URBS
I?ve probably said this before but in this thread it needs to be written again. Summer of ?67 I was posted to a mechanized infantry company that traveled up and down Thunder road, or played in the Iron Triangle and Hobo Woods. On some of those side roads the tree branches hung so close to the road it wasn?t unusual for leaves to slap you in the face. Charlie really enjoyed convoys going down those side roads and he filled them with anti-tank mines, claymores in the trees and even the VC could hit a vehicle with an RPG at a range of 15 feet. The military used Agent Orange, then bull dozers to extend the tree lines a couple of hundred feet.
If Westmoreland had asked the guys in our company what we wanted to do; probably die this week or probably get cancer twenty years from now, we?d of all said, ?Use the friggen agent orange.
Likewise if this new ammunition will kill enemy tanks or bunkers when iron tipped ammo might not, use the best ammunition you have. Does anyone think a 20 something year old soldier cares much about this crap when he has a chance to live to be 50+?
That said, once the war is over the government has a legal and moral responsibility to take care of it?s own. I?d like to see them do a better job of that. But taking the best available weapons out of the hands of our men and women is never the answer.
BTW: Having had Agent Orange sprayed all around and even on me, there was no reason to be surprised when I came down with lymphoma and then had a relapse. The lymphoma has been attributed to exposure to agent orange by at least 6 oncologists. I would rather not have cancer but I did not die at age 19.
Stay healthy,
Andy
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