Having critical reasoning skills helps, but when someone is invested in an ideology or event, critical reasoning skills go out the window.. because to acknowledge facts and reality is to negate one's identity.
I am a Vietnam vet, and way too many of us, especially those like me who lost team mates and friends, are too invested in that ill…
Having critical reasoning skills helps, but when someone is invested in an ideology or event, critical reasoning skills go out the window.. because to acknowledge facts and reality is to negate one's identity.
I am a Vietnam vet, and way too many of us, especially those like me who lost team mates and friends, are too invested in that illicit venture to admit that it was a folly and a crime, that never should have happened.
I shudder to think that my team died, that McDonalds and KFC could have a franchise in Saigon err Ho Chi Minh City, and that Exxon would have a sole source contract with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to extract and process oil from the Gulf of Tonkin, where naval aircraft unloaded unused bombs to be used as seismic detectors for oil deposits.
I too am a Vietnam Vet, ARMY 69-71 (18 mos. in country) and I knew well before going that this was an immoral enterprise. That said, I could not gather the courage to flee to Canada (which for those who did took like 8 to 10 years to resolve.
Like the now political cartoonist Danziger I spent a lot of energy just trying to stay out of the line of fire and of course ended up on a RRF for like 180 days of perimeter guard at both Phu Loi and Quan Loi.
So, I ended up facing Sappers in the wire, coming under rocket and mortar fire and probably about 176 days of being soaked in monsoons. Wondering if the mosquitoes that were feasting on me would lead to malaria was always in the back of one’s mind.
Finally, when grunts tell you that they felt safer in the field than on the perimeter you were on then with, well you know you are not in the best of situations.
I've been to both Phu Loi and Quan Loi. 1967, red earth laterite runway, a PSP ramp at the end, across the ramp and viewable from it was the French Planters home. It was the home of Dracula, 2/2nd, Big Red one, and the Planter was a Frenchman, who permitted the grunts to use the swimmng pool, but they turned it red with the dust from the soil, they didn't shower first, so he drained the pool. near the ramp was the guarded entrance. The perimeter was sealed with a barbed wire fence, down a bit was a deuce and a half mount quad 50, pointed at the pop up village, just outside the gate.
It housed shacks made of bamboo and sheets of aluminum, where were actually uncut sheets of Budweiser beer cans.
I have some stories. There was a dirt road that led to the gate, follow the road and it took you to the old plantation workers quarters.
One night I almost wound up like Bergdahl
I have done some goggling and it changed quite a bit, When I was there the squad tents and HQ of the 2/2nd was stung along the runway, later it seems that it got built up quite a bit and all of the action was moved to the approach end of the runway
I don't remember being bothered by Mosquitos, my tent was under the barrels of the artillery battery, try to sleep with that going off., and the concussion of outgoing knocking youpff the canvas cot.
I have some pictures of Quan Li. including a sign which says Quan Loi International, constructed by the 1st Engineer Battalion, "Always First"
I have a picture of me and a monkey, The monkey was a pet of a PFC, kept him on a chain, the monkey liked me, but not others. Smart, he would pull up the chain and loop it to shorten it, and when a dude got within reach he would let go and jump on him. I wasn't assigned the 2/2nd, just supported them I eventually moved into the LRRP squad tent, and went on patrol with them a couple of times.not a foot patrol,but a motorized patrol in an M151, Crazy dudes, the would always let loose with their mounted M160.
For the civilian, the M151 was a Jeep manufactured by Ford, it had independent suspension and was dangerous if it hit a bump and went airborn, or if any wheels left the road.
A quad 50 is a 50 caliber machine gun, mounted and with four barrels, and M160 is a 7.62mm Squad weapon, a machine gun, you can fire it from the hip, not advised as it climbs and has awesome recoil. used quite a bit hung from slings in UH=1 (Huey) Helicopters as a door gunner
Quite good in the jungle though, because unlike the 5.56 M16, its round is not deflected by foliage and branches.
I saw and experienced some of the most surreal stuff at Quan Loi - 1969-1971 - I tried to sleep in a bunker under ground when I first got there… The sounds of like a dozen rats in the dark knocking over old C-Rat cans quickly inspired me to sleeping in an above ground hootch before dawn. I think this was the Quan Loi version of “Rocket Watch” for FNGs.
The Mosquitoes were associated in my memory with Phu Loi, given that rice paddies were adjacent to several sections of perimeter.
