Montagnard’s Rock ‘N’ Roll You Tube Song…..”Beautiful Flowers on the Mountain”
09 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
Boy, has life ever changed since I was in Vietnam 41 years ago!
2011 in review
31 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 57 trips to carry that many people.
What is a Viet Nam Veteran?
04 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Story
“WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?”
A college student posted a request on an internet newsgroup asking for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the question: “What is aVietnamVeteran?” This is what I wrote back:
Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.
Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit–or a great bit–closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a day’s work. Life’s a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad.
We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.
We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.
We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships’ berths at sea.
We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.
Mostly–and this I believe with all my heart–mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of “the world,” shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egoized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.
And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn’t been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.
Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different–what makes us Vietnam vets–is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate your asking.
Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the “real world,” we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese.
We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change…or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.
Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same.
We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists–though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.
We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desparately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember.
Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don’t know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask “what’s wrong?” We’re afraid we might have to answer.
Adam, if you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in your car next weekend or cage a friend with a car to drive you. Go to Washington. Go to the Wall. It’s going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there…no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. I’ll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I’m a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 44 years, I think I am beginning to understand what that means.
Author Unknown
Story of the 4th Infantry Division in Viet Nam.
03 Dec 2011 1 Comment
in YouTube
This is a video about the history of the 4th Infantry Division an their work inViet Nam. From the battle of Dak to the winter of 1965. Great historical footage here.
Vietnam War: Facts, Stats & Myths
13 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in True Story
9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975.
2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam.
Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation.
240 men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War.
The first man to die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1961. He was with the 509th Radio Research Station. Davis Station in Saigon was named for him.
58,148 were killed in Vietnam.
75,000 were severely disabled.
23,214 were 100% disabled.
5,283 lost limbs.
1,081 sustained multiple amputations.
Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21.
11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old.
Of those killed, 17,539 were married.
Average age of men killed: 23.1 years.
Five men killed in Vietnam were only 16 years old.
The oldest man killed was 62 years old.
As of January 15, 2004, there are 1,875 Americans still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.
97% of Vietnam Veterans were honorably discharged.
91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served.
74% say they would serve again, even knowing the outcome.
Vietnam veterans have a lower unemployment rate than the same non-vet age groups.
Vietnam veterans’ personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent.
87% of Americans hold Vietnam Veterans in high esteem.
There is no difference in drug usage between Vietnam Veterans and non-Vietnam Veterans of the same age group (Source: Veterans Administration Study).
Vietnam Veterans are less likely to be in prison – only one-half of one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes.
85% of Vietnam Veterans made successful transitions to civilian life.
Common Myths Dispelled:
Myth: Common belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted.
Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.
Myth: The media have reported that suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 – 6 to 11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.
Fact: Mortality studies show that 9,000 is a better estimate. “The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the Vietnam veterans’ group.
Myth: Common belief is that a disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War.
Fact: 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book “All That We Can Be,” said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam “and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia, a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war.”
Myth: Common belief is that the war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Fact: Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers. Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high school education or better.
Myth: The common belief is the average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19.
Fact: Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age.
Myth: The common belief is that the domino theory was proved false.
Fact: The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America’s commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism.
Myth: The common belief is that the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.
Fact: The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. One ot of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,148 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Although the percent that died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. 75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour.
As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border).
Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June
1972 (shown a million times on American television) was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.
Fact: No American had involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South
Vietnamese troops on the ground. The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc are incorrect. There were no Americans involved in any capacity. “We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF,” according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F.
Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC at that time. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phuc’s brothers were killed in this incident. They were Kim’s cousins not her brothers.
Myth: The United States lost the war in Vietnam.
Fact: The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance. General Westmoreland quoting Douglas Pike (a professor at the University of California, Berkeley), a major military defeat for the VC and NVA.
Statistics from the Combat Area Casualty File
(CACF) as of November 1993 (the CACF is the basis for the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial, aka The Wall)
Average age of 58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years (Although 58,169 names are in the Nov. 93 database, only 58,148
have both event date and birth date. Event date is used instead of declared dead date for some of those who were listed as missing in action).
Deaths Average Age Total: 58,148, 23.11 years
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Enlisted: 50,274, 22.37 years
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Officers: 6,598, 28.43 years
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Warrants: 1,276, 24.73 years
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E1 525, 20.34 years
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11B MOS: 18,465, 22.55 years
Interesting Census Stats and “Been
There” Wanabees: 1,713,823 of those who served in Vietnam were still alive as of August, 1995 (census figures).
-
During that same Census count, the number of Americans falsely
claiming to have served in-country was: 9,492,958. -
As of the current Census taken during August, 2000, the surviving U.S. Vietnam Veteran population
estimate is: 1,002,511. This is hard to believe, losing nearly 711,000
between ’95 and ’00. That’s 390 per day. During this Census count, the
number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is:
13,853,027. By this census, FOUR OUT OF FIVE WHO CLAIM TO BE VIETNAM
VETS ARE NOT.
The Department of Defense Vietnam War Service Index
officially provided by The War Library originally reported with errors that 2,709,918 U.S. military personnel as having served in-country. Corrections and confirmations to this errored index resulted in the addition of 358 U.S. military personnel confirmed to have served in Vietnam but not originally listed by the Department of Defense (All names are currently on file and accessible 24/7/365).
