We Were Young Once...

        And Soldiers

    Of Various Kinds

I have received, in my load - still - of daily mail (my various requests to be taken off of mailing lists taking a while to kick in; if they ever will) a letter “From The Desk of” one Joseph L. Galloway, author of ‘We Were Soldiers Once…And Young,’ a bio out of the Vietnam War.  He is asking - again - for donations for The National Vietnam War Memorial, already starting to go up in Fort Worth, Texas,(1) offering the public to become “an ORIGINAL MEMBER of” the Museum, the honor entitling one to have their name “permanently displayed on the museum’s ‘Members’ Monitor,’ which will be located inside the entrance for all visitors to see“ (and the contributors’s ’goodies’ going up from there, according to their level of donation).  I had passed on this offer when it first came around in my mail, about a year ago, I would guess; because, I recall well, I didn’t feel as though I deserved to be ‘recognized’ in that company.  I had never put my life on the line as those poor buggers had.  I had, however, thought enough of ‘it’ - the cause - to volunteer (it was around ’71) to go over there as a Medic; but was turned down, on account of my age (I was around thirty-seven).(2)    

And to clarify by what I mean by ‘the cause’: I don’t so much mean this country’s duty as a signatory to the SEATO treaty - aa honorable as that position was - as I do our ability in general to support the cause of freedom - essential liberty - around the world.  And particularly there, of a people including their own kind who had upped stakes and fled their homes in North Vietnam after its takeover by the Communists to the (relative) safety of the South.  And now, as Galloway goes on to point out in his letter, “many of [our youth] have no idea there was even a war in Vietnam!”   

     

This is a tragedy.  Almost as big as that war itself was.  And was in many ways.  Including the selling-out of our troops by TPTB, in selling war materiel to the North as well as the South… 

It is also, then, a memorial to learning from history, and, to quote from Galloway’s letter, not to “repeat the mistakes of the past”.

I get that.

And I certainly hope that the American public in general get that, too.

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footnotes:

(1) near the military post “that served as the initial training base for more than 90% of the helicopter pilots who served in Vietnam”

(2) A note (as I have shared in these pages before): I had been a c.o, (conscientious objector) back when I was of the age (and capacity; i.e., having dropped out of my formal education) to be drafted, in 1956-’58, when I served out my ‘civic duty’ over in South Korea, as a medic, which was what we c.o.’s were trained as, who accepted to go into the military, rather than either into hospital duty stateside or jail, for the obligatory two years of service.  So I had had that training.  

   (Further note: I moved out of a medical battalion and into Special Services rather quickly into my tour of duty over there, ending up as Entertainment Director for the 7th Division for the rest of my time there.  Another story.  Just clarifying.)

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P.S. As for the likes of cannon fodder, and the recent moves in this country towards Molech’s altar:

     If I were a female these days, and like so many of them with a male-patterned brain, to varying degrees, I may well not want one of those ‘things’ growing in me, either.  It must feel like a tumor to them.

     A shame, though.  It means that they aren’t allowing themselves (being allowed??) to experience one of the major reasons for being a female.  For the experience.

     The learning experience.

     When will we learn.  When will we ever learn.