An open post on combat.

[catnhatnh]

I haven't been there and neither have most of you. I have just received some correspondence and records regarding the involvement of a family member. I am a "Vietnam Era Veteran" which is probably something that will be noted in my obit although I never served in any combat zone. Like many guys with an army hitch I thought I knew a couple things and now I find I was mistaken. I got the paperwork.

The papers I received refer to two specific combat actions on June 26th and July 6th 1970. In one a family member was involved in the Ah Shau valley when his company was overrun. In the second he was peripherally involved in a "friendly fire" incident.

I read these two nights ago and both cried and puked. Over 35 years of stuff began to make some sense. Because a family member came home "different" and I just put it down to John Wayne horseshit fed to me since birth.

But this week I saw war and how badly it warps all those involved. God bless our combat vets and God Damn those who sent them to war.

Special apologies to the combat vets on our board-I just never got it, but I sure as Hell do now. Thank you for the ghosts you don't deserve and how you bear them. I'm sorry.

Cat

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[annabanana]

2. k&r. . . . .

Human beings aren't meant for that.. We aren't designed to hurt each other so.

[sandnsea]

3. when small boys ask why

“when small boys ask why, we will be able to say “Vietnam” and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.”

John Kerry

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

4. "Era" vet here, too

Got drafted (thanks, LBJ), sent to Germany.

I'd recommend the book "We Were Soldiers, Once, and Young". Nobody could go through that unchanged. But I don't think we heard of the letters "PTSD" back then.

The Mel Gibson movie of the same name covers the first part of the book, the "easy" part of the battle. And then goes into complete fiction at the end with a gunship-backed infantry charge to victory. That end didn't happen. Get the book.

:hi:

[arbusto_baboso]

5. Combat is so far outside "normal" human experience that you can't "get it" without experiencing it.

And thank God you never really will.

While I am a vet of Desert Storm, Just Cause, and several other smaller ops and know I never faced anything approaching what my Vietnam, Koran and WWII brethren did, I still know enough to know that combat is an obscene thing. No one should ever have to face it. Ever.

We owe our returning combat vets all the health care (especially mental health care) that we can give them. It is truly the very least we can do.

[roguevalley]

6. my uncle was first marine and made it to Bougainville before getting

shot. he was trapped on Guadalcanal when the fleet had to leave. He never talked about it until one day he sat and watch Baa, Baa, Black Sheep with us and just chuckled. I looked at him and he said the only thing he ever said about it: "That's just the way it was like."

My Uncle John, my hero. RIP, John William Paxton.