Isolated atrocities committed by American Soldiers produced torrents of outrage from anti-war critics and the news media while Communist atrocities were so common that they received hardly any media mention at all. The United States sought to minimize and prevent attacks on civilians while North Vietnam made attacks on civilians a centerpiece of its strategy. Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations.
From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front assassinated 36,725 Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499. The death squads focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical
personnel, social workers, and school teachers. – Nixon Presidential Papers.
The United States Did Not Lose The War In Vietnam, The South Vietnamese Did.
Read On…
The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March 1973.
How could we lose a war we had already stopped fighting? We fought to an agreed stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January 1973. It called for release of all U.S. prisoners, withdrawal of U.S. forces, limitation of both sides’ forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful reunification. The 140,000 evacuees in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives. There were
almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 than there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam. Thanks for the perceived loss and the countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their undying support-by-misrepresentation of the anti-War movement in the United States.
As with much of the Vietnam War, the news media misreported and misinterpreted the 1968 Tet Offensive. It was reported as an overwhelming success for the Communist forces and a decided defeat for the U.S. forces. Nothing could be further from the ruth. Despite initial victories by the Communists forces, the Tet Offensive resulted in a major defeat of those forces. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the designer of the Tet Offensive, is considered by some as ranking with Wellington, Grant, Lee and MacArthur as a great commander. Still, militarily, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat of the Communist forces on all fronts. It resulted in the death of some 45,000 NVA troops and the complete, if not total destruction of the Viet Cong elements in South Vietnam. The Organization of the Viet Cong Units in the South never recovered. The Tet Offensive succeeded on only one front and that was the News front and the political arena. This was another example in the Vietnam War of an inaccuracy becoming the perceived truth.
However, inaccurately reported, the News Media made the Tet Offensive famous.
MP3 Song “Band-Aid For My Heart”
13 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Songs
A Photo of the 1/2 Scale Vietnam Wall
Band-Aid For My Heart
Click on The Title to this Post
for a Link to the MP3 Song.
I visited the 1/2 scale of the Healing Wall on 6/6/09 in Johnson City, Tn. After I looked up several names on the wall, I decided to go back to the fence which is about the width of a football field in order to capture the whole wall (which is 250′ long) in a photo. While I was standing against the fence doing my thing with my camera, a lady came up to me and started making conversation. She had seen my cap. Then she presented her card to me along with a metal lapel pin. The pin is in the shape of a HEART with a BAND-AID on it. She then said that she was a member of “The Rolling Thunder” and that she is from Stapleton, NE. She then noticed my Montagnard Bracelet that I wear. She then showed me hers. She told me a story of a Vietnam Vet that gave her the Montagnard Friendship bracelet and that he told her to never pull it off. I then asked her do you know the meaning of the symbols on both of our braclets? She said no, then I proceeded to explain the symbols. I told her that the groups of 3 rings around the bracelet represents the Bamboo in their lives. I told her that the Bamboo is their staple from everything to their homes, to their everyday tools and also their Crossbows and Arrows. I told her that they were unlike our South Vietnamese Allies (Far Eastern Descent) and they were Polynesian Descent. They migrated into Vietnam around the turn of of the 2oth century. They were different and were greatly discriminated against by the Vietnamese people. Then I told her that they were a far greater friend to us. Their fathers trained them to protect our Green Berets at all costs, even with their lives. You see the Green Berets trained them to fight against the VC and North Vietnamese Army. Then I told her that the groups of 3 arrows symbolize their Crossbow Arrows. They take great pride in their hunting skills with their handmade crossbows. I then explained the stars symbolizing their friendship with everyone that wears their bracelets. She then looked @ her bracelet and noticed that the one of the symbols was made a little different. I told her that there were a number of different tribes in Viet Nam just like our American Indians. I went on to say that there is a Dega and a Bru tribe to name a couple. She said that a Viet Nam Veteran gave her her bracelet several years ago and told her to never remove it. After I got home, I typed in the URL that was on her card http://veteransmusicministry.com and as I was looking through her site I found her link to a MP3 Song Titled Band-Aid For My Heart.
Capt. Neville (the pineapple) Colburn
30 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Photos
If there were ever 2 officers that I would ever walk bare footed through broken glass and fire for, they would be Capt. Toby (The Pineapple) Colburn and Col. Pat Crazier. I took this photo of Capt. Colburn sernading us with his guitar in Vancouver, Washington!
R.I.P. to my 2 favorite officers!
Photo of me, Larry and Butch Orr
30 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Photos
About 20 years ago, I called Larry and asked him if he would allow a couple of men to hunt on his 10,200 acre ranch. He said for me yes by all means. So I went with the 2 mem in question. I spent the entire week knocking around with Larry as he did his ranching fall chores. I even got to seee a real live Cattle Roundup with horses as the mode of transportation. All of his distant neighbors helped with the roundup. Even all of the women folk helped with the enormous meal. Afterwards he told me that was the only way that all of the ranchers could survive is by volunteering their help with each other! I thought about the Bible Verse where Jesus said “Love thy neighbor as thyself, for there is no greater commandment”! Another one of life’s lesson taught by Larry and learned my be!
RIP My Bro……I promise you I will see you in Heaven!!
25 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
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