Veterans share their views on Iraq as Veterans Day approaches

[thedrifter]

Veterans share their views on Iraq as Veterans Day approaches

By Ben Dobbin
ASSOCIATED PRESS
9:34 a.m. November 8, 2003

Perhaps better than most, veterans of America's involvement in places from Sicily to Korea to Saigon to Kuwait City understand what their brethren are experiencing in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

As they recall their own experiences, many say they think the United States should stay the course despite painful losses. Withdrawing from Iraq now, they say, would leave a perilous void. Others favor a quick exit. And some express deeply ambivalent emotions.

As Veterans Day approaches, former warriors reflect on their service and on battles ? and the soldiers who fight them ? past and present.



Thomas Greene still suffers "real bad flashbacks, sweats, nightmares" from his 2 1/2 years as an Army Ranger "door gunner" on an attack helicopter in Vietnam between 1969 and 1973.

"Everybody says forget, forget, forget. You can't. I was in hell every day," said Greene, 52, who was wounded three times by bullets or shrapnel.

After 23 years working for the U.S. Postal Service, Greene has been on disability since 1994. He lives in Victor near Rochester, N.Y.

Earlier wars, he said, seem to have had a clearer mission ? defeat the Nazis, hold back the Communists. Iraq, in his view, looks frighteningly similar to Vietnam.

"We have become the world's police force," he said. "If we kick back and say 'OK, we'll lose one soldier every day, 365 a year,' as far as a war goes, that's not bad. But as a police action, that's not good."

But he says withdrawing wouldn't be right.

"My head says we have to stick it out. My heart says I hope we stay with the troops and support them when they come home.

"I'm really torn. ... I cry every time I hear somebody died because I think of somebody I knew."



Fred Brady, a retired Navy commander who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, says the United States would only encourage terrorism if it pulled out of Iraq in the face of mounting casualties.

"We did the same thing in Beirut. We made a commitment and the first time we took casualties we ran," Brady said. "We did it in Somalia. The first time we started taking casualties we ran. We're getting a reputation, and the terrorists know that we run when we take casualties."

Brady, 76, now volunteers at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla.

He sees two major differences between his wars and the conflict in Iraq: U.S. troops in Iraq are all volunteers, and he thinks senior officers today are more attuned to avoiding casualties.

Striving to avoid casualties, he said, "is sometimes good, sometimes bad. You can let that govern your operation to the extent where you're not doing your best."



A Gulf War veteran, Rob Hedequist said his first impulse when the war in Iraq started was to rejoin the Marine Corps. Then reality set in.

"I'm older, 20 pounds heavier, not quite in the shape I used to be in," the father of four, a Seattle-based drug company manager, said with a laugh.

Hedequist, 42, who commanded an anti-terrorism unit that helped protect ships and the Saudi port of Al Jubail, thinks anyone who expects the conflict in Iraq to end as quickly and bloodlessly as the Gulf War has the wrong idea. "This is a difficult type of mission and a difficult type of war," he said.

Despite the mounting U.S. casualties, Hedequist said the military should stay in Iraq until the new Iraqi government is established.

"Unless we're there, instability will continue to reign," he said.

The big welcome that greeted soldiers returning from the Gulf War felt like a public penance for the way Vietnam veterans were treated, Hedequist said, and he urged more public support ? more flag-waving rallies ? for the troops in Iraq.

"Sometimes the American people forget," he said.



Grethe Cammermeyer says she was against U.S. involvement in Iraq from the beginning, especially with little support at home and from the international community.

The 61-year-old retired Army colonel, a lesbian who successfully fought to stay in the military, feels there are too many similarities between Iraq and Vietnam where, she said, "we were used for political gain, or political loss as it turned out."

Just as with Vietnam, where Cammermeyer spent 14 months, Americans are divided about Iraq.

"What we're feeling is that same schism of wanting to support our troops and wondering why the hell are we there," she said from her home near Langley, Wash.

Anti-war demonstrations were just beginning during her time in Vietnam, she said ? and they hurt.

"It was absolutely psychologically devastating to feel, as a nurse, that you were taking care of the best and the most dedicated ... then to have our citizens negating that sacrifice."


Andy Anzanos remembers flying on 26 B-17 bombing missions in World War II, a time when he says people willingly went to battle.

"Now, people are worried about one or two dying a day, while we had thousands" dying, he said.

"And yet, I feel we've got a bigger threat today (at home), the populace has a bigger threat today than we had back during World War II."

Anzanos, 79, left the Army Air Corps after the war as a technical sergeant, then had a long career with McDonnell Aircraft before retiring to Tucson, Ariz., in 1980. He's now a volunteer docent at the 390th Memorial Museum in Tucson.

Anzanos thinks the antiwar sentiment concerning Iraq could evolve into something resembling that of the latter stages of the Vietnam war, fracturing the nation. But he believes the nation will "stick it out" in Iraq: "We have to."



For Richard Kirk, who served in Sicily and North Africa in World War II, earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart in Korea and then served in Vietnam, this conflict reminds him most of Vietnam ? and that worries him.

