Vietnam vets reluctant to tell war stories..

I have enjoyed reading about the duties of the APs. I go back further
than many of you and can remember hanging out with APs in earlier times
before it all went bad. In those days they mostly manned the gates,
checked traffic and walked the perimeter with big 135-pound German
shepherds. They were responsible for inner security only.

I recall a few occasions when angry farmers stood outside the main
gates, shouting and waving their wooden pitchforks, pissed of about a
runaway oxen or chickens that didn't lay or whatever. Within a few
minutes here would come a fully armed platoon of infantry, often
accompanied by an armored vehicle or two. That was the way it was done
in the old days. Now I see the Air Force has a dozen different color
berets. God bless em.

"GrgLnsctt" wrote in message
news:20031220122154.21823.00000853@mb-m19.news.cs.com...
> >My question to REAL Vietnam vets (not to someone wanting
> >to give their anti-war views) is why it was so hard to get someone
> >after they got back from war to tell me what they had been through,
> >particularly when I was in high school 1972-5 and particularly before
>
> Paul,
>
> Many of us returned to an anti-war and anti-military environment. I lived
in a
> fairly large city with a large university nearby (which I attended). The
males
> on campus were bent on preserving their deferment status. I was bent on
getting
> on with my life and getting the war and it's memories buried into
oblivion. The
> war turned sour, negative images caught the public's imagination and just
> about there, I retired my service into the closet. Everybody knew the
military
> lost the war and we were all a bunch of crazed, dope-smoking, baby killing
> fiends. None of my friends or relatives ever inquired about my activities
in
> the war, they already knew (from the media) and there would be no
discussion.
> The vast majority of males (burdened with a guilty conscience because they
did
> not serve) and sympathetic females (convinced that males are evil war
mongers)
> generated a mindset not receptive to war stories. In the 70's Vietnam Vets
were
> portrayed as social misfits and psychos. I applied my jungle fighting
> techniques and donned a leisure suit and hit the discos. Concealment and
> evasion. Seemed like the right thing to do.
>
> - LMAO
>
> Greg
>
Greg, I'm sorry you guys went through that. Growing up in Huntsville, AL,
where Werner Von Braun was the head honcho, my Dad was a NASA
engineer, and every day there was something happening in Vietnam, or
something happening south in Alabama, but Dad (and the rest of the town)
were so emersed with manned space flight that everything else became
secondary. The Saturn V tests that happened two or three times a day
were more than 3 or 4 on the Richter scale for our part of town, and
visiting
folks from California would dive under tables and stuff - we thought it
was a hoot.

To hear the documentaries, the rest of the nation was focusing their anger
on Alabama and the rest of the deep south for racial injustices, but
everything
I saw was just pictures in the paper. When I was really young, our maid
would take me to the projects and I'd play baseball with the kids there
while she did the laundry. Hell, there's more racial tension now than there
was then, at least, with my own physical perspective.

Which goes back to the Vets - I'm sure you guys in the North and West
went through hell going back to the cities, but in the South, there was
still a pretty healthy dose of support. I would have volunteered during
the War, even at its most unpopular point - but there was no way I was
going anywhere but the Air Force - I was scared to death of what might
happen to me in the Army or Marines.

That's why I'm curious - and I'm not necessarily looking for stories of
heroism - just things to get my facts straight. Here's an example -

In this same thread, but in another subthread, a fellow goes off on me
because we were the beginning of the "all volunteer" military. But to
me, that was where the US Armed Forces began to improve, particularly
after President Reagan took office. I was told that toward the end of
the war, guys would toke up in the (USAF) mess hall, people just didn't care
anymore. Now, however "bad" these guys felt about discipline after
Vietnam, it was certainly much more strict than that stateside after the
war.

Paul

You do realize that you can go to your nearby surplus store and buy any and
every medal ever issued with the sole exception of the Medal of Honor don't
you? Just because some guy has a Bronze Star medal in a box doesn't mean
diddly, most especially because Air Force regulations state that the Bronze
Star Medal is NOT awarded for circumstances involving aerial flight.

