Heroes of the Vietnam Generation
By James Webb
The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great
Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off
from the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has
published two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that
feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct
was historically unique.
Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns
praising the Navy service of his father while castigating his own baby
boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle. William
Bennett gave a startling condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few
years ago comparing the heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to
the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the "Woodstock Generation." And
Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film "Saving Private Ryan,"
was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action based on the
supposedly unique nature of World War II.
An irony is at work here. Lest we forget, the World War II generation
now being lionized also brought us the Vietnam War, a conflict which
today's most conspicuous voices by and large opposed, and in which few
of them served. The "best and brightest" of the Vietnam age
group once made headlines by castigating their parents for bringing
about the war in which they would not fight, which has become the war
they refuse to remember.
Pundits back then invented a term for this animus: the "generation
gap." Long, plaintive articles and even books were written
examining its manifestations. Campus leaders, who claimed precocious
wisdom through the magical process of reading a few controversial books,
urged fellow baby boomers not to trust anyone over 30. Their elders who
had survived the Depression and fought the largest war in history were
looked down upon as shallow, materialistic, and out of touch.
Those of us who grew up, on the other side of the picket line from that
era's counter-culture can't help but feel a little leery of this sudden
gush of appreciation for our elders from the leading lights of the old
counter-culture. Then and now, the national conversation has proceeded
from the dubious assumption that those who came of age during Vietnam
are a unified generation in the same sense as their parents were, and
thus are capable of being spoken for through these fickle elites.
In truth, the
"
Vietnam
generation" is a misnomer. Those who came of age during that war
are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole range of
counter-cultural agendas, and nothing divides them more deeply than the
personal ramifications of the war itself. The sizable portion of the
Vietnam
age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and
especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during
the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades
have claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World
War II generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college
protestors were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to
work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented
not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance, or protest marches but
a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in
World War II and Korea.
Few who served
during
Vietnam
ever complained of a generation gap. The men who fought World War II
were their heroes and role models. They honored their father's service
by emulating it, and largely agreed with their father's wisdom in
attempting to stop Communism's reach in
Southeast Asia
.
The most accurate
poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91 percent were glad
they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their time in the
service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops
were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in
Washington
would not let them win." And most importantly, the castigation they
received upon returning home was not from the World War II generation,
but from the very elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for
them.
Nine million men
served in the military during Vietnam War, three million of whom went to
the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology, two-thirds of these
were volunteers, and 73 percent of those who died were volunteers. While
some attention has been paid recently to the plight of our prisoners of
war, most of whom were pilots; there has been little recognition of how
brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.
Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home,
America
's citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never
be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompletely
on a tactical level should consider
Hanoi
's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the
battlefield, compared to 58,000 total
U.S.
dead.
Those who believe
that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all the
work might contemplate that is was the most costly war the U.S. Marine
Corps has ever fought-five times as many dead as World War I, three
times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than
in all of World War II.
Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the
United States
was deeply divided over our effort in
Vietnam
. The baby-boom generation had cracked apart along class lines as
America
's young men were making difficult, life-or-death choices about serving.
The better academic institutions became focal points for vitriolic
protest against the war, with few of their graduates going into the
military.
Harvard
College
, which had lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in
Vietnam
from the classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at
Princeton
lost six, at MIT two. The media turned ever more hostile. And
frequently the reward for a young man's having gone through the trauma
of combat was to be greeted by his peers with studied indifference of
outright hostility.
What is a hero? My
heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and possible death,
and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their country.
Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and professional lives
at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the Confederate
Memorial in
Arlington
National
Cemetery
, "not for fame of reward, not for place of for rank, but in simple
obedience to duty, as they understood it." Who suffered loneliness,
disease, and wounds with an often-contagious elan. And who deserve a far
better place in history than that now offered them by the so-called
spokesman of our so-called generation.
Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my Marines.
1969 was an odd year to be in
Vietnam
. Second only to 1968 in terms of American casualties, it was the year
made famous by Hamburger Hill, as well as the gut-wrenching Life cover
story showing pictures of 242 Americans who had been killed in one
average week of fighting. Back home, it was the year of Woodstock, and
of numerous anti-war rallies that culminated in the Moratorium march on
Washington. The My Lai massacre hit the papers and was seized upon the
anti-war movement as the emblematic moment of the war. Lyndon Johnson
left Washington in utter humiliation.