"As a professional, I did my job and did it well," said Kirk, 80, who retired in 1967 as a lieutenant colonel. "But I lost a lot of friends there, and I think, 'Why?' We simply got deeper and deeper into that pit."

In World War II and Korea, a strong coalition of allies fought alongside the United States but "in this one, hell, we're dragging people into it by their heels," Kirk said.

From his retirement haven in Tacoma, Wash., the father of eight said his thoughts frequently return to issues of war and peace. He says he thinks that in Iraq, U.S. leaders weren't prepared for an extended struggle, the complexities of nation-building and the casualties.

"We should hand over as much as possible to the Iraqis as soon as possible and get out. I know that doesn't sound like a loyal soldier, but ..." he said, his voice trailing off.



Saddam Hussein "was on the order of Hitler when you compare him to bad people, so we must stay" in Iraq, says retired Air Force Col. Richard Bushong.

"And if they called me I'd go do it myself," said Bushong, 80.

Now is a volunteer docent at the 390th Memorial Museum in Tucson, Ariz., Bushong was a co-pilot on B-17 bombing missions over Germany in 1943 and took part in the first full-daylight raid over Berlin in 1944, when no fewer than 69 bombers were lost. He criticized the spotlight on body counts in Iraq.

If the country gives in to a cry in some quarters to get out of Iraq, he said, "that means that we're a loser."

"And not only are we a loser, but Iraq will be a loser if we don't help them."



Paul Fournier was severely burned when his plane crashed in Vietnam. After two years in the hospital and 42 surgeries, signs of skin grafts remain on his face and hands.

The 69-year-old retired Army captain from Langley, Wash., stores his medals in a cottage cheese dish. He still loves the military but disagrees with how the conflict in Iraq has been waged.

"I'm really disappointed," he said. "I thought we were above throwing the first punch."

Fournier believes the United States acted too quickly in Iraq and failed to learn about the people or the region.

"We did the same thing in Vietnam, trying to impose our strictures on other people without even knowing much about them," he said.

Continuing American casualties do not sway retired Army 1st Sgt. Tim Kelliher, a Vietnam War veteran, from his belief that America must remain until its mission is done.

"We as a nation have a bad reputation of not following through. Our word is not as well taken as it used to be in the past," said Kelliher, 49, now a building construction technologies technician at Pima Community College in Arizona.

"We're basically stepping up to the plate, and we have to stand behind not only the people of Iraq but the soldiers of the United States."

Kelliher retired in 1993 as a first sergeant after serving more than 20 years.

He says some people have illusions about war: "It's like, we go in, do it and come out. People have short memories. War is extremely ugly. And the soldiers are the ones that have to suffer that day in and day out for the rest of their lives."

Kelliher noted a stark similarity between the Vietnam and Iraqi wars: "We're back to body counting."

"Yes, it's important, but the final outcome is what we're trying to get to," he said. "The soldiers on the ground understand that. They believe in what they're doing."



George "Gordy" Powell, who joined the Navy the day after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, said it "depresses me" each time he hears of U.S. soldiers getting killed or injured in Iraq. Still, he thinks the military must keep to the task.

The Allies stayed in Germany long after 1945 until a stable, democratic system was in place and "I would expect we'd do the same in Iraq," Powell, 81, said as he sat in a wheelchair at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Canandaigua, N.Y.

Powell served on submarines during World War II. On shore duty in the Korean War, he spent eight months in hospital after a mortar shell upended his jeep and crushed his right leg.

Iraq is very different from the wars he fought in, but the horror of battle isn't.

"When you get shot, it feels the same in any war. I've got two Purple Hearts to prove it," he said.



Marlin Overholt notes that the United States took many more casualties in some battles during World War II, when he flew aboard Navy torpedo bombers, than it has in all the combat in Iraq. In 36 days of ground fighting at Iwo Jima alone, 6,821 Americans were killed.

Overholt, 76, says he's not convinced the United States should have entered Iraq to begin with. But now that U.S. troops are there, he says, the country cannot leave without dishonoring the troops already killed.

"We've lost a couple hundred lives already," he said at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla., where he volunteers.

"Are we going to throw those away, say they died for nothing?"



Associated Press writers Arthur H. Rotstein in Tucson, Ariz., Bill Kaczor in Pensacola, Fla., Rebecca Cook in Olympia, Wash., and Melanthia Mitchell in Seattle contributed to this story.


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Sempers,

Roger

[BLUEHAWK]

I, personally, tried everything possible during the build-up to Iraq and Afghanistan to prevent these deployments and declarations of war... absolutely everything one man could do... my peacenik friends and family thought I was doing so because of being "anti-war", which I am not... but the arguments are similar.

The major difference is, obviously, once the war command is given and acted upon, then everything changes... and there is a world of difference in attitude between those who have served (usually), and those who have not... there's just NO way to convey to the latter folks what "support our troops" actually means in practise.

Good post Roger...