There were a number of sapper assaults at Quan Loi, primarily focused on destroying big guns and in one instance an assault on a mortar unit left about a dozen men dead from satchel charges as they slept.
I used to occasionally eat at a mess hall adjacent to a 175 that inevitably would get a fire mission while I was there. I remember my tray bouncing from the table clearly. So, given your proximity to these guns, I totally get being the shock wave knocking you from your cot.
I witnessed an E6 being accidentally crushed by a tank as he tried to shoo a mutt away. He slipped in that miserable fucking laterite red clay, which as you rightly recalled wither stuck to or dusted everything depending on the time of year.
After returning I decided in the early 70’s that one great way to eliminate Vietnam from my mind was to throw away dozens of B&Ws that I took there. A decision I regret deeply, becuase it is surprisingly hard to get quality visuals of over a decade shared by over 5 million men.
In any case, I’m thankful to be home and able to get treatment for Agent Orange when i did.
The underground sleeping quartes must have been built after I was there.
My unit was deployed where ever we were needed, I have been in over 30 places in that miserable country. Don't recall being pestered by mosquito though, I wore long sleeves the whole year I was there, I might have rolled up a cuff.
One mission I was deployed to Kontum, on the Cambodian border. it had been an NVA base camp, and they left behind all kind of surprises, booby traps, one almost got me.
The army had dug in, for sleeping quarters and used those aluminum pallets that are used for cargo and equipment as roofs, sandbags on top of the roofs. not enough room inside to stand up.
I was in the cot, catching Z's when I heard a gunshot, you can imagine how it reverbrates in that space, jumped up, hit my head on he pallet.
Some idiot shot a rat. That did it, I took my chances sleeping in the dirt.
I was at Dak To,when a company of the 173rd Infantry Brigade (Airborne) was ambushed and wiped out, I heard the whole thing over my PRC-25 (an FM manpack portable radio,as if you didn'tknow). The bodies, all 72 of them lay in bags outside the mortuary tent for three days, waiting for personal ID's, the NVA had scrambled their ID cards and dog tags, and it took personal ID to figure out who was who.
It was at that point, that the `173rd started to take ears and mutilate bodies, pay back, and rightly so, fight terror with terror. But the press said nothing of the customs association with the mutilation of that company.
It started to rain, and I undressed quick lathered up and got wet, then it stopped and I had to rinse off in a mud puddle, I swear Viet Nam, except for the Delta and the DMZ is nothing but red earth.
I learned to speak and Read Vietnamese and have the habit of writing Viet Nam, because in the language there was Nam Viet (South Viet) and Bach Viet (North Viet).
Bill, what you experienced especially reference the fate of those men of the 173rd makes the term nightmarish totally inadequate.
There are innumerable accounts of GI’s and atrocities committed over the decade we were in Vietnam. There was a clear tendency to paint soldiers as “baby killers” as you may well recall. My Lai, pushing prisoners from choppers, free fire zones, and Tiger Force only added to the conception that we were all behaving like Nazi occupation forces, rather than the upright, chocolate bar dispensing GIs of our father’s generation.
My father, a forward observer at the Bulge, made it clear to me that Americans got more than ample “payback” against German soldiers after the Malmedy massacre who were surrendering in droves.
My command of Vietnamese was limited to typical stuff like “go away now” or “come give me a kiss” - This reminds me of an E6 in my outfit that was a polyglot who live the life of Riley while stationed in Vietnam.
Laterite clay - got caught in the shower during a 122 attack trying to get that stuff off. Being nude under fire is like some sort of bad dream made real 😂
There was a dude on our team that extended 4 times, he was fluent in Vietnamese, and I think he was up to his arse in the black market, He had a Browning 9mm with no serial number that he was gifted by a CIA friend.. The CIA had their own airline, with Hueyes, Pilotus Porters, C47's and I think, not sure Chinooks.
I had a good friend whose Vietnamese was limited to "give me a kiss please" làm ơn cho tôi một nụ hôn
Shit happens in war. And temperatures flare, especially when your friends get murdered, or worse tortured and/ormutilated.
Bleeding heart ass hats on Campus or back home, don't get it. War is not civilized and you can't expect civilized behavior, the fact that we couldn't shoot, but had to wait till we were shot (at) was bad enough.
And most troops, even the regular forces didn't want to be there.