Richard Nixon entered the scene, destined for an even worse fate. In the
An Hoa Basin southwest of Danang, the Fifth Marine Regiment was in its
third year of continuous combat operations. Combat is an unpredictable
and inexact environment, but we were well led. As a rifle platoon and
company commander, I served under a succession of three regimental
commanders who had cut their teeth in World War II, and four different
battalion commanders, three of whom had seen combat in Korea. The
company commanders were typically captains on their second combat tour
in Vietnam, or young first lieutenants like myself who were given
companies after many months of "bush time" as platoon
commanders in he Basin's tough and unforgiving environs.
The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its
torn, cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the
mountains just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the
North Vietnamese Army operated an infantry division from an area called
Base Area 112. In the valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong
battalions whose ranks were 80 percent North Vietnamese Army regulars
moved against the Americans every day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and
harassed. Ridgelines and paddy dikes were laced with sophisticated booby
traps of every size, from a hand grenade to a 250-pound bomb. The
villages sat in the rice paddies and tree lines like individual
fortresses, crisscrossed with the trenches and spider holes, their homes
sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from large-caliber
artillery shells. The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate and
permeating. Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did not
side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the
government controlled enclaves near Danang.
In the rifle companies, we spent the endless months patrolling
ridgelines and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of
tents, barbed wire, hot food, or electricity. Luxuries were limited to
what would fit inside one's pack, which after a few "humps"
usually boiled down to letter-writing material, towel, soap, toothbrush,
poncho liner, and a small transistor radio.
We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear,
causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in
the bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit
trenches for toilets. We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho
hootches, and when it rained we usually took our hootches down because
wet ponchos shined under illumination flares, making great targets.
Sleep itself was fitful, never more than an hour or two at a stretch for
months at a time as we mixed daytime patrolling with night-time
ambushes, listening posts, foxhole duty, and radio watches. Ringworm,
hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were common, as was trench foot when
the monsoons came. Respite was rotating back to the mud-filled
regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five days, where rocket and
mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned defensive bunkers at
night. Which makes it kind of hard to get excited about tales of
Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.
We had been told while training that Marine officers in the rifle
companies had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and
the experience of "Dying Delta," as our company was known,
bore that out. Of the officers in the bush when I arrived, our company
commander was wounded, the weapons platoon commander wounded, the first
platoon commander was killed, the second platoon commander was wounded
twice, and I, commanding the third platoons fared no better. Two of my
original three-squad leaders were killed, and the third shot in the
stomach. My platoon sergeant was severely wounded, as was my right
guide. By the time I left, my platoon I had gone through six radio
operators, five of them casualties.
These figures were hardly unique; in fact, they were typical. Many other
units; for instance, those who fought the hill battles around Khe Sanh,
or were with the famed Walking Dead of the Ninth Marine Regiment, or
were in the battle of Hue City or at Dai Do, had it far worse.
When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with
me, I am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians
barely out of high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do
their year in hell and he return. Visions haunt me every day, not of the
nightmares of war but of the steady consistency with which my Marines
faced their responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were
in the face of constant danger. The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds
teaching green 19-year-olds the intricate lessons of the hostile
battlefield. The unerring skill of the young squad leaders as we moved
through unfamiliar villages and weed-choked trails in the black of
night. The quick certainty when a fellow Marine was wounded and needed
help. Their willingness to risk their lives to save other Marines in
peril. To this day it stuns me that their own countrymen have so
completely missed the story of their service, lost in the bitter
confusion of the war itself.
Like every military unit throughout history we had occasional laggards,
cowards, and complainers. But in the aggregate, these Marines were the
finest people I have ever been around. It has been my privilege to keep
up with many of them over the years since we all came home. One finds in
them very little bitterness about the war in which they fought. The most
common regret, almost to a man, is that they were not able to do more
for each other and for the people they came to help.
It would be redundant to say that I would trust my life to these men.
Because I already have in more ways than I can ever recount. I am alive
today because of their quiet, unaffected heroism. Such valor epitomizes
the conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence.
That the boomer elites can canonize this sort of conduct in our fathers'
generation while ignoring it in our own is more than simple oversight.
It is a conscious, continuing travesty.
Hicksville
Vietnam War Era Memorial
November
was an excellent month with 12 new names added to the Confirmed List,
bringing us to a new total of 1,877 names.
In addition, we continue to make strong progress on both missing
information for names already on the Confirmed List and needed
information on the Unconfirmed List.
Surprisingly, almost all names added to the Confirmed List
this past month were for active duty service members during the Vietnam
War Era, just when we thought we had likely found everyone who had
served back then. So, we
continue to need your help to insure that we leave no one behind who
deserves to be included on the Memorial.