--
Don Thompson
Former ROAD

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before
them, glory and danger alike, and notwithstanding go out to meet it."-
Thucydides

"Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of Freedom:
Therefore they do not believe in dying completely."-
Albert Camus


"Atlanta Ramfan" wrote in message
news:%w1Fb.6398$wL6.5699@newsread1.news.atl.earthl ink.net...
> "Don T" wrote in message
> news:Oa0Fb.12309$Pg1.6814@newsread1.news.pas.earth link.net...
> > "Atlanta Ramfan" wrote in message
> > news:tGVEb.5973$wL6.4442@newsread1.news.atl.earthl ink.net...
> > > Mr. Penley, I'll top post here because of the orderliness of your
post:
> > >
> > > First, the reason I made such remarks (they weren't intended to
> > > be disparaging) was that I was familiar with SP's from my own
> > > 4 year tour. I roomed with one, had several for friends, and knew
> > > that the LE's (Law Enforcement Officers) constantly raided their
> > > barracks with dogs to find dope.
> > >
> > > This is something they rarely even did to us, the flightline techs, so
> > > we saw their life as a rather miserable one, relegated to watching
> > > the 'line, admitting cars in and out of the gate, and consistently
> > > being lorded over by the LE's, who were the ones you had to
> > > watch out for.
> > >
> > > None of the guys I had talked to were affected by Tet, and if any
> > > had been stationed at Tan Son Nhut I would have heard, because
> > > the majority of them were stationed in Thailand or points out of
> > > country at the time. All they could say is that things got real busy
> > during
> > > Tet
> > > and nobody was sleeping for a while (my memory is fuzzy, it's
> > > not my recollection - but trying to recall what someone else told
> > > me) that they were going 12 - 16 hours at a time, but that may
> > > be wrong. Although I know they train you guys to be able to
> > > function deprived of sleep, it was the opposite for guys on the
> > > line, particularly the armaments guys. You don't want them making
> > > mistakes with the ordinance, although we used to pull 16 hours
> > > all the time - but Luke was just a training base.
> > >
> > > Like I was trying to say before, and I guess I didn't do a good
> > > job of holding my tongue the right way, is that outside of Tet and
> > > the incident at Da Nang, the picture the guys painted was that
> > > the Air Force bases were the safest place you could be in country.
> > > They made it sound like when you left the base to go on R&R,
> > > was when you were crossing the threshold. We were always
> > > curious as to what life was like on the other side of the fence.
> > >
> > > Anyway, remember, these are guys that fixed airplanes for a living,
> > > if they were in SAC, a few of them got rides in B-52's and that's
> > > where the one of the fellows got a bronze star - kicking out a
> > > phosphor bomb that got stuck in a B-52 bay.
> > >
> >
> > No he didn't. B-52's did NOT cary phosphor bombs nor even crew in the
> bomb
> > bay. You been listening to the base bullshitters.
> >
> > --
> > Don Thompson
> >
> I'm sorry, Don. I saw a medal. That was the story. Maybe it wasn't
> a B-52, maybe it wasn't a phosphor bomb, but the detail was ordnance
> hung up in a bay while a bird was in flight. The B-52 was the bird that
> delivered the most ordinance, and I assume you know, what was the
> methodology for a malfunction in the weapons delivery system?
>
> Of the stories that I heard (2) involving enlisted men, I am certain
> one involved B-52's. (apparently not the one in question). I know
> they pared the crew from 6 to 4 by the time we were in. The gunner
> was removed when they made the back gun automatic. The other
> story I heard, one fellow claimed to have gotten a ride as an observer
> - I don't know the assigned task of the fellow in question. But the
> observer claimed to have physically seen SAMs go past the bird he
> was in - and he definitely claimed he was in a B-52.
>
> I wasn't a BB stacker, I was an avionics weenie and easily impressed
> at the time. Look, I'm really trying to nicely ask, here, but if we're
> going to talk USAF stories here, I've got loads of those, because I
> lived with the guys that were telling them. Some of them sounded real,
> and we knew some were whoppers. But when a guy shows you a
> case that has medals in it, and one is a bronze star, I for one listen
> up, shut up, and whatever he says goes. Maybe now, that someone
> wouldn't outrank me, I'd be more careful to challenge what he was
> saying, but frankly some of the stuff we heard that was confirmed
> by several people separately was pretty unbelievable.
>
> Paul
>
>