Imagine you were drafted, found yourself surrounded in the jungle or a fire support base camp, like Khe Sanh, and fighting for your life, and back home the campus idiots and home grown Marxists demand that you be civilized.
It is one thing to be in a firefight and watching your buddies die, and to get wounded,and another thing to deal with the aftermath of.
I was supporting the Marines at Dong Ha, when a battalion that was patrolling or whatever, I don't know the orders, was caught in a valley in the DMZ, the NVA closed off the entrance and exit and then wiped them out,virtually, in a kill zone.
There were only 11 unwounded, and they were repatriated on a C-130 flight. The rest of the battalion was dead and wounded.
I and my team mate, were basically the only one's on the airfield, and we unloaded the H-19 choppers that flew in, carried the wounded to the field ambulance, along with the medics, and later carried the body bags and loaded them aboard a C-130.
There was this big black dude, built like a brick shit house, that was sitting holding his insides in, and I picked up one end of a poncho,and an arm fell out.. I went to the side of the pierced steel planking that was the ramp, puked and went back to work. my team mate Perry Kyser wanted to take pictures and our team leader slapped down the camera.
At Bong Son I saw what a bee hive round (a cannister of fleschettes) shot from the depressed barrel of a 105 mm howitzer can do to a company of NVA, a sight that you never forget.
These self obsessed, self indulgent, moralizing campus idiots, have no idea of what it is like to be under attack and have your family and friends slaughtered.
I will finish my rant with a claim that those who protest will take umbrage to.
The Chicago 7 (or 8), and the 1968 riots during the Democratic convention, had the consequence of electing Richard Milhaus Nixon.
These self righteous, self indulgent, obsessed assholes didn't stop the war, but they did discredit the Democratic party,and are responsible for the right wing extremism that follows, including Reagan and Trump.
And the fools haven't learned a thing, in their righteous outrage, and that includes Muslims and young black males, they are going to be responsible for electing Trump and his theocratic, racist, homophobic, anti immigrant thugs and they will regret their asinine stupidity, and so will you and I.
But like all stupid and immature people(Trump as an example) they want accept responsibility and will blame it on the Democrats and Biden, because the poor little things didn't get their way.
There is one thing that defines our society and that is the unwillingness to accept personal responsibility. It is always "you made me do it".
Having critical reasoning skills helps, but when someone is invested in an ideology or event, critical reasoning skills go out the window.. because to acknowledge facts and reality is to negate one's identity.
I am a Vietnam vet, and way too many of us, especially those like me who lost team mates and friends, are too invested in that illicit venture to admit that it was a folly and a crime, that never should have happened.
I shudder to think that my team died, that McDonalds and KFC could have a franchise in Saigon err Ho Chi Minh City, and that Exxon would have a sole source contract with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to extract and process oil from the Gulf of Tonkin, where naval aircraft unloaded unused bombs to be used as seismic detectors for oil deposits.
I too am a Vietnam Vet, ARMY 69-71 (18 mos. in country) and I knew well before going that this was an immoral enterprise. That said, I could not gather the courage to flee to Canada (which for those who did took like 8 to 10 years to resolve.
Like the now political cartoonist Danziger I spent a lot of energy just trying to stay out of the line of fire and of course ended up on a RRF for like 180 days of perimeter guard at both Phu Loi and Quan Loi.
So, I ended up facing Sappers in the wire, coming under rocket and mortar fire and probably about 176 days of being soaked in monsoons. Wondering if the mosquitoes that were feasting on me would lead to malaria was always in the back of one’s mind.
Finally, when grunts tell you that they felt safer in the field than on the perimeter you were on then with, well you know you are not in the best of situations.
Oh, Welcome Home!
I've been to both Phu Loi and Quan Loi. 1967, red earth laterite runway, a PSP ramp at the end, across the ramp and viewable from it was the French Planters home. It was the home of Dracula, 2/2nd, Big Red one, and the Planter was a Frenchman, who permitted the grunts to use the swimmng pool, but they turned it red with the dust from the soil, they didn't shower first, so he drained the pool. near the ramp was the guarded entrance. The perimeter was sealed with a barbed wire fence, down a bit was a deuce and a half mount quad 50, pointed at the pop up village, just outside the gate.
It housed shacks made of bamboo and sheets of aluminum, where were actually uncut sheets of Budweiser beer cans.