As
covered in last month's report, the Project Team voted to allow the
addition of Reserve and National Guard members to the Confirmed List of
Names, provided they served during the Vietnam War Era and otherwise
meet all other qualification requirements listed below.
Under our old qualification rules, Reserve and National Guard
members did not qualify, so if you submitted your name, or the name of a
friend, in the past who did not qualify for this reason, please resubmit
that name now for inclusion to the Confirmed List of names.
As
a HixNews reader and as noted
above, please continue to help us by reviewing both lists when you
select the "click here" options near the bottom of this update with
your computer mouse. To
speed the process, just use your class year or the years you may be
familiar with as a reference and see if you have a new name or some
missing data on existing names to email to us.
Class years, where known, are specifically shown to make this
effort easier for everyone. Missing
data for names is shown in red, to make it easier for readers to see
what's needed.
The
Unconfirmed List was created to insure we don't leave anyone behind
from earlier class years (the 1940's and 50's) who served during the
Vietnam War Era and deserve recognition.
Please see if you can help us establish if these folks served
during the Vietnam Era (Vietnam Era dates are shown in the "Memorial
Qualifications" section below).
We
are still awaiting confirmation of our petition for not-for-profit (NFP)
status from the IRS, in order to proceed with our fund raising plans.
The petition includes establishing a bank account with the name Hicksville
Vietnam Era Memorial, LLC. A
tax identification number has been obtained for this entity.
Good
input was received from Project Team members during November for
modifying the governing by-laws of the LLC.
A new draft, with these modifications included, was distributed
to the Team and final approval of the copy that will be forwarded to the
IRS should be in place no later than December 6th.
Memorial Qualifications:
A person must have been on active duty in one of our Armed
Forces, served in the Active Reserves or served in the National Guard
during the Vietnam War Era. Active
duty personnel did not necessarily have to serve in Vietnam, because by
being in service at that time he or she faced the possibility of being
sent to Vietnam and was an integral part of strengthening our Armed
Forces during a time of war.
Overall
qualifications include:
- must have been a
resident of
Hicksville
at some time before entering our Armed Forces
- must have attended a
public, private or parochial high school while living in
Hicksville
(attendance at HHS not required)
- must have served on
Active Duty, Active Reserve or National Guard Duty anywhere in the
world during America's Vietnam Era (February,1961 through
April,1975)
- Both men and women
qualify (We're stating this since, while a number of women have
been added, we still have relatively few on the current list
overall)
Our
Project Team consists of the following HHS Alumni and Vietnam War Era
Veterans and is pleased to add its newest member in Terry Wallace:
·
Ken Strafer, Founder (HHS
'62)
·
Joe Carfora, Project
Coordinator & Master List (HHS '62)
·
Carl Probst, Input Data,
Class of '59 & Others (HHS '59)
·
Tony Plonski, Input Data,
Class of '64 & Others (HHS '64)
·
Tommy Sullivan, Press
Release Editing (HHS '63)
·
Walter Schmidt, Town of
Oyster Bay Veterans Services Officer (HHS '65)
·
Joe Ingino, Veterans
Advocate, Hicksville &
Long Island
(HHS '67)
·
Jay Tranchina, Input Data,
Class of '64 & Others, plus local press contact (HHS '64)
·
Bill Walden, Cmdr of
Hicksville VFW Post, Site Selection/Approval & Fundraising Leader (HHS
'65)
·
Terry Wallace, Input Data,
Class of '66 & Others, has fundraising experience (HHS '66)
Here's what we continue to need from each person reading this to
do:
Please
click on the following link to review the Confirmed List of Names:
Click
here
Please
click on the following link to review the UNCONFIRMED List of Names:
Click
here
If
you know of someone who is not listed, or if you have information we are
still missing, please send what you have to Joe Carfora at jcarfora1@nc.rr.com.
Please use the information contained on the current list as a
guide for the data we need.
Thank
you!
The
Vietnam War Era Memorial Project Team
Footnote extracted from www.vietnamwar.com:
During nearly 15 years of military involvement, over 2 million
Americans served in Vietnam with 500,000 seeing actual combat. 47,244
were killed in action, including 8000 airmen. There were 10,446
non-combat deaths. 153,329 were seriously wounded, including 10,000
amputees. Over 2400 American POWs/MIAs were unaccounted for as of 1973.
To access a huge list of veteran related websites
that offer assistance, visit http://buffalobobcasale.com
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