Nobody "goes off on" YOU. I was, quite simply, stating the conditions
rampant in the various services immediately following the institution of the
all volunteer services. Your example of guys "toking up" in the messhall is
but one more thing among many that were baadddd wrong with discipline in
those days. I have no doubt at all that things work better now but when
congress stopped funding the military enough and when Peanut Jimmy was the
prez morale was damn low amongst people who knew it could be better. No
money for parts and it was against regs to cannibalize. Equipment was down
because supply couldn't furnish a 3 dollar part so a lot of us old timey
lifer bastards went shopping on the local economy and bought parts out of
our own pockets. A lot of guys just got fed up and didn't reup at the 12 or
16 year mark. I was lucky in a way. I had been wounded bad enough that I
could get out and have a disability income.

--
Don Thompson

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before
them, glory and danger alike, and notwithstanding go out to meet it."-
Thucydides

"Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of Freedom:
Therefore they do not believe in dying completely."-
Albert Camus


"Atlanta Ramfan" wrote in message
news:9V1Fb.6415$wL6.2455@newsread1.news.atl.earthl ink.net...
> "GrgLnsctt" wrote in message
> news:20031220122154.21823.00000853@mb-m19.news.cs.com...
> > >My question to REAL Vietnam vets (not to someone wanting
> > >to give their anti-war views) is why it was so hard to get someone
> > >after they got back from war to tell me what they had been through,
> > >particularly when I was in high school 1972-5 and particularly before
> >
> > Paul,
> >
> > Many of us returned to an anti-war and anti-military environment. I
lived
> in a
> > fairly large city with a large university nearby (which I attended). The
> males
> > on campus were bent on preserving their deferment status. I was bent on
> getting
> > on with my life and getting the war and it's memories buried into
> oblivion. The
> > war turned sour, negative images caught the public's imagination and
just
> > about there, I retired my service into the closet. Everybody knew the
> military
> > lost the war and we were all a bunch of crazed, dope-smoking, baby
killing
> > fiends. None of my friends or relatives ever inquired about my
activities
> in
> > the war, they already knew (from the media) and there would be no
> discussion.
> > The vast majority of males (burdened with a guilty conscience because
they
> did
> > not serve) and sympathetic females (convinced that males are evil war
> mongers)
> > generated a mindset not receptive to war stories. In the 70's Vietnam
Vets
> were
> > portrayed as social misfits and psychos. I applied my jungle fighting
> > techniques and donned a leisure suit and hit the discos. Concealment and
> > evasion. Seemed like the right thing to do.
> >
> > - LMAO
> >
> > Greg
> >
> Greg, I'm sorry you guys went through that. Growing up in Huntsville, AL,
> where Werner Von Braun was the head honcho, my Dad was a NASA
> engineer, and every day there was something happening in Vietnam, or
> something happening south in Alabama, but Dad (and the rest of the town)
> were so emersed with manned space flight that everything else became
> secondary. The Saturn V tests that happened two or three times a day
> were more than 3 or 4 on the Richter scale for our part of town, and
> visiting
> folks from California would dive under tables and stuff - we thought it
> was a hoot.
>
> To hear the documentaries, the rest of the nation was focusing their anger
> on Alabama and the rest of the deep south for racial injustices, but
> everything
> I saw was just pictures in the paper. When I was really young, our maid
> would take me to the projects and I'd play baseball with the kids there
> while she did the laundry. Hell, there's more racial tension now than
there
> was then, at least, with my own physical perspective.
>
> Which goes back to the Vets - I'm sure you guys in the North and West
> went through hell going back to the cities, but in the South, there was
> still a pretty healthy dose of support. I would have volunteered during
> the War, even at its most unpopular point - but there was no way I was
> going anywhere but the Air Force - I was scared to death of what might
> happen to me in the Army or Marines.
>
> That's why I'm curious - and I'm not necessarily looking for stories of
> heroism - just things to get my facts straight. Here's an example -
>
> In this same thread, but in another subthread, a fellow goes off on me
> because we were the beginning of the "all volunteer" military. But to
> me, that was where the US Armed Forces began to improve, particularly
> after President Reagan took office. I was told that toward the end of
> the war, guys would toke up in the (USAF) mess hall, people just didn't
care
> anymore. Now, however "bad" these guys felt about discipline after
> Vietnam, it was certainly much more strict than that stateside after the
> war.
>
> Paul
>
>