I have some stories. There was a dirt road that led to the gate, follow the road and it took you to the old plantation workers quarters.
One night I almost wound up like Bergdahl
I have done some goggling and it changed quite a bit, When I was there the squad tents and HQ of the 2/2nd was stung along the runway, later it seems that it got built up quite a bit and all of the action was moved to the approach end of the runway
I don't remember being bothered by Mosquitos, my tent was under the barrels of the artillery battery, try to sleep with that going off., and the concussion of outgoing knocking youpff the canvas cot.
I have some pictures of Quan Li. including a sign which says Quan Loi International, constructed by the 1st Engineer Battalion, "Always First"
I have a picture of me and a monkey, The monkey was a pet of a PFC, kept him on a chain, the monkey liked me, but not others. Smart, he would pull up the chain and loop it to shorten it, and when a dude got within reach he would let go and jump on him. I wasn't assigned the 2/2nd, just supported them I eventually moved into the LRRP squad tent, and went on patrol with them a couple of times.not a foot patrol,but a motorized patrol in an M151, Crazy dudes, the would always let loose with their mounted M160.
For the civilian, the M151 was a Jeep manufactured by Ford, it had independent suspension and was dangerous if it hit a bump and went airborn, or if any wheels left the road.
A quad 50 is a 50 caliber machine gun, mounted and with four barrels, and M160 is a 7.62mm Squad weapon, a machine gun, you can fire it from the hip, not advised as it climbs and has awesome recoil. used quite a bit hung from slings in UH=1 (Huey) Helicopters as a door gunner
Quite good in the jungle though, because unlike the 5.56 M16, its round is not deflected by foliage and branches.
I saw and experienced some of the most surreal stuff at Quan Loi - 1969-1971 - I tried to sleep in a bunker under ground when I first got there… The sounds of like a dozen rats in the dark knocking over old C-Rat cans quickly inspired me to sleeping in an above ground hootch before dawn. I think this was the Quan Loi version of “Rocket Watch” for FNGs.
The Mosquitoes were associated in my memory with Phu Loi, given that rice paddies were adjacent to several sections of perimeter.
There were a number of sapper assaults at Quan Loi, primarily focused on destroying big guns and in one instance an assault on a mortar unit left about a dozen men dead from satchel charges as they slept.
I used to occasionally eat at a mess hall adjacent to a 175 that inevitably would get a fire mission while I was there. I remember my tray bouncing from the table clearly. So, given your proximity to these guns, I totally get being the shock wave knocking you from your cot.
I witnessed an E6 being accidentally crushed by a tank as he tried to shoo a mutt away. He slipped in that miserable fucking laterite red clay, which as you rightly recalled wither stuck to or dusted everything depending on the time of year.
After returning I decided in the early 70’s that one great way to eliminate Vietnam from my mind was to throw away dozens of B&Ws that I took there. A decision I regret deeply, becuase it is surprisingly hard to get quality visuals of over a decade shared by over 5 million men.
In any case, I’m thankful to be home and able to get treatment for Agent Orange when i did.
The underground sleeping quartes must have been built after I was there.
My unit was deployed where ever we were needed, I have been in over 30 places in that miserable country. Don't recall being pestered by mosquito though, I wore long sleeves the whole year I was there, I might have rolled up a cuff.
One mission I was deployed to Kontum, on the Cambodian border. it had been an NVA base camp, and they left behind all kind of surprises, booby traps, one almost got me.
The army had dug in, for sleeping quarters and used those aluminum pallets that are used for cargo and equipment as roofs, sandbags on top of the roofs. not enough room inside to stand up.
I was in the cot, catching Z's when I heard a gunshot, you can imagine how it reverbrates in that space, jumped up, hit my head on he pallet.
Some idiot shot a rat. That did it, I took my chances sleeping in the dirt.
I was at Dak To,when a company of the 173rd Infantry Brigade (Airborne) was ambushed and wiped out, I heard the whole thing over my PRC-25 (an FM manpack portable radio,as if you didn'tknow). The bodies, all 72 of them lay in bags outside the mortuary tent for three days, waiting for personal ID's, the NVA had scrambled their ID cards and dog tags, and it took personal ID to figure out who was who.
It was at that point, that the `173rd started to take ears and mutilate bodies, pay back, and rightly so, fight terror with terror. But the press said nothing of the customs association with the mutilation of that company.
