-CIA mission north of the DMZ to take a sample of oil/fuel from a pipeline only to discover it was Esso product. We fought and died for the big money an so every memorial day they all get up and make speeches and wave the flag. Fuck'em all.

To the OP and others, thank you for the thought. I went with 218 other lieutenants and from late Dec. of 1967 to 1972 we lost 22 killed in action. I remember all of them.

quote:

Originally posted by bushpilot:
We fought and died for the big money an so every memorial day they all get up and make speeches and wave the flag. Fuck'em all.

Gee, thanks, bushpilot, for making me aware that I volunteered to fight in a war to enrich Big Oil and Big ... Rubber—? Despite all the books I’ve read on the subject, I’ve never heard those … ideas before. I’m just surprised that the antiwar crowd (then and now) never picked up on them. It would have been much more effective, I believe, than just saying that we didn’t need to keep a small country from being overrun by Communist aggression. I guess all those people the Communists murdered during the war and especially after they succeeded really didn’t matter because they were so far away and didn’t look anything like me.

Now I feel like shit for having been duped so thoroughly all these nearly five decades and will just stop remembering that disgraceful period of my life. Perhaps I should take up watching teevee to help me forget.

quote:

Originally posted by bushpilot:
the draft dodgers, peacenicks, and other pieces of crap including the shithead politicians and non-veteran government workers ar that they need to just die and go away.

Seriously, though, if the war was being fought for such illegitimate reasons, I don’t understand your animus toward the draft dodgers and other antiwar folks. It seems to me you should have been firmly on their side in whatever efforts they made to get us out of the war, and be grateful to this day that they were finally successful in getting the US to abandon an entire nation to its fate.

Thanks for that. Don't know about others but the only "welcome home" I got was from my family.