"Yeff" wrote in message
news:e39syuxonwmm.dlg@lemming_militia.com...
> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 10:40:25 GMT, Atlanta Ramfan wrote:
>
> > Anyway, remember, these are guys that fixed airplanes for a living,
> > if they were in SAC, a few of them got rides in B-52's and that's
> > where the one of the fellows got a bronze star - kicking out a
> > phosphor bomb that got stuck in a B-52 bay.
>
> My bet is you're thinking of the late Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. John
> Levitow. See
>
No, this wasn't Sgt. Levitow, they taught us about him in basic.

I can't remember our Sergeant's name (he was a Tech Sergeant or
Master Sergeant in the late 70's) but it was nothing like hugging
a live magnesium flare. It was "just" ordnance (and I know absolutely
nothing about B-52's save for their fuel systems - my Dad was
designing them when I was born in Wichita - and a little about their
engines) I'm not even sure of what kind it was - and for that matter
I'm not absolutely sure of the type of plane - but I know it wasn't
a gunship - it was an ordnance delivery system, the guy was
a weapons specialist. For all I know, maybe the bird had been
having problems with that and they took him up so he could see
what was happening.

Anyway, he had to physically extricate the thing from the aircraft.
I'm sure it was live, but nothing like a magnesium flare going off,
and he wasn't injured. The key was to just get the thing out of the
plane. We all thought it was a pretty brave thing to do.

Paul

"Don T" wrote in message
news:FZ1Fb.12427$Pg1.12274@newsread1.news.pas.eart hlink.net...
> You do realize that you can go to your nearby surplus store and buy any
and
> every medal ever issued with the sole exception of the Medal of Honor
don't
> you? Just because some guy has a Bronze Star medal in a box doesn't mean
> diddly, most especially because Air Force regulations state that the
Bronze
> Star Medal is NOT awarded for circumstances involving aerial flight.

I don't think you could buy a medal at a surplus store back in the 70's,
but you've got a strong argument about bronze medals and flight.

I don't know, I'm just saying I saw it, and that was the story. Geez, if
you want to hear the rest of MY stories, I'll be glad to put them up here
for your validation.

But my original question was about what it was like on the other side of the
fence.

For instance, almost all of the guys were telling us about these "F*ck you"
lizards that made a sound like they were cursing you. Now, that one came
from all the guys that were over there. They swore there were these
lizards that made a sound like that. And these bugs, that they said the
villagers treated like a delicacy, that they'd pick them up all around the
flightline in big garbage bags and sell them to the locals because they
were nuts about them.

Those kinds of stories.

Paul

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 20:02:13 GMT, "Atlanta Ramfan"
wrote:

>Which goes back to the Vets - I'm sure you guys in the North and West
>went through hell going back to the cities, but in the South, there was
>still a pretty healthy dose of support. I would have volunteered during
>the War, even at its most unpopular point - but there was no way I was
>going anywhere but the Air Force - I was scared to death of what might
>happen to me in the Army or Marines.

I never did understand that, partly luck and partly attitude. In Long
Beach, San Francisco and the rest of the bay area I just walked tall
and smiled a lot and I got invited home by so many wimins that for the
first time in my life I was at risk of getting too much. My health
would have failed if I didn't slow down just a bit.