It started to rain, and I undressed quick lathered up and got wet, then it stopped and I had to rinse off in a mud puddle, I swear Viet Nam, except for the Delta and the DMZ is nothing but red earth.
I learned to speak and Read Vietnamese and have the habit of writing Viet Nam, because in the language there was Nam Viet (South Viet) and Bach Viet (North Viet).
A skill I lost, if you don't use it, you lose it.
Bill, what you experienced especially reference the fate of those men of the 173rd makes the term nightmarish totally inadequate.
There are innumerable accounts of GI’s and atrocities committed over the decade we were in Vietnam. There was a clear tendency to paint soldiers as “baby killers” as you may well recall. My Lai, pushing prisoners from choppers, free fire zones, and Tiger Force only added to the conception that we were all behaving like Nazi occupation forces, rather than the upright, chocolate bar dispensing GIs of our father’s generation.
My father, a forward observer at the Bulge, made it clear to me that Americans got more than ample “payback” against German soldiers after the Malmedy massacre who were surrendering in droves.
My command of Vietnamese was limited to typical stuff like “go away now” or “come give me a kiss” - This reminds me of an E6 in my outfit that was a polyglot who live the life of Riley while stationed in Vietnam.
Laterite clay - got caught in the shower during a 122 attack trying to get that stuff off. Being nude under fire is like some sort of bad dream made real 😂
There was a dude on our team that extended 4 times, he was fluent in Vietnamese, and I think he was up to his arse in the black market, He had a Browning 9mm with no serial number that he was gifted by a CIA friend.. The CIA had their own airline, with Hueyes, Pilotus Porters, C47's and I think, not sure Chinooks.
I had a good friend whose Vietnamese was limited to "give me a kiss please" làm ơn cho tôi một nụ hôn
Shit happens in war. And temperatures flare, especially when your friends get murdered, or worse tortured and/ormutilated.
Bleeding heart ass hats on Campus or back home, don't get it. War is not civilized and you can't expect civilized behavior, the fact that we couldn't shoot, but had to wait till we were shot (at) was bad enough.
And most troops, even the regular forces didn't want to be there.
Imagine you were drafted, found yourself surrounded in the jungle or a fire support base camp, like Khe Sanh, and fighting for your life, and back home the campus idiots and home grown Marxists demand that you be civilized.
It is one thing to be in a firefight and watching your buddies die, and to get wounded,and another thing to deal with the aftermath of.
I was supporting the Marines at Dong Ha, when a battalion that was patrolling or whatever, I don't know the orders, was caught in a valley in the DMZ, the NVA closed off the entrance and exit and then wiped them out,virtually, in a kill zone.
There were only 11 unwounded, and they were repatriated on a C-130 flight. The rest of the battalion was dead and wounded.
I and my team mate, were basically the only one's on the airfield, and we unloaded the H-19 choppers that flew in, carried the wounded to the field ambulance, along with the medics, and later carried the body bags and loaded them aboard a C-130.
There was this big black dude, built like a brick shit house, that was sitting holding his insides in, and I picked up one end of a poncho,and an arm fell out.. I went to the side of the pierced steel planking that was the ramp, puked and went back to work. my team mate Perry Kyser wanted to take pictures and our team leader slapped down the camera.
At Bong Son I saw what a bee hive round (a cannister of fleschettes) shot from the depressed barrel of a 105 mm howitzer can do to a company of NVA, a sight that you never forget.
These self obsessed, self indulgent, moralizing campus idiots, have no idea of what it is like to be under attack and have your family and friends slaughtered.
I will finish my rant with a claim that those who protest will take umbrage to.
The Chicago 7 (or 8), and the 1968 riots during the Democratic convention, had the consequence of electing Richard Milhaus Nixon.
These self righteous, self indulgent, obsessed assholes didn't stop the war, but they did discredit the Democratic party,and are responsible for the right wing extremism that follows, including Reagan and Trump.
And the fools haven't learned a thing, in their righteous outrage, and that includes Muslims and young black males, they are going to be responsible for electing Trump and his theocratic, racist, homophobic, anti immigrant thugs and they will regret their asinine stupidity, and so will you and I.
But like all stupid and immature people(Trump as an example) they want accept responsibility and will blame it on the Democrats and Biden, because the poor little things didn't get their way.
There is one thing that defines our society and that is the unwillingness to accept personal responsibility. It is always "you made me do it".