I was not looking all that good in those days either, I can guarantee
it.

But to the other issues, I grew up watching and listening to all the
Pacific Island Campaign stories, movies, etc. and I had absolute faith
in the fact if I had to go to a war, the best way to guarantee getting
home would be the Marine Corps.

I loved Subs, but I was too tall, so there was only one choice. I
couldn't imagine any other in my wildest thinking.

Those movies I watched showed a hell of a lot of planes being shot
down and I am not an Army kind of guy so I guess my fate was sealed.
"But now is the time for the younger men to lock in rough encounters,
time for me to yield to the pains of old age. But there was a day I shone among the champions."

Homer, The Illiad, 23.715-719 (800 BC). King Nestor of Pylos.

Want to see a picture of a fuck you lizard? HeH. Al Zeller has a pic of one
on his shoulder. Then there are the Rice Bugs. Their pursuit and capture on
flightlines all over Asia was the cause of discontinuance of issue of
nightsticks to SP augmentees.

--
Don Thompson

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before
them, glory and danger alike, and notwithstanding go out to meet it."-
Thucydides

"Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of Freedom:
Therefore they do not believe in dying completely."-
Albert Camus


"Atlanta Ramfan" wrote in message
news:Uo2Fb.6444$wL6.4462@newsread1.news.atl.earthl ink.net...
> "Don T" wrote in message
> news:FZ1Fb.12427$Pg1.12274@newsread1.news.pas.eart hlink.net...
> > You do realize that you can go to your nearby surplus store and buy any
> and
> > every medal ever issued with the sole exception of the Medal of Honor
> don't
> > you? Just because some guy has a Bronze Star medal in a box doesn't mean
> > diddly, most especially because Air Force regulations state that the
> Bronze
> > Star Medal is NOT awarded for circumstances involving aerial flight.
>
> I don't think you could buy a medal at a surplus store back in the 70's,
> but you've got a strong argument about bronze medals and flight.
>
> I don't know, I'm just saying I saw it, and that was the story. Geez, if
> you want to hear the rest of MY stories, I'll be glad to put them up here
> for your validation.
>
> But my original question was about what it was like on the other side of
the
> fence.
>
> For instance, almost all of the guys were telling us about these "F*ck
you"
> lizards that made a sound like they were cursing you. Now, that one came
> from all the guys that were over there. They swore there were these
> lizards that made a sound like that. And these bugs, that they said the
> villagers treated like a delicacy, that they'd pick them up all around the
> flightline in big garbage bags and sell them to the locals because they
> were nuts about them.
>
> Those kinds of stories.
>
> Paul
>
>

Paul,

There are two ways to look at the all volunteer military. On the bright
side, they want to be there so there is perhaps less grumbling among the
ranks. They chose their bed. However, I don't think you get the mix you
did in the old days. I suspect (without proof) that the vast majority of
volunteers is from the lower economic strata...I don't mean poor
blacks...I mean workers and lower middle class.

In the draft military, there were a lot of unhappy people but you got a
marvelous mix. You would have some farmer from Alabama next to a coal
miner from Pennsylvania next to a college graduate from Harvard whose
deferment ran out. You got a great mix of intellects and a complete
variation of class. That made it damn interesting.

I served in both. In fact, I trained both. I reserve judgement on which
is better, but it was certainly different.

As for the alcohol and drugs, that is always a leadership
responsibility. If you have motivated and dedicated leaders you did not
see drugs. If not you did. Everyone here had a completely different
environment and it is seldom that two guys agree on what it was like.
You see people calling each other fakes and wannabees, but it isn't
really that. It is just that the times and situations are so different
that they do not recognize the war that the other fellow is talking
about.

In addition to what Don said, it is also important to know that the "V"
attachment is what makes the Bronze Star. Without it, it is just for
meritorious service. There is an old Vietnam song parody that mocks all
the Bronze Stars awarded to officers at MACV. I don't want to knock the
system, but in some cases they could be given for an end of tour or
retirement gift. That is against all the regulations, but everyone here
that had any rank knows what went on in some